Bloodless
AN: I needed an angst fix. It's like a blood transfusion; in a way…Poor Kakashi has borne the brunt of my random angst-attack. Oops. Hints at KakashixRin, but in a totally fucked up way. The beginning of this chapter is a precursor of the first chapter, just so you know. It slips later into the 'present', if you will.
Hurrah for the Mindfuck Genre!
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He comes home smelling like sex and sweat and blood. But at least he comes home. He's seventeen, and all vestiges of innocence have been burned, broken or beaten out of him, and the light in his eyes has never boded anything but ill. He barely makes it to the bathroom in time to throw up, and his retches echo horribly throughout the empty house, the auditory equivalent of graffiti in its ugliness.
She can barely hear the sound of her own heart, as it flutters against her ribs like a bird in a cage. She's gripping his hitai-ate close to her chest, because he lets her keep it when he's away on missions, a twisted memento in case he's maimed(Shit happens) or in case he's killed (Deal with it and go on) or in case he just doesn't come home and she's left to cherish aught but memories.
He's unpredictable like that.
The light in the bathroom goes out, and he stumbles out into the bedroom, swaying like he's drank too much, but that's not alcohol on his breath.
"Welcome back," Rin says dryly, hiding the tremble in her voice.
Kakashi isn't violent outside of the chaotic ambivalence of battle. So he doesn't hit her. He just looks at her and her blood freezes, and even though she's been dealing with Kakashi in his darker moods for the better part of her life, that look has always managed to make her feel like she's ten years old again and cowering in front of her father in one of his drunken rages.
But she isn't scared, because she's forgotten how to be afraid. Instead, she holds out Kakashi's hitai-ate for him to take, and doesn't ask about what's bothering him, because if Kakashi wants her to know something, he'll tell her.
"I fucked up," he tells her without looking at her. His quick, clever fingers snatch the hitai-ate and he closes his hand around it with a sort of viciousness that makes her stomach knot with apprehension. "I fucked up and people died and yet no one's blaming me. Why not?"
She shivers, and not with cold. "Stop it, Kakashi…"
He gives her a long, slow look, deep and dark, and she can feel secrets overflow from the sheer force of his gaze, secrets that she shouldn't be seeing, that probably shouldn't exist. She can see his father's death in his eyes, and Obito's, although the latter of the two is a sigil more prominent, an eye tainted ruby opaque.
"It's my fault." His voice is blunt like the edge of oblivion. "It's my fucking fault and you…" he trails off. Drops his forehead protector like he doesn't care that it's a symbol of everything they are and will always be. We are shinobi. We are whatever future exists…Except Kakashi doesn't care about the future, because he's too busy living in the past.
"You're injured?" she asks, because she can smell the blood and knows that he'll never tell her unless she's upfront about the whole matter. Without speaking, he jerks his shirt off over his head and tosses it over his shoulder into the bathroom, and she sees, not for the first time, the network pattern of scars, new and old, fine and jagged, intrinsically Kakashi. There's a kunai-inflicted wound just above his hip and she brings her medical jutsu into play, patching the wound, re-knitting the fibers of torn muscle and skin and trying so hard to heal underneath the underneath.
"How many more times can I fail…?" he asks softly to what she knows to be the ghost of someone long dead but never forgotten. "How many times do I get to walk away unscathed…" and he hisses in pain as she swabs his wound, reminding him just how 'unscathed' he really wasn't. "Before I die?"
"Shut up," she whispers softly, tracing a finger over his almost-sealed injury. "Kakashi, just…shut up, please."
He keeps talking, more to himself and his ghosts, heedless of her presence. She raises her voice and tries again. "Kakashi, shut up!"
His gaze snaps back to her and the sharingan, madness and mayhem sewn up into one damaged little package, reflects a fire from somewhere she's never been privy to. "It's not enough, Rin," he says softly. "It's never enough."
She takes a breath. "It has to be. Now, it has to be and there isn't any choice in the matter, Kakashi, because now…now things are different, and I need you, all right? I need you to…to be strong, and I know it's hard, but…"
"Strong?" He laughs a little, in moderation, and the act itself is like a knife against her skin. "Strong, Rin? Strong is dying for your best friend because he's a fucking idiot. Strong is saving a village when they can't save themselves. Strong is…is…"
She lifts her chin and she looks at him, and he's half-smiling in that way he does when the world wants to break for him, and she knows that if he leaves, now, she may never see him again. Kakashi is smart, and he can look after himself, but there've been times when she thinks he wants to die. He's created only death throughout the length of his life and she knows…she knows that bothers him. So she grabs his hands, pulls him towards her, and without preamble, she thrusts his hands against her stomach. "I'm pregnant," she says flatly. The words hang in the air as if caught on chakra strings, and they shimmer with promise and purpose.
And then they turn to dust.
He jerks his hands away, takes three steps back and is against the bathroom door. His eyes are wide. He doesn't speak. She didn't think he would, but anything worth doing is worth doing well. She can almost feel the engorged distance grow between them, a legacy of their own personal ghosts.
"I'm sor -" she tries to say, but he's already disappeared in a little puff of smoke, and she sits back numbly, pulls a pillow over her abdomen, her skin cold where he'd touched her, and she tells herself she will not cry.
And then she wonders when it started raining inside.
It's two weeks later, and Kakashi hasn't come home. The only thing she has is his hitai-ate to console herself with. A flimsy door prize to clutch and wonder over, a staid memento to curse and hate and love. But no Kakashi.
She knows she should have expected this. Kakashi is too young, she's too young, and the two of them together have no business raising a child. But Rin, at least, is willing to try.
It's two weeks later, and Kakashi hasn't come home.
So she, not bothering to play the part of the bereaved and newly pregnant girlfriend, goes to see Sandaime, who blinks at her and informs her with more than a half-century's calm competence that Kakashi never reported in after his last mission was over, and that no reports have been received. Sandaime wonders why she didn't come to him sooner, seeing as how she seemed to be the sole person with which he'd been in contact. Was his mission a success? I don't know, I don't know, he was bleeding and maybe that's his way of crying because he doesn't know how to cry. There, there, child, it's all right. Did he say where he might have been going? No, no, I don't know, he just left…!
Rin has always had a sort of sixth sense. It comes from being a medic, she supposes. She knows when people are hurt and when they need someone, and whether or not she can help them. Kakashi needs someone, but she also knows that she can't help him. At this point, the only one that can save him is him.
So she packs up her things, her little medical bag and her bandolier of kunai and shuriken, and she wraps his hitai-ate around her waist and positions it just so, because if he won't stay to protect their child, then who will…? She leaves her own behind, because she's in love, and people in love sometimes do stupid things, and she sets off to find him.
She knows where to look, because Sandaime had allowed her to see the preliminary mission report, and so she heads for the Water country. She knows she's going to bring him back, because there is no alternative.
Obito is still laughing at him. Two weeks later, and he's still laughing. Laughing like he's the genius and Kakashi's the failure. Laughing like he was the one to master the tree-climbing jutsu on the first try. But there's a hard steel in his eyes that makes Kakashi wonder when Obito had fallen into the White Fang's shadow, and he's dimly aware of the fact that Obito's laughter sounds like the scrape of a knife against a whetstone.
"They're coming, Kakashi. How badly do you want to live?"
Kakashi remembers Rin, and her words, and he squeezes his eyes shut and his lips move but no sound comes out. He's not sure what he wants, but he knows it doesn't involve death. But life is still so very mysterious, and he's not quite sure how to compensate for its lack in his life.
"Hurry!" Obito tells him. His voice is twisted and gnarled and Kakashi blinks, looks at him. Up at the kid he'd never cared about, that in death became his best friend. Kakashi has his reasons for visiting the monument, and in a way it's a sort of penance. You'll never have a better friend than the one that's willing to die for you, after all.
Kakahsi doesn't speak, and the image of Obito shatters as if hit by a stone. He imagines little shards of that mirror image splintering across the ground. His interrogator is standing in the space that Obito vacated, and his arms are folded and he's scowling. "You have half an hour to tell us what we want to know, and then we will kill you. Even if you try to barter your life for the information after that, I will not listen, and you will die. No matter what." The man leans against a wall, flicks a small knife from hand to hand. "So talk."
Kakashi is silent. He ticks off the seconds and minutes in his head, having no way of knowing how accurate he's being. His brain is still so addled he isn't sure of his own name, let alone anything else.
"…Rin…" he says finally. The man, interest piqued, quirks an eyebrow.
"Who?"
"When…we were younger. She used to tell me that she'd…that she'd follow me anywhere." He strains his arm, the one that he presently didn't want to rip out of the socket, and the chains clattered futilely with his efforts. "…I'm glad she's not here to see me fail again."
Kakashi looks up, and from the depths of somewhere he's not sure existed, he smiles.
The interrogator 'Hms' in something akin to amusement, walks towards him and holds the knife out and away from his body in a classic combat stance. Kakashi looks at him impassively. Looks and waits and pretends that he wants to die when he doesn't. It's the only dignity he has left, and if he's going to die, at least he'll do it with honor. Honor. Not duty, but honor.
It's a nice change of pace.
The man presses the knife against the dip in his collarbone and pushes. Kakashi feels it as it pierces his skin, and doesn't comment. At least he'll own his own death.
But he'll leave Rin wondering. Wondering how he died, or if he's even dead. He doubts they'll return his body; they don't seem that type of people. So she'll raise a child, his child, their child on her own and every night she'll look up at the door and she'll wonder if and when and how he's going to walk through it, and she'll ask him what took so long, and he'll smile and maybe he'll kiss her and…
Oh, God, that hurts…but dying…doesn't hurt like living, because with living, you know it doesn't end. Death is final and so pain doesn't matter because after you're dead, that's it.
Kakashi closes his eyes.
And somewhere, in the distance, an alarm goes off.
Immediately, the knife is removed and the interrogator snarls at no one in particular. "A raid? Now?" he asks, more to himself, and Kakashi suppresses a suicidal urge to suggest the man run along and play with someone else.
The unspoken message seems evident regardless. Moments later, the man whirls and sprints out of the room.
Kakashi hangs in his chains and wonders just how long he has to live.
Alternately, he discovers that he really doesn't give a shit.
Approximately two hours later, his cell door rattles open and he blinks himself out of the light fever-doused doze that had claimed him, and he studies the rush of people that flow into the tiny room. Some are babbling incoherently, others are angry, and one person amidst the maelstrom is calm, calm and collected and cool, just like the time she'd had to cut a friend's eye out of his head and stick it in the skull of someone else.
It acts like a slap to the face, like a rush of painkiller into his system. Everything about him is forgotten. Everything.
"Rin." It isn't a question. Moments later, he could have kicked himself, because he just gave away who she was, and now that their captors know, know, they'll use it against him in every feasible way. They'll use her against him and they'll laugh, just like Obito. She's weighted down under chains and manpower and she's still looking somehow gently haughty.
You've fucked up again, Kakashi. Why am I not surprised? Do you make a habit of killing those closest to you, or having them die because of you? Congratulations. Will she die easily, I wonder? Or will she scream, just like you? I hope it's the latter. I bet she has such a pretty scream. Just like the rest of her. And all those nights you've kissed her lips and made love to her. Wasn't she so pretty? I don't see why you call it 'making love.' You never thought of it like that. It's just another game to you, isn't it? One more thing you can do that I can't. One more thing…
Shut up.
You'd do anything to win, right…?
She smiles. "…Hello."
"Ah, good. You know each other. I had to wonder." The interrogator smiles at them both, but it's tepid and tender and stripped from the edge of a knife. Whittled down to scimitar perfection. He palms a hand through his dark hair and looks back and forth between Kakashi and Rin, and then a knowing smile lights his face. "She's the one you were babbling about, hm?"
Rin doesn't look afraid. Kakashi supposes it's a good thing, because he is fucking terrified.
"She killed over twenty of our best soldiers. Surprising, coming from such a pretty little thing."
Rin glares at the man, jerks free of her captors, stomps on his foot and knees him in the groin, and he doubles over, coughing and hacking. Immediately, half a dozen others pounce on Rin and she goes down under a writhing mess of bodies. Kakashi shouts once, hoarsely, and tries to do something, anything. He fails. It doesn't surprise him, really.
Kakashi isn't sure what happens next, and he wonders later if he actually lost consciousness just when it counted. When he returns to his senses, Rin is shackled next to him, so close and yet not near enough to touch, and she's got her head tilted to one side and she's looking at him with a healer's softness that he has never been able to comprehend.
"Hello again." Her face is puffed and bleeding from a deep laceration along one cheek. That'll scar, Kakashi notes with clinical disinterest. She's cut and bleeding in a dozen different places, and he notes but does not comment on the fact that she's got a hitai-ate tied around her waist.
"…You…"
"Came to rescue you. Um…sorry. It didn't…quite work out as planned." She gives him a tentative little smile as if she expects him to yell at her, to rant and to rage and to scream and he wants to, oh, god, he wants to. But he can't. He doesn't have the heart.
"You…shouldn't be here."
"I look after my friends," she reminds him gently. Her words are like a caress, and her voice, so strong and sure and steady, is his anchor. He clings to it, because he's got nothing left to his name. I could have loved you, he thinks carefully, like he's setting down his foot on an unsteady stepping stone. I…I could have…
"…I'm…I'm sorry," she whispers. "I just wish…things could have been different. I just wish…" She stretches a little, as if reaching for one of his dangling hands, and he musters up the strength to make a mutual effort. They come just short of touching, but he can feel an electrical pulse jump between the unconquerable gap, like a quiescent version of the chidori that wasn't meant to kill but to heal.
He closes his eyes, because the constant drain on the sharingan, while he's gotten used to it, shouldn't be wasted. Even to look at the last face he'll ever see. Even to look at her like he loves her.
He can't bring himself to say it.
"…At least…at least we're together, right?"
He makes a neutral noise. It could have been either a yes or a no.
Rin isn't sure she wants to know which it was.