Chapter 5
Day One - Morning
Kakashi replaced his handkerchief and followed Iruka into the kitchen after breakfast, insisting that he would like to make himself at least slightly useful. He offered to dry dishes as Iruka washed them.
He probably shouldn't have been quite as surprised as he was that their arrangement worked with minimal collateral damage.
Iruka chatted absently as he scrubbed the dishes, apparently content to hold a mostly one-sided conversation about the latest news from the capital, the weather forecast for the next few days, his upcoming lesson plans, building renovations, and anything else that seemed to pop into his head. Kakashi let the sound of Iruka's voice wash over him, half of his mind composing a list of things he would need to pick up from his own apartment that afternoon. He also wanted to stop at the grocery store. Even if he couldn't cook, he could certainly help purchase food items. It seemed like the least he could do, for the inconvenience he was putting Iruka through.
"I'm sorry. I must be boring you," Iruka said, interrupting a comment he'd been making about the packaging of ration bars.
"Not at all," Kakashi replied honestly. "I've often wondered why they use such loud packaging, myself. Makes it impossible to eat them when one is trying to remain undetected. I'll sometimes wrap a few up in a cloth before I hide out, if I know I'll be somewhere for several hours or more."
"The manufacturers obviously aren't shinobi," Iruka agreed. "Still, though. I know that sometimes I can be a little... talkative."
Kakashi smiled. "It's nice."
"O– oh," Iruka said quietly. "I.... Good, I guess?"
Kakashi chuckled. "It's relaxing. You're very... normal."
"That's... usually an insult," Iruka observed dryly.
Kakashi strangled a yelp. "That's not what I meant! I just meant that the sense of domesticity is relaxing. It doesn't feel like I have to be prepared to jump into battle at any moment, when you talk."
"Domesticity..." Iruka murmured under his breath. "Well, I suppose you only feel that way because my class hasn't started weapons training," he said, a smile in his voice. "It's constant warfare, at that point. Especially until my students figure out they can't break into my apartment to sneak attack me."
Kakashi let out a brief bark of laughter. "Do they try often?"
"Even once is too often," Iruka replied dryly. "I'm just glad I don't have to teach pre-genin tree walking. It means I don't have to worry as much about traps around my windows, only by my door."
"You have traps by your door?" Kakashi asked with interest. He had noticed no such thing. He'd assumed that most chūnin didn't put traps around their doors, or something. Jōnin, being professionally paranoid, all tended to put traps around their doors.
The traps were usually at least noticeable to a discerning shinobi, though.
"Mmhm," Iruka hummed in agreement. "A few. I can't use lethal traps since pre-genin try to break in, so I had to make up for it in volume."
"When you say 'a few'...?" Kakashi asked, his voice trailing off.
"Ah... six or seven. Or twelve," Iruka mumbled. "I kind of got carried away."
Iruka had twelve traps around his door, and Kakashi hadn't noticed a single one?
"Trap wire?" Kakashi guessed. The only way he wouldn't have noticed the traps, he figured, would be if they were mechanical rather than chakra-based. Since he would be unable to see wires, that was the most obvious solution.
"Some of them," Iruka said vaguely. "If you're interested, I could show you once you regain your sight. I doubt it's anything that would be of interest to you, though there are a couple of amusing ones in there. One will turn a would-be intruder's hair vivid blue, pink, and purple."
Kakashi snorted. "That explains why I've sometimes seen pre-genin with hair in those colors." It didn't, however, explain why he hadn't felt the buzzing of chakra in wards as they'd approached and entered the apartment.
"Yup," Iruka acknowledged, amused. "Another will stick a piece of paper reading, 'I tried and failed to break into my sensei's apartment,' onto the back of their shirt."
Kakashi snickered. "Appropriate."
"I thought so. Oh, let me take the towel from you."
Kakashi set down the last utensil on the countertop and held the drying towel for Iruka to take.
The towel slipped out of his fingers and was pulled with a hushed susurration over its bar.
"What next?" Iruka asked. "I need to change and wash up."
"I'd like to do the same," Kakashi said.
"Alright. Would you like me to lead you to the bedroom, or would you like to try navigating on your own? I imagine you're getting some idea of the layout of my apartment by now."
Disappointingly, Iruka was correct. Kakashi thought he could probably make his way back to his untidy stack of clothes at the foot of the bed on his own, now.
But he put out his hand. "Do you mind terribly helping me?" he asked. "I could probably make it, but I'd rather not trip over my own feet and fall flat on my face. It seems hardly befitting a shinobi of Konoha."
Iruka chuckled and slid his palm against Kakashi's. "We couldn't have that," he agreed, leading Kakashi back toward the bedroom.
The dampness from dishwashing clung to Iruka's warm skin, making his palm slightly sticky with water. Kakashi rubbed his thumb over the places where a little more moisture had gathered at Iruka's knuckles. He had never stopped to notice the different ways different parts of one's hand captured dampness before.
He liked feeling Iruka's hand in his.
He didn't immediately notice as his fingers tightened, ever so slightly, around Iruka's hand.
When he realized what he had done, however, he felt a flush crawl up his cheeks. He had rubbed Iruka's knuckles and squeezed his hand, he realized, appalled. No wonder Iruka had asked if he could make the journey without Iruka's help. Had he done something like that before? Was he making his interest in Iruka too obvious? God forbid, was he being creepy toward Iruka, perhaps making Iruka uncomfortable? Was that why Iruka had seemed so nervous yesterday evening? Oh, god.
He barely registered that Iruka was saying something about the fact that they had reached the foot of the bed, and Kakashi pulled his hand away as if stung. The very last thing he wanted was to be creepy toward Iruka.
"Do you need any help with anything?" Iruka asked quietly, his voice unreadable. "If not, I'll go wash up and leave you here to change."
"That's fine," Kakashi said, trying to convey disinterest. "I should be able to manage. Thank you, Iruka-sensei." He smiled over the handkerchief.
"Alright," Iruka said. "Just yell if you need anything."
"Thank you," Kakashi repeated.
Iruka walked into the bathroom, letting the door click closed behind him, as Kakashi turned his attention to the clothing he had shed the night before.
He dressed quickly, years of practice of changing into uniform in the dark during missions giving his hands sureness. Each piece of equipment was as familiar to him as his own gloves.
It was nice to have a proper mask cover his face again rather than the handkerchief. As thoughtful as the kerchief had been, its upper edge had bitten into the bridge of Kakashi's nose, left a gap on either side of said biting edge and his face, and felt altogether too loose over his jaw. His mask clung comfortably and snugly to his face without smothering him. Even the hitai-ate over his unseeing Sharingan made him feel a little more relaxed.
He was done changing almost before Iruka had finished wetting his toothbrush.
Kakashi wished, unexpectedly powerfully, for a moment, that he could see. He wondered what he would find in Iruka's apartment. Trinkets from students, maybe? Bookshelves, scrolls, photographs? Drawings by students? Perhaps art on the walls?
Iruka's apartment was more sparsely furnished than Kakashi would have initially guessed. Even blind, it seemed to Kakashi that there was little to trip over or navigate around. Iruka had always struck Kakashi as the type who would hold onto mementos with great care, but Kakashi suddenly realized he knew very little of Iruka outside of their work relationship.
Did Iruka even form close connections with the people around him? Or was his social work affect just that – an affect?
Kakashi frowned. Did Iruka have close friends? Kakashi couldn't think of any off the top of his head, though he would have been the first to admit that he didn't know much about Iruka's social and personal life. Other than Naruto, did Iruka have anyone?
...Was he lonely? Or was he alone but content?
"Are you dressed?" Iruka called from the other side of the bathroom door, startling Kakashi out of his thoughts.
"Yes, thank you," Kakashi called back.
The bathroom door opened, and Iruka came into the bedroom. A faint hint of sandalwood aftershave and mint toothpaste wafted into the room with him.
"I'll let you wash up while I change, and then we can head over to your apartment," Iruka said.
Kakashi hesitated.
"Is there something else you wanted to do?" Iruka asked curiously.
Kakashi smiled sheepishly. "Would you mind taking me to the Memorial Stone?" he asked. "I go almost every morning, if I'm able to."
"Every–" Iruka began, startled. But he cut himself off and said only, "Of course. Yes, we can do that."
"Thank you," Kakashi said.
He made his way slowly toward the bathroom, one relaxed hand out in front of him to find a wall or the bathroom doorway.
Iruka stepped aside, letting Kakashi feel his way through the bathroom door.
Iruka was, Kakashi reflected, a teacher through and through. He challenged people to do their best, no matter their circumstances. It was kind.
And frustrating.
Not because finding the doorway was frustratingly difficult. It wasn't. But it was frustrating because Kakashi realized, only now that he was missing Iruka's hand in his own, how much he had liked it.
Too much, really.
So he didn't ask for Iruka's help. He shut out the part of himself that yearned for even that small closeness and closed the door behind himself.
Iruka body flickered them both to the Memorial Stone with Kakashi's permission. It seemed unwise to show too much of the village that Kakashi was blind and chakra-dead.
"I'll be within hearing-range, and I'll be somewhere I can still see you," Iruka said quietly. "Just in case. Take as much time as you need."
Kakashi nodded silently.
He listened as Iruka's footsteps in the grass went away. He stood, his eyes, though unseeing, fixed to the place where he knew the Memorial Stone stood.
Guilt gnawed at him with old, familiar teeth. The fangs of regret pierced his skin, burying themselves deeply into his heart.
They were old companions, guilt and regret, but their bites always stung anew whenever Kakashi came to the Stone to beg Obito's and Minato's forgiveness. What he would give for them to be alive, to have lived instead of died on the road of life that had brought Kakashi here.
It was only their deaths that allowed Kakashi to stand here today, on his own two feet, alive and healing from yet another enemy attack.
That's not quite true, he imagined in Minato's admonishing voice.
But if Obito hadn't sacrificed himself for his ideals and given Kakashi the Sharingan... and if Minato hadn't sacrificed himself for his ideals and sealed the Kyūbi into his baby son.... Kakashi would have died long ago. And even if he hadn't, he certainly wouldn't be the person he was today. He wouldn't have learned what it meant to be the kind of human being he wanted to be.
That's still not quite true, Minato's admonishing voice said in Kakashi's imagination once more.
Iruka-sensei hardly counts, Kakashi retorted at the imaginary voice of his jōnin sensei. Not that his subconscious wearing Minato's voice was wrong. Iruka was the most immediate reason Kakashi was standing at the Memorial Stone. Iruka was good.
Iruka had sacrificed himself for Naruto, barely surviving a fūma shuriken thrown by his close friend. Everyone had whispered, before Iruka was discharged, that he would be paralyzed from the chest down. Or that he wouldn't live. Or that he would have to be hooked up to machines to breathe for the rest of his life.
That he had survived had been nothing short of a miracle. And despite that, Kakashi knew that Iruka wouldn't hesitate to throw himself at the mercy of the fates again, if that's what it took to protect Naruto.
Let me have my remorse, Kakashi added irritably at Minato's voice.
He imagined Obito's brash, irreverent voice saying, Your father wasn't afraid to have friends.
Yeah, thanks, Kakashi thought sarcastically. Just what he needed: his subconscious taking the imagined form of his dead team to try to convince him to let Iruka into his life.
His memories and imagined team usually left him alone to mourn in peace. He wondered, a little irately, why he was imagining them and their snarkiness now.
Because you're not here alone, Obito's voice said slyly (insomuch as Kakashi's memory of Obito was able to be sly). You're here with someone. Someone that you like.
Kakashi made a face in the direction of the Stone. "Oh, shut up," he snapped.
"Kakashi-san? Is everything okay?" Iruka called, sounding surprised. He was close enough, Kakashi realized, to have heard Kakashi tell the stone to shut up. Oops.
"Just arguing with ghosts," Kakashi grumbled, far too quietly for Iruka to hear. Then he called back, "Yes."
"Alright," Iruka called.
He went quiet again, apparently content to wait for Kakashi to finish arguing with his ghosts.
We'll talk about this later, Kakashi told the ghosts of his memories firmly.
He turned and began slowly walking in Iruka's direction.
He stumbled on a stone.
"Oh! Let me–" Iruka's hand had caught his elbow, steadying him, before Kakashi could stumble even a full step forward and before the words had even fully left Iruka's mouth. Indeed, only Iruka's soft voice breathed in Kakashi's ear prevented Kakashi from lashing out instinctively at the hands on his elbow. Had Iruka always been that fast? he wondered, startled.
"You're very quick," Kakashi observed dryly.
"Oh. I, um, saw you might trip over that stone," Iruka stammered. "I was ready to flicker over here in case you did. That's all."
"I see," Kakashi said lazily. "Well, thank you."
His body, however, had fallen into the relaxed looseness he wore in anticipation of a fight, and his mind had focused like a laser on Iruka's stammered excuse. There was something off about the way Iruka had excused his being able to catch Kakashi.
Suddenly, Kakashi's mind was filled with doubts and suspicions. Part of his attention flicked back through memories of the battle that had led to his eyesight being temporarily blocked. Could Iruka have coordinated such an attack? And if so, could he have sent all of Kakashi's closest teammates out of Konoha or put them on call so that Kakashi would be unable to call on them? As much as he wanted to, he couldn't completely dismiss the possibility.
Another part of his mind wondered if Iruka could have placed the stone there for Kakashi to trip over. To what end might he have done such a thing? Why and how might he have tripped Kakashi? Was it possible that Iruka had manufactured this moment so as to build Kakashi's trust in order to later exploit it?
A third part of Kakashi wanted to know only what Iruka was hiding. Because his intent did not seem malicious – and Kakashi was pretty good at gauging that, if he did say so himself – but he had definitely been hiding something. He was hiding something besides his speed, that was; and that speed was remarkable for a chūnin in and of itself.
He allowed Iruka to lead them back into the press of Konoha's buildings.
He gave Iruka instructions to his apartment building. But, without realizing he was going to do so, he gave instructions that were unnecessarily complex and inefficient.
Chūnin and jōnin alike were expected to have a fairly solid understanding of Konoha's layout. However, chūnin in particular were supposed to have a firm mental map of the city, since they would be more likely to help civilians, genin, and pre-genin evacuate in case of an attack. Kakashi wanted to see how Iruka would navigate them to his apartment.
Iruka didn't say anything; he only began walking. It soon became clear that Iruka intended to follow Kakashi's instructions the entire way there.
"You know," Kakashi said lazily, "there's a faster way there."
"Oh, I know," Iruka said, unbothered. "I figured you were more comfortable with this route, or something. I didn't want to alter your routine at a time like this."
Kakashi stumbled but caught himself, even as Iruka's grip tightened just slightly on his elbow to keep him steady. It hadn't occurred to him that Iruka might have patiently accepted an inefficient route for the sake of Kakashi's comfort.
"Take me the most efficient way," Kakashi suggested mildly.
"Are you sure?" Iruka asked uncertainly. "It's... not a normal route."
"Yes, please," Kakashi said with a smile over his mask. "As long as there's no roof-hopping."
He regretted it not long after. Iruka's route involved ducking under swinging boards nailed to fences, shimmying between walls of alleyways that really shouldn't even be called alleyways, sliding over a cement partition onto a dirt pathway that wound through a small park, hopping over a small creek (Iruka unceremoniously picked Kakashi up so he wouldn't get his feet wet, despite Kakashi's halfhearted protests – for which Kakashi was secretly grateful), and finally to a door Kakashi had never actually used to enter his own apartment building.
Huh.
Kakashi made a mental note to follow Iruka's route when he got his sight back. He was curious to see how complex it was. He had to admit, following his mental map of Konoha, though, that Iruka's route was significantly more efficient than even Kakashi's most efficient route would have been.
"Have you come to this apartment building before?" Kakashi asked as they went inside.
"No," Iruka said, sounding surprised. "I mean, not specifically. I spent a lot of time wandering around Konoha, after my parents died."
That's right, Kakashi realized belatedly. He'd forgotten that during his time wearing the dog-faced mask, he'd often seen a small, lonely boy with a long scar over his nose wandering aimlessly through Konoha. The boy had been all smiles and goofy jokes when he knew others were around, but when the only people nearby were invisible ANBU, he had been quiet and drawn. He'd often worn unchecked tears that vanished the moment someone rounded a corner.
"I saw you sometimes," Kakashi admitted quietly. "I hadn't realized that was you until just now."
"You saw me?" Iruka asked, perplexed.
"Wandering around," Kakashi clarified. "I don't think you ever realized I was there."
"O– oh," Iruka said embarrassedly. "I didn't do anything too stupid, did I?"
"No," Kakashi said. "I don't think so. You just seemed... sad."
"I was," Iruka confessed, his voice low. "Well, I suppose that's inevitable. I'm surprised I never noticed you, though."
"I'm not," Kakashi admitted. "I was made a jōnin during the Third Shinobi War, and I've always been pretty good at staying unnoticed." That was an understatement; he had been the ANBU who snuck up on ANBU. But Iruka didn't need to know that. (Or, more specifically, he wasn't supposed to tell Iruka that.)
"Wait, how old are you?" Iruka blurted. "Ah, sorry, that was incredibly rude of me to ask. Never mind," he added quickly.
"Twenty-eight," Kakashi replied. "I became a jōnin at 13."
"Oh," Iruka exhaled, something unreadable in his voice. Oddly enough, it didn't seem like hero worship or even amazement; it seemed like– "I'm sorry."
Kakashi blinked. That hadn't been what he'd expected.
"What?" he asked, confused.
"You– you must have had a very... not-childlike childhood," Iruka said softly. "To become a jōnin so quickly."
"Well, it was the middle of a war," Kakashi conceded. "I don't think anyone in my year at the Academy had a normal childhood."
"I suppose not," Iruka said, with that ineffable something in his voice again. "That's very... well, I'm sorry."
Kakashi shrugged. He didn't normally feel a sense of loss for his childhood. His sense of loss was reserved for the people who had been in his life and who no longer were. Inexplicably, though, he felt a brief moment of yearning for the childhood he had never known. Was childhood so nice that Iruka mourned for Kakashi's lack of one? How could that be, when Iruka had wandered around Konoha with a tear-stained face and old, ill-fitting clothes?
In any case, he could feel the wards buzzing in and around his apartment door.
"Do you think you can inactivate the barriers for me?" Kakashi asked.
He was about to offer to walk Iruka through the process, but Iruka spoke first. "Sure, one moment," he said, his voice somber but not sorrowful now.
And then the barriers came down.
Kakashi blinked several times, dumbfounded, too startled and confused to move so much as a muscle. He had to remind himself to breathe.
"Did I miss anything?" Iruka asked politely.
"N– no," Kakashi whispered hoarsely. He cleared his throat. "Did you just...?"
"O– oh. I did that too fast, didn't I?" Iruka whispered. "I've never– I mean...."
"Have you taken my barriers down before?" Kakashi asked faintly, his sense of trust and relaxation and safety crumbling away from beneath his feet.
"No," Iruka said quickly. "As I said, I've never been in this building before. It's just, you use pretty standard ANBU barriers. They're kind of easy to– Can we talk about this inside? Would that be okay?"
"Okay," Kakashi said, his head spinning. He felt lightheaded with shock. Iruka had taken down his wards faster than Kakashi would have been able to, and they were Kakashi's own wards!
They went in and Kakashi closed the door behind them, reactivating the wards with a silencing barrier activated with them.
"So," Kakashi said.
"So..." Iruka replied nervously.