It was a beautiful day today. The sun was shinning, the sky was blue, the grass was green, and the birds were chirping sweet songs as they flitted through air. Everyone was smiling and carrying on in their cheerful moods, and to top it all off, it was Kakashi's day off.

Too bad he loathed days like this with a passion

Why?

It gave him way to much time for peace, quiet, and solitude. Some time to think. And thinking (unless he was using it for a mission) was something he frenziedly tried to avoid.

At all cost.

He busied himself with anything and everything he could think of.

Paperwork he hadn't filled out or finished during the week. Surprise training sessions with his team. Working on new concepts and ideas for jutsus or perfecting the ones he already knew. Taking all the missions he could. Reading "Icha Icha Paradise" or spending hours in the mirror, making sure his hair was perfectly styled. Hell! He even went looking for Gai to play another round of Gai's ridiculous challenges as his self-proclaimed "eternal rival" just to keep himself occupied! But, it only lasted for so long, and soon, he was alone in his room, on his bed. Thinking.

God, how he despised this.

And it wasn't like he could choose what he thought about--- Oh God no. His thoughts had a mind of their own and it always drifted to one thing.

Himself.

And when he did, as he was doing now, his past broke free of its captivity and ran wild as one word drifted in and out of each flooding memory.

Useless.

If anyone had asked what Kakashi remembered most about his childhood, that would be it. How completely, unconditionally, irrevocably, and utterly useless he had been.

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He watched hopelessly as his father changed into something else. Something less than human, something sickly and vile. His father's health was the first thing to go. He preferred to stay cooped up in his bedroom, day after day, with the curtains closed and the door locked so there would be nothing but dark silence. Most likely a reflection of his soul. Kakashi witnessed him eating less and less as the days passed by, his mind slowly being sucked into a moonless night. There probably weren't even any stars to bring a little light to shine in the darkness. It was pitch black in his father's mind.

Everyday, Kakashi thought about walking into his fathers room, making him eat and dragging him outside to see the sun once again. To try and slap his dad awake from the endless nightmare. To ask-- no, to beg him to come out and return to the world outside of the bedroom. To live, to train with him. God, how he had missed training with his father. If he could just get him back.

But he couldn't.

There hadn't been many rules in the Hatake household. In fact there was only one: under no circumstances was Kakashi to enter his father's room when the door was closed.

Nothing changed with the fact that his father was dwindling away.

Kakashi had never really cared for the door to his fathers bedroom, it usually got in his way for one reason or another. Coming home to brag about his straight A's in class, but finding the door closed and having to wait later when he came out. Alone at school on parent's day because he never got to inform his father in time for him to make it (the door had been closed for four days straight). Or even just wanting to ask permission to go over to one of his friends house to play. Most importantly, to ask his own father, the infamous "White Fang" of Konoha, to train him. Kakashi wanted nothing more than to become just like his father, of whom he was so proud of. So people would know he could belong to no one else other than Sakumo Hatake. For Kakashi, the door was a symbol of all the things he could not do.

Thankfully, his father's bedroom door being closed was a rarity. Or it was.

He'd often have nightmares about the door when it was closed, but it hadn't been that often. At least, not until recently. Now, he had nightmares about it all of the time. Sometimes, the door would try too suck him in, or stop him from reaching his father when he called out for him. Other times, there was something in the room beyond that he desperately need to get to and never could. But, there was one nightmare above all others that scared him the most, and that still scared him to this day.

Kakashi shot up from his bed, awake and alert. Thunder crashed outside his bedroom window. Something had happen.

He wasn't sure what it was, but it had happened, and it was bad. He could feel it, like a giant, metal chain wrapped tightly around his heart and pulling-- yanking-- hard. Pulling hard enough to drag his feet from his bed and yank him down the hall. With each yank, his heart would beat faster and his feet moved quicker, and soon both his feet and his heart were racing. The rain fell harder, beating a fast staccato rhythm against the roof.

The Hatake house was a fair sized home. Nothing huge and fancy like what once was the Uchiha main house, but it was nothing to laugh at either. The white-haired boy maneuvered the halls easily without thought. Finding his way through the house was second nature to him. Instinct. Never in his life had these very same halls he was so accustom to seem like an increasingly very long, dark and confusing maze of paths of right and lefts. Erie, still, and perplexing. All instinct shot to hell.

He ran through the twisting turns of the hallways as they gradually got more creepy and terrifying, not knowing where he was going, just following that yank at his heart. It wasn't until he slipped over something slick and fell on his face did he stop. As he moved to stand, he felt that a wetness had seeped through his clothes and now covered his hands as he pushed himself up. Whatever it was had not only completely covered his night shirt and pants, but as Kakashi crawled on his hands and knees, he felt it all over most of the floor as well. He also noticed that it got wetter and thicker the further up he went. He followed the wetness until it reached something very familiar. A door.

Up until now, his heart had been doing its own little marathon. Now, it was trying its hardest to break through his rib cage. For this door (there was no doubt in his mind), lead to his father's room.

If you listened hard enough, you could possibly hear the silent click of Kakashi's brain as things came into place. The reason for why he had been plagued by all those earlier nightmares about this very door. Why he woke up suddenly in the middle of the night to run around the halls in a frantic panic. Why he had the strange notion that he knew exactly what it was he was covered in at the moment. As all these things clicked into place, his heart; once desperate for jailbreak, now came to an abrupt halt.

Hatake could not breath.

In the next few moments, he must had been on autopilot because Kakashi couldn't recall standing up. Kakashi didn't recollect ever reaching for the doorknob. Kakashi couldn't even bring to mind turning the knob and opening the door---all rules be damned.

But he would never forget afterwards.

As if switching controls suddenly, Kakashi came off autopilot and back into his senses just in time for thunder to boom directly over head and lightning to flash just outside the window, illuminating a scene of which no four year-old should ever have to witness.

His father's cold, blood-soaked body. Unmoving. Dead.

Forever.

The scream that ripped itself from the toddler's throat was so blood-curdling and grief-ridden that any self-proclaimed banshee would be put to shame. For surely, his fright and terror; woe and misery were unmatched.

Kakashi screamed with all that he had in him and all that he did not. He screamed when people came to see what was wrong. He screamed when the people carried his father's corpse away. He screamed as all sorts of people tried to desperately and fruitlessly calm him down. He screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed. He kept screaming until the point where he just couldn't anymore-- he couldn't even stifle out a mere grunt. He had screamed himself mute.

He had screamed so hard, for so long, hoping he would wake from this horrible nightmare, like he always did when it got too terrifying to deal with. He would scream and wake up, and his father would come rushing to his side, hug him and tell him that everything was alright. That everything was okay. That it was all just a bad dream.

But, as he stood there, staring at the spot where his father's unmoving body had once lain, he realized that this was no nightmare. This was the horrendous and hideous truth.

If it was possible, he would have screamed again.

His nightmares had definitely not gotten better after that night. So, with no where to turn, what with being the sole Hatake heir and the rest of the village avoiding him, Kakashi submerged himself into his training. To be a ninja. Following all the rules accordingly, learning from his father's mistake, and taking one sole ninja rule to heart. One that helped eased his pain for years. The number one rule: A ninja must never show emotion.

He swore he never would again.

He also swore he would never be as useless as he had been.

Nine years later, he broke both his promises.