Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto and its godly characters.
Summary: IrukaXKakashi. Somewhere in their uncharted childhood, their paths crossed. One shot.
A/N: Well whatever. I have forgotten how to write already. My attempts to recapture my knowledge about writing are apparently a flop and I think it will take ten million stories more before I get back the touch. Consider this a preliminary and give it time, years, if needed. Anyway, I don't use double quotations (" "); I use these (' ') instead. I can't stand pressing the shift key so many times in one sitting in the same way I can't write dialogues at all. I'm a bad, unprincipled writer.
--
Feeling pain is better than feeling nothing – Gwyn Hyman Rubio
It was the empty time of the day when both the jounin and chuunin of Konoha were dispatched to their respective missions, and the genin were either too young or too inexperienced or both to take part in the action, to which they aspired nonetheless. Those hours usually came and went unmarked by Umino Iruka, the hours when he'd sit by himself, doing nothing, mulling over nothing. Those times always made him feel so far away from anywhere. And it baffled him why he had loved that feeling, that very indication of solitude. His visits to his parents' graves were often accompanied by tears, as it became a struggle to spend a day without looking at them. Later, upon growing up, he'd realize how much imbedded crying had become to him. Between bouts he'd think if crying was worth his time. Later still, he'd learn that it wasn't. He languished behind his classmates, never getting over being an orphan, and when consolation came his way he only became more and more dogged by nostalgia.
Even now as he stared at their graves, he could feel the weight of death around him, more potently than ever before. It seemed only yesterday when he received their farewells and promise of quick return, which didn't happen while they lived. Since then time had stopped at its progress, doomed to prolonged staggering. It stood still thereafter, just like the epitaphs on the lifeless tombs left behind by that generation, just like the fact that Iruka would forever remain parentless. He bit his lower lip to fight back the tears and clenched his fists as though it would help him forget.
He was in the middle of emptying his tear glands for the day when he heard those footsteps. Slow and careless, they dragged nearer and nearer towards him. Otherwise, nothing moved around him save for what was cluttered by the wind, but it was so faint that it seemed barely there. He didn't turn his back to look at the person. Whoever it was, it sure wasn't there for him. When it arrived, it turned out to be another shinobi from Konoha. Young, the person was, and seemingly impassive. A mask covered the greater part of his face and his eyes hardly saw sunlight as they were blocked by his gray mane of hair. Though Iruka was sure that there wasn't a large age difference between them, the stranger wore a chuunin jacket thereby widening the gap that lay between their individual abilities. The boy drew closer to the Fourth Hokage's tombstone, knelt and recited an unheard orison. He came there, clearly, for the same purpose as Iruka. Only he didn't dwell much in his loss. Finishing, the boy straightened up to leave. As he passed by Iruka, the back of their hands almost brushing, he spoke.
'There isn't much that remained the same, but what happened simply happened. We have to live with it.'
His voice sounded thoughtful, but in a distant way. He had read Iruka's mind in a flash, knew that the latter had since lived a cloistered life and knew, too, that he had been wasting away. One swift look was all it took; his keen power of observation did the rest of the job. Iruka looked at the stranger. There, he saw how their plight startlingly resembled each other; the boy lost the ones he loved as well, only he had developed stoicism and would never mourn for them the way Iruka had.
'Yes. But living would be much harder then.' Iruka said. That things had become different was neither here nor there; it was rather the fact that these people died untimely that bothered him. Had things been different, he would've pursued the argument more enthusiastically. But as they were, he was hardly in the mood to speak and hence maintained his contriteness.
'Yes, of course. I didn't say everything would be back to normal. For all anyone would know, Konoha will remain tainted by the nine-tailed demon. But we chose to live after that and whatever consequences there may be, we have to come to terms with them. Isn't that what they died for?'
Iruka didn't reply. Was that heroism and death all about? Living the ones they loved at a loose end? In this abstracted state, what had never felt like regret felt like it since to Iruka. His parents died for him too. All along he had overlooked that possibility. How cruel of him.
'You're probably right. But I need time.' Iruka said after a moment.
'Acceptance through time isn't as easy as it looks.'
'I know. Nothing's easily overcome, not where death is concerned. Sooner or later we'll just find ourselves remembering everything.'
'Well, weeping over the dead is not my department. I'll leave it up to you to put your crying to better use one of these days.'
'What do you mean?' Iruka asked. He felt slightly irritated by the boy's cockiness. He would've said that not crying didn't make anyone tough but crying had already made his throat tight and hence rendered him speechless.
'You seem to be the kind to never forget. You'd do well to teach Konoha's history someday.' The stranger said, commiserating but stern.
Almost wincing at the boy's seeming indifference, Iruka glanced at him. This boy couldn't recognize pain no matter how much of it was inside him, he conjectured. And even if they saw their past differently, there still was a dominant detachment to the boy's air. It befuddled Iruka that such coldness was in existence. Then, after a quick nod, as if to protest against Iruka's unsaid opinion of him, the boy walked further on until he was nothing but a dot against the background. Iruka followed him with his gaze, not knowing what had been set there between them.
In the lull that followed the boy's departure, Iruka decided that forgetting was the ground he'd never stray on.
--
Konoha had prospered on and it became a complete marvel that it held its strength during the post-Fourth Hokage years. It wasn't that it survived in spite of the aftermath of the Kyuubi's attack, but that it survived because of it, because of the will that had been subsequently engendered in the people's hearts. It had been longer ago than Iruka could remember when he opted to brave the teaching road. It had been more years than he could count when he made up his mind to tightly shut his memory from bitterness. Just a few years earlier he had learned the name of the kid who stood by him. He had been pronounced the leader of the Anbu at an astoundingly young age and for innumerable reasons his name was seldom uttered without the addition of the word 'genius'. But being a genius, as Iruka would later realize, was not the rule, but the exception. Apparently, he was called Hatake Kakashi. And Iruka had unknowingly welcomed Kakashi's challenge that gloomy day twelve years ago. That day lived on inside Iruka, becoming a private reminder of what it was that shaped him as a shinobi of Konoha.
'It still amazes me that you took the teaching profession, Iruka.' The Third Hokage had told him then.
'It amazes me, too. Sometimes I wonder if being an orphan has something to do with this choice. But perhaps I was never meant to be something else.' Iruka answered.
'The decisions we make in life are affected by the significant events we've hitherto come to witness and experience. Whether or not we are directly affected by said events, whether or not we foresaw them, it is always their results that have the power over us. People's minds change, Iruka, dramatically or otherwise.' The elder man lectured him. His austerity came as a relief, since otherwise none would've taken his words seriously.
Iruka let his mind absorb those words and silently agreed that what was said couldn't have been truer. Perhaps, it was that brief encounter with Kakashi that altered his prospects altogether. Perhaps, it was Kakashi that made him love teaching. When he became a chuunin, he frequently, and to no avail, tried to see to it that he and Kakashi landed on the same mission. He was prone to wishful thinking of the kind, and he was still young and naïve. Seeing that not once was he assigned to the same team as Kakashi's, he loyally kept on making inquiries to the Hokage. He wasn't sure himself why he would so much want to face Kakashi again when he had nothing to say to him to begin with. He wanted to capture that chance before it vanished forever.
As time drifted, subtracting the length of their lifetime Iruka's and Kakshi's path failed to meet. Fate didn't grant Iruka the mercy he wished for and luck was nowhere to be found. It wasn't until when three young genin, Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura and Uchiha Sasuke, came that the bridge between them was somehow rebuilt. It surprised Iruka that his most favorite student should found a teacher in Kakashi. Since then, as it had been in the past, Iruka and Kakashi only found communication through the impersonal looks they exchanged. Iruka wondered if Kakashi would take him for the crybaby he had advised a little over a decade ago, but with the banal looks Kakashi had repeatedly addressed him with, it didn't seem likely that he remembered anything about Iruka.
Unable to verify this on his own, Iruka relinquished all attempts to relive the items of his past. Because things that belong to the past have no room in the present, he thought. He no longer conceived future meetings with Kakashi to be possible, rather the effort was desperate and childish. All along, he had waited for something that would never occur; all along, he had been feeding on falsehood, never profiting from it, clandestinely suffering for it.
But time heedlessly slid away. And it dawned on him that somewhere in his being, he still hankered for that one final conversation. He was still disturbed by the notion, occasionally by himself, but often by the thought of him and Kakashi and what was in store for them. Something needed to be settled between them; whether it was an expression of gratitude or a mumble of apology he should offer, Iruka didn't know.
If fruitless waiting could hurt, he would've been hopelessly fighting for his life then.
--
The death of the Third Hokage was another blow to Iruka. Never in his wildest nightmare did he assume that he would live through the day when the great Saurtobi died. It was natural that he would outlive the Hokage, considering the latter's age, but the shock came hard and when it came, Iruka could scarcely find time to comfort those who needed consolation, because what he felt then necessitated great amount of it as well.
On the day of burial he had strung out a litany, with what his worn-out heart could muster, of what he knew about heroes, about life and death, the admittance thereof, and about surviving long after tragedies. It was raining and the drops that fell concealed the tears that so familiarly traveled down his cheeks as they melded together on his face. He felt loneliness creep up to him, felt the weight of death catch up with him again, forcing him down in defeat and ultimately holding sway over him. But this time, he deemed it proper not to grieve in the open as he often did so before. Thus, on the surface, he held himself upright, still melancholy but understanding everything finally.
He had made an unspoken pact to himself to come to the Third Hokage's grave on a daily basis. Having submissively bound himself to that promise, it followed that he make it a tradition to offer something to the tomb; a little talk or anything palpable would do. On his ninth visit, he brought with him white dandelions. Under broad daylight, their immaculate whiteness stood out among the rest. Elsewhere, the light was stolen by the shades of the trees and so unlike the glum silence that was precipitated by the Fourth Hokage's death, the milieu that day was anything but deathly. Indeed, life continued. Life went on long after heroes were gone, and long before that. Thriving in abandonment didn't have to be done alone after all. This time, there was a whole village to share his grief. Iruka smiled, laughing at the fool he had made of himself when he'd sulk off and double up crying in front of those graves. Deciding that time was up, he traipsed away from the tombstone. Halfway, he came across a gray-haired, masked someone.
Hatake Kakashi. For the first time in many years, they were alone together. To Iruka, the fragments of reality became ever unreal as their steps drew them closer together. But how would he see Kakashi now other than a forlorn echo from his past?
'You're here.' Kakashi said.
'Well, I go here everyday.'
'Really?'
'Uh-huh. It seems like I'm indebted to it. I mean, I should be.'
'I see.' Kakashi sighed. 'No longer in a slough, I trust?'
'Huh?'
'I hope you don't cry anymore. It takes guts to watch a grown man cry, you know.' Kakashi smiled.
He remembered. And for a moment, he was again that young lad that had unwittingly exerted such influence over Iruka.
'I never saw you again around here. I thought you've forgotten.' Iruka said, shaking his head. Deep inside, he was afraid that the obsession had been rekindled. He hoped to heaven not so.
'I wanted to come here, many times, but there just wasn't time.' Kakashi muttered. 'You said you often go here?'
'Yes.'
There was silence, too much for both of them as it had been for Iruka alone. He couldn't think of anything to say. Time had effaced so much personality, so many links, and it was too late now to recommence their trek to the past. He felt half lost at the moment. He had bidden his time for this opportunity to arrive and when it did, he caught himself utterly muted. It wasn't his plan to say nothing and it made him want to curse himself for being so devoid of hindsight.
'I thought you wouldn't take my word for it.' Kakashi said. 'You seemed pretty stubborn when I saw you and I just thought you wouldn't listen to a kid. Not a word.'
'People change, Kakashi.'
'Yes.' There was a pause. 'If I hadn't said it, Iruka, would you have thought of being a teacher?'
Iruka had long known the answer to that. How many times did the thought dismay him? How many times did he consider that he might've done well on other fields? It was quite plain that Kakashi alone, nothing and no one else, instilled that ambition in him. It was merely a fact waiting to be divulged. It was that which kept the connection going all these years.
'No. I don't think I would've realized it otherwise.' Iruka inhaled and then, 'Kakashi, why did you say that?'
'That's how I saw you, at very first sight. I couldn't have thought of anything more suitable for you. In fact, up to now, I can't imagine you being something else. I…' Kakashi faltered.
'What?'
'I wanted you to be content as it was possible to be.'
Iruka perked up his head as if to search for what to reply, for what to feel.
'But why?' He asked.
'I don't know. You seemed hurt, terribly so. And it just felt like I should say or do something. I tried to reach you since then but my missions just kept on coming up. Each time I came here you'd already gone. And…It's so funny but I also thought that you forgot.' Kakashi smiled ironically. 'I'm so sorry. It just begged to be said. I didn't think I could rest until I told you about this. I'm really sorry.'
'Don't be.' Iruka breathed, lending his words emphasis. 'All those times all I was trying to do was not to cry. Then you came. What you said was right; maybe I wasn't hurt as I fancied myself to be. Thanks to you I woke up.'
'I never held crying in disdain, if that's any comfort. I was thinking about you. I didn't want you to cry…'
At that, Iruka learned that Kakashi mourned as much and often as he did, only Kakashi had restrained himself and didn't cry, merely because he chose not to. As Iruka looked at him, he realized why he wanted his life to be about Kakashi. Come to think of it, it had been about Kakashi, his impeded race toward him, all along. He thought of what came to pass twelve years ago, of his fast-tracked journey of loving Kakashi, and how, in a protracted heartbeat, he made up his mind to be a teacher. Time waited to give that episode meaning, and it took twelve barren years and many wrong turns in the matrices of destiny before they came to full understanding.
'Well, I haven't thought of it that way before. But if that's what it was, I'll take it.' Iruka smiled.
'You'd better.'
Beneath the dappled sunlight, two hearts rejuvenated, and the deception of fate broke to a peaceful end. Time brought them back together, mending what was shattered by its subsistence and ultimately awarding the lovers their due; time. There is an appropriate end to every confusion, as there is resolution to every story. Once again, Umino Iruka and Hatake Kakashi resumed their cancelled business with each other as they began to retrace their steps back to their lost childhood. This time, there was nothing to hinder them.
END