Author's Note: Short chapter, I'm sorry, but I have been going insane with cleaning my house. Just about every single one of my relatives is coming over. Sigh. Free time, I miss thee.

Memories of Things To Be

Chapter 2

Kakashi was tired, and his head was starting to throb, but he had no choice.

None at all.

He had to stay awake.

You should sleep.

"Shut up."

I'm not trying to hurt you, you know. That would be extremely counterproductive on my part.

Kakashi's eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.

Seriously, though. Three days and not one wink of sleep. That really isn't healthy.

His eyes went flat. He snatched a kunai out of his pouch and positioned it over his eye: the one that always turned red. "Shut up, or I'll dig you right out of my head."

To say that Kakashi had 'lost it' in that moment would be a rather accurate description. The voice went silent. Kakashi remained like that for a moment, blade positioned over one unblinking eye. When he heard no response at long last, he relaxed.

He slumped back against the wall of a room so sparsely decorated that one would wonder if anyone even lived there.

His bed was tucked into the corner far away from the window, a night stand next to it with a lamp, and a small drawer for clothes. The curtains that shaded the windows were the same blank grey as the walls, and the floor was covered in a fuzzy tan carpet that promised to stain at the smallest opportunity.

Kakashi inhaled from his place atop the bed, back braced by a pillow and legs covered with his blanket, and the faint tang of rust coated his tongue. He stared unblinkingly at the ceiling, swallowing over and over again to see if it would go away, but it didn't.

Grimacing, he rolled off the bed and landed soundlessly on the carpeted floor, then made way for the bathroom to wash out his mouth.

When a ninja walks, it is silent, graceful, and effortless, every step poised for action. Kakashi was none of those things because he was dead tired. He stumbled into his bathroom with the finesse of a drunkard, staggering this way and that as the strength in his legs threatened to abandon him. He managed to catch hold of the wall before he could fall to the floor. For a moment he stood there, panting. How long had it been since he'd been on sick leave? Two days? Three? When was the last time he'd eaten? He couldn't remember.

With a grunt of effort, he took the last few staggered steps into the bathroom and barely managed to switch on the light. He didn't bother looking at himself in the mirror, instead simply opening the tap and rinsing his mouth of the rusty taste. The cold felt nice, woke him up. It distracted him from the throbbing in his head, calmed him down a bit. Kakashi lowered his head into the sink, letting the water cascade over his head, and he allowed himself to relax for the first time in days.

Sighing, he realized he needed to eat something. It wasn't that he was forcing himself not to, he just forgot. The hunger pangs had a habit of disappearing when he actually needed to eat. He pulled his head out from under the sink, closing his eyes for a moment as the water dripped down his hair.

He closed the tap, groped blindly behind himself for a towel, and dried his head. Even after days spent awake (an idea that was looking dumber and dumber by the second), he was feeling a little refreshed after this. Cleaner, too. He rubbed his hair furiously, doing his best to collect all moisture, before he peeked at himself in the mirror.

Kakashi froze.

So did the man in the mirror.

That man in the mirror was not Kakashi.

They both held towels, they both were in the same bathroom, and they both had silver hair, but that was where the similarities ended. For one thing, the man in the mirror was older, in his early forties at least. Next was the hair. While it was the same color, Kakashi's hair sort of went in every direction. The man's hair went up, like it was mocking the laws of physics or something.

While Kakashi wore blue pajamas, the man in the mirror was dressed for war, the armored vest of Konoha strapped over clothes designed for mobility, his arms and legs carrying multiple pouches meant for kunai and shuriken.

Most important of all, though, Kakashi's eyes were both midnight-black. With the man, only one was such a color. The other eye swirled red.

A terrible rage built up inside of Kakashi. "You," he hissed. "Get out of my head."

He was half-expecting the man to copy his every motion from inside the mirror, just to mock him. That wasn't what happened, though. Instead, the man dried himself off with his towel and hung it on the rack behind him. Kakashi glanced down at the towel in his own hands, making sure it was still there.

"So, Kakashi-kun, you and I can finally speak face-to-face." It was the same, raspy voice that had been tormenting him for so long.

Kakashi looked around, disoriented. The man's lips were moving, but his voice wasn't coming from the mirror: it was in his head. With that realization, he went on guard, ready to fight at a moment's notice.

The man raised an eyebrow from the other side of the mirror, looking distinctively unimpressed. "Are you really going to fight me with a wet towel?"

The teenager looked down at the object in question and glared. "If I have to," he said, tersely.

The man shook his head in exasperation. "Just what is it going to take to convince you that I'm not your enemy?"

Kakashi rose a brow. "Are you serious?" he asked. The man in the mirror froze, seeming to realize that all was not going quite as he'd planned. "Are you serious?!" Kakashi said again, although this time with far more aggression. "I wouldn't care if you really were an ally! You invaded my head! You took control of my body! If I could kill you right now, I would do it without hesitation."

The man stared for a moment, seemingly unperturbed by the younger man's declaration. Then he sighed, running his hands through his hair. "Naruto, this is so much harder than you said it would be," he growled under his breath. Then turning back to Kakashi, he said, "Regardless of what you think, I'm on your side. Just let me help you."

He tried to say more, but Kakashi cut him off with a harsh bark of laughter. "Help me? Help me? You really think that what you're doing is helping me?"

The man narrowed his eyes. "Fine. If you won't trust me, then at least use your head. Who do I look like, Kakashi?"

Kakashi growled. He knew the obvious answer, but he wasn't going to give this man the satisfaction of hearing it said out loud since, so far as he could tell, the man wasn't a mind-reader.

The older man shook his head again and turned around with a sigh, and the red swirl on the back of Konoha's chūnin and jōnin vests dominated the mirror. "Soon you'll be forced to change, Kakashi. Just be sure not to resist too hard."

Death. So much death. It seemed that everyone he grew to love inevitably walked into their own graves. The boy crushed by the boulder, the girl impaled with a lightning blade, and the teacher who sold his soul to the Reaper.

Kakashi's eyes turned to slits. Then he wrapped his fist with the towel and shattered the mirror.

Minato frowned as he watched his students. Kakashi had been acting strange for several weeks, but this was just too much.

He was in a staring contest with Obito.

A staring contest he started.

That was just not normal. Even Rin was staring at him, gaping like a fish.

Minato decided then and there that something was wrong with his student, and that he was going to fix it.

To say that his students were taken by surprise when he dismissed them mid-mission and Hiraishin'd away with Kakashi would be to say that the ocean was wet.

Minato had been using his technique for several years now, and he'd more or less mastered it to the point that he didn't get nauseous. Kakashi? Not so much. The poor chūnin emptied his stomach into a nearby bush.

Blue eyes narrowed.

"We have a lot to talk about, Kakashi-kun."