Takes place during the Pein/Pain-attacks-Konoha-arc. Kakashi's POV. For mayaslash on Y!Gallery. Warnings for violence.

To Know Pain
by vernajast

Kakashi and Pain

Kakashi knows regret. Every time his blood-red-gray-mutt glance meets itself in the mirror, he is reminded.

He knows loss, and he understands duty and honor and sacrifice. But understanding doesn't make it any easier to wipe the bloodstains up from the floorboards of his parents' home without mingling in a few tears. It doesn't get that other, brighter blood off of his hands after Sensei is buried and his light hidden beneath deep black soil.

Kakashi understands a great many things, and he understands that none of it matters.

It is never more obvious than the moment he dies.

He opens his eyes seconds later to an unfamiliar sky swirling with colors and dizzying patterns. His hand comes up to brush across several protrusions sticking out from his throat and they are metal-cool to the touch despite the feverish heat of his body. Heat that by all logic shouldn't be there. Kakashi shouldn't be there.

His body tries to reject that thought, and he can feel the walls of his mind closing in tighter around him. A silky voice edged with something sharp and unidentifiable urges him to "know pain," and Kakashi blinks and sits up very much against his will.

He isn't in control any longer, only a puppet, and yet his mind is trapped inside the shell. And now he can see what Pain wanted him to see - Naruto, Sakura, Sasuke, Iruka-sensei, Tsunade: all are laid out across the battlefield of a flattened, deconstructed Konoha. In the distance lay others, and he recognizes a second shock of far-too-bright blond amongst the casualties.

This isn't Pain's doing, it's the Kyuubi's. The scene before him changes, and it's the night Kakashi's whole world came to an abrupt stop, perched on a precipice of what was and what is.

Inside his head - his head - Kakashi is methodically going mad. These images cannot exist, and yet his eyes are seeing it clearly. It hurts, it does, he can't deny it, and more of his fallen loved ones begin to appear: Jiraiya, Kushina, Rin, Obito, Mother.

He can feel chidori burning his palm even if he's no longer in control, and his fist seemingly penetrates the empty air.

Except...not so empty...because once he makes contact, Pain drops the illusion. It's Naruto's chest Kakashi's hand is buried inside, and maybe, maybe it wouldn't be so horrific - so painful - if he didn't know that this wasn't the first time the boy had been pierced by that very same jutsu.

Unlike Sasuke, Kakashi didn't 'miss.' And unlike Kakashi, Sasuke had had a choice.

When the illusion returns, Naruto's whisker-like scars have disappeared and his hair has grown even longer. It's matted with blood. His coat billows in the wind like living flames...and powerless inside his head, Kakashi screams.

Itachi's tsukiyomi could never have been so successful; Kakashi has never cared so much for his own personal discomfort. Even his own death would have been less than tragic. But Pain has guessed Kakashi's worst fears and used them against him.

With unfettered access to his mind, he knows Kakashi better than anyone else.

And beyond any doubts, aware of the other's presence filling up the gaps and shadows and cracks inside his head, Kakashi surely knows pain.

[ .end ]