He thought about it still, more often than he would have liked to admit, about the way Guy had told him, I couldn't die, not as long as my rival was still alive, not before I'd beaten him, while lying in that hospital bed, his eyes shining beneath a film of teary delusion.

Afterwards at the lakeside inn Kakashi sipped a drink through his mask and tried to forget the pale knife-edge line of Guy's mouth, the ghostly white of his eyes and the way they made him feel a twinge somewhere below his belly.

He rolled the sake around on his tongue, swallowing against rising bile, and tried not to hear the barmaid, a willowy husk of a woman, giggle. Still, the low and tinny sound reached his ears. For Kakashi it conjured up the image of empty cans clanging against each other in a garbage bag. Waste.

Guy was laughing with her. Of course Guy was laughing with her, his loud, empty laugh, devoid of anything remotely human. He was winking, probably. Sharing some kind of stupid, innocent joke, not something suggestive or lewd like her usual customers might. Guy's humor was sweet, it was almost childlike, and Kakashi hated it because it reminded him of the way Guy had crushed a boy's skull against the grey trunk of a tree. The kid had been what? Naruto's age? Anyway, a dark orange splatter remained where his head had struck, then it mixed with the dew and dripped into the grass.

Kakashi hated Guy.

He took another sip, not looking up from the stained surface of the bar where countless drinks had left countless stains, black and frayed like burn marks, but knowing either way that next to him Guy was drawing in yet another woman. The bony waitress was at his elbow now. Empty tray under one arm, she put her other hand on the counter and leaned forward – feigning ignorance – to give them a good view of her cleavage.

Kakashi wasn't impressed. Under her pallid skin the arches of her ribs would be visible like tent poles about to poke through worn canvas. She smelled like cheap perfume, sickeningly sweet. She was a flower past her prime, decaying.

Guy, however, would fuck both her and the one behind the bar. Guy would fuck anything. He was like an animal that way.

Back when they were kids, Guy had been the one who'd come up with the beast nickname for himself, but it had stuck because it was so apt. He had no reason, nothing beyond lust and instinct. Why he'd had to latch on Kakashi of all people was a mystery Kakashi had never bothered to solve. He knew Guy was a curse. As children, their classmates had known immediately, the way children did, had excluded and picked on him because he was stupid and weak and bad luck. You would not become friends with someone who was so clearly headed for an early grave. Self-preservation.

Kakashi could feel the change in the atmosphere, Guy had turned the tide. He was praising the women for their fragile beauty, their soft, flawless skin. Simile and hyperbole rolled off his tongue with practiced ease. The women had been listening to his old-fashioned speech with amusement and curiosity at first, as if Guy was some kind of rare beetle they'd discovered – an odd creature, a little disgusting, kind of pathetic, sure, but with a shiny shell, that little hint of specialness. They'd given him time, all the while trying to rope Kakashi into the conversation, but now… Now it was dawning on them. That Guy meant every flowery word he said, that to him, they really were beautiful, that in the span of their boring, meaningless lives no one had ever looked at them like that and that no one ever would again.

Kakashi could feel the women shift away from him. The one behind the bar waved towards a pimply youth to take over for her. The waitress set down her tray and nervously wiped her hands on her yukata. She shot her friend an insecure look, worrying at her lower lip.Are we really going to do this?

Guy was good; Kakashi had to give him that. He was the perfect liar, the kind that was deluded enough to completely buy into his own fabrications. Guy was convinced he was a good man; he was convinced he cared.

Kakashi, however, knew the truth. He'd seen it countless times, and he knew Guy wasn't even a man, much less a good one.

One image that often came to mind when Kakashi's thoughts dared to wander was that of Genma chewing on his senbon, hands twitching around the wooden hilt of his shovel. Framed by a grey sky heavy with clouds, he stared down at the cave's sealed entrance and made no move to start digging.

Guy took off with the women soon enough, but not without giving Kakashi a thumbs-up behind their backs.

Kakashi kept nursing his drink in silence. He had been waiting for this moment. In and of itself, getting rid of Guy was always a highlight, but there was also the nagging sense that he was being watched.

He'd noticed the woman back when they'd first entered the inn, and now he was trying to get another look at her out of the corner of his eye.

Black hair, tanned. She was staring at him openly, unashamedly from underneath her long, dark lashes.

Kakashi had a sudden flash of Guy's black eyes, narrowed in concentration. He shivered in revulsion, even as he felt his blood surge.

In one angry movement, he tossed the rest of his drink back, the alcohol burning in his throat for seconds after he'd swallowed twice, thrice against the sting, the urge to choke and cough.
She was next to him in the space of that breathless moment. Hand on his should and her breath in his ear, "I'm glad the loud guy is finally gone."

Kakashi almost laughed at her choice of words. More fitting than she'd ever know. "So am I," he said.

"Do you have a room?" She cocked her hip against his side, and he gave her a slow once over for show. She was beautiful, in a curvy way. Her dark yukata was drawn tight around her torso, showing him only a hint of collarbone beneath her neck, no cleavage, which he found enticing. Her lips were lush and blood-red.

Kakashi nodded.

"I do."

They'd sent him away when the actual digging started. Kakashi, a chûnin with actual battle experience, had been considered too young for whatever sight awaited them under the rubble.

There was something oddly rushed about the way she stripped. Kakashi wondered if it was eagerness that made her move so briskly, but somehow he doubted it.

She was naked within moments, licking her lips, looking at him from behind those dark, dark eyes.

He caught her wrist before her fingertips could brush the mask.

"You're not going to take it off for me?"

"Not for anyone."

She pouted. "No kissing?"

"No kissing."

He sat on the bed, lowered his zipper and motioned for her to get on her knees.

Everyone had known that Guy was dead. They'd known as soon as Ebisu and Genma returned without him, and it became clear that the whole mission had been a trap designed to lure a bunch of Konoha Genin to their deaths to send a message to the Hokage.

Kakashi enjoyed laying back and letting her do all the work. Moonlight was slanting in through the cracks in the blinds, camouflaging her in shadow.

She was on top of him, around him, her body drawing him deeper inside like she was a living maelstrom and he nothing but driftwood caught up in her.

When he closed his eye, he saw Guy, fists balled, his jaw set, the mask slowly peeling away.

Kakashi gasped, his eye snapped open. Above him, the woman moved, her lashes fluttered, black insect legs. He stared at her hands, hanging at her sides limply, her hips angled toward him, rocking as her head fell back.

Women's necks broke easily.

Guy broke necks; he shattered bones. He drove his fist through men's chests and smiled the whole time.

It was warm inside someone's chest. Warm and wet like his woman was now.

Rin had been warm, the cavity of her chest had seemed to welcome his hand. Her eyes had never closed.

Kakashi knew he shouldn't be aroused, but he was. He was.

The line of her jaw became the line of Guy's jaw, her throat Guy's throat, the moonlight rippling across it like waves of chakra.
Her mouth fell open and he saw the white gleam of her teeth. He saw Guy's sharp canines, spattered in blood. Kakashi saw the bottomless black pits of Guy's pupils.

He hated Guy. He hated himself.

"Touch me," she whispered, and he wanted her to shut up.

"This is for you, Ryô," she said, reaching behind herself.

"Don't talk," Kakashi murmured tersely, irritated with her and his own thoughts.

It took a split second for her words to sink in, for him to grasp their actual meaning, and by then she was already bringing the kunai down, aiming for his eye, her face twisted into a grimace of hatred.

Deep down, people had almost been relieved. It's behind him now. He would never have made chûnin anyway, better to be killed in action like that than to die during the exams – maybe even at the hand of a classmate – that would have been even more unfortunate. This way his name will go on the monument, at least.

At the very last second, Kakashi escaped the inescapable - for the moment - by moving slightly to the right. The kunai sank into the pillow, leaving him with a fresh scrape on his cheek and his field of vision obscured by a snowstorm of innocent white feathers.
Now it was child's play to topple her, as she was doubled over, heaving with sobs, panting like a dog. The assault seemed to have taken the life out of her, all of it. He threw her onto the mattress, rolling her on her back, straddling her and pinning her wrists with one hand. She didn't even struggle, and somehow that only made Kakashi even more aware of his dick still hanging out of his open pants. As if he was about to rape her – and he could, he realized, he could do anything he wanted with her, she was completely at his mercy.

Kakashi stared into her face, wondering if she was thinking it, too. Probably. Her nostrils were flaring, her chest heaving, her eyes flat and cold. She was a fool.

"I'm Hatake Kakashi," he said. "Sharingan no Kakashi. Do you know how many men I've killed?"

He'd asked conversationally, as if they were friends having a little chat. She only pressed her lips together defiantly. It was something Guy did when he was determined, pressing his lips into a bitter line until they lost all color.

Kakashi tightened his grip on her wrists. He hated defiance. It was stupid.

"Hundreds. Maybe a thousand," he told her. "Men, women, boys, girls. I've killed them all."

He leaned in closer; close enough to her face for her to feel his breath on her skin, for his breath to stir the feathers stuck in her hair.

"I don't remember their names. Your Ryô meant absolutely nothing. So how about you forget him too, hm? Promise me and I'll let you go."

He knew what her answer would be even before she opened her mouth. The very moment Kakashi saw his own exasperated disappointment reflected back at him from the pitch black depths of her pupils, he knew that he had known all along.

"He meant everything to me. You… you're not human. As long as I live, I swear, I'll never—"

There was no need to let her finish.

Women's necks broke easily.

When they found Guy, he was alive. Everyone else in the small cavern – the missing villagers, plus three other Konoha Genin - was dead, had been dead for a while. They'd been tortured and killed. Guy's lung had been punctured. He was missing teeth and fingernails. He was lying on a heap of corpses. But he wasn't dead.
Although he should have been.

Sneaking out of the window and across the roof, Kakashi carried the dead woman to the lake and dumped her body in the black water. There was barely a ripple as she was swallowed; only two or three tiny white feathers drifting to the surface in the place in the center of the lake where Kakashi had lowered her in.

Guy'd had nothing on him when they found him. There'd been nothing in the cave that could have helped him survive.

The next morning Guy was as obnoxiously cheerful as ever.

"Did you sleep well, Kakashi?" he asked, winking in a way that Kakashi was supposed to read as I didn't sleep at all, if you catch my drift.

Kakashi chose to ignore it. "Like the dead," he said, and if Guy shot him a little side-glance at that – maybe one that was just long enough to notice the small cut on his cheek, the tiny tear in the fabric of his mask, Kakashi chose to ignore that, too.

"Aaah, you're so cool!" Guy yelled at the sky, head thrown back, pulling at his hair in pretend-agony.

Kakashi looked at his exposed throat, at the tendons in his neck, and thought about the woman. He had to swallow against the sudden burn in the back of his own throat.

Sometimes, Kakashi thought as he started on the path back to Konoha – Konoha, where the kids were waiting for the return of their two respectable sensei, where they were admired, honorable shinobi – sometimes, Kakashi thought, he didn't know how much longer he could keep pretending.

Maybe that was the real challenge.

In the end, the corpses were burned quickly, almost immediately.
In the end, no one asked Guy, How come you didn't starve to death?