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Nostalgia
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A fragile whimper echoed out achingly in the darkness.
A low, tortured rumble growled back from the other side of the wall as if in lamenting reply.
Kakashi, breathing shallowly, slowly lowered his chin.
Lifted his eyes.
...
...
Sai slipped one of his frilly white gloves off and pushed it through the narrow crack of a kitchen pantry window, giving it several little jounces. There, the signal had been set. Dusk was coming on fast and the maids were about to begin lighting the decorative candles that filled the daimyo's palace. If all went according to plan, Sakura had seen the mark from her stealthy perch outside from the palace roof and battlements.
"Are we all set?"
Yori asked from halfway through the pantry door, looking palpably nervous. Sai nodded gravely, then turned to go with an oddly lost look on his normally placid face.
"Maybe."
The rogue-ninja turned ally cast Sai a sharply concerned look that the other boy didn't seem to notice, but said nothing. He followed his new friend back into the main kitchen, stumbling in his high heels awkwardly over the rug edge.
"Oop!"
...
...
All the trappings and fixtures of antique ornamentation that'd clashed themselves into abrupt tastelessness (at the unexpected discovery of new money) had been promptly dragged out. Apparently tonight was a very important night in River Country.
An occasion.
Sasuke sneered at the mushy beige and orange carpet. The floral patterned wall paper plastered against the stone walls. He scowled at the ceremonial robes they'd brought up for him, tossing them fecklessly onto a passing statue. As if he cared what anyone thought he looked like.
Descending the stairs that led from his guest room in one of the anterior towers, he felt a prickle of annoyance.
Why were they making such a fuss?
Because of Hijame's and Izanami's recent success in the secret fight ring they'd planted-right under her husband the daimyo's nose no less-they'd gotten reckless. Throwing a lavish party, inviting an assortment of the country's upper-class as well as an easily identifiable contingent of relatively well known criminals; it was a disaster waiting to happen.
All they needed was one spy. One turncoat. And, all their secret doings would be brought to light. Sasuke sighed.
"Idiots."
It all suited him just fine either way, he supposed. He had only one real reason for involving himself so deeply in this mess. And, that reason was currently entombed in the castle dungeons wearing but a sheet for decency. Sasuke scoffed.
As if anyone could hide anything from him.
Running a pale finger absently along the dusty wood of the banister railing, he frowned. Clearly, whoever was supposed to have done the cleaning in this part of the castle had been a little careless. He reminded himself to remind one of the staff later.
It wasn't typical of him to request such tawdry things. But, as an elite shinobi one must always be dwelling in the peak of fitness, in the height of all senses.
And besides, it'd be harder for him to come off as cool and mysterious as he'd like if he kept breaking down into a fit of sneezes every other instant. Not that he cared what anyone thought.
Sasuke's lips quirked a little and he almost laughed to himself as he glided down the stairwell. He knew just who to call.
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...
"Excuse me." Tsunade's blonde hair flipped as her head turned with a snap, "Just where in the hell do you lot think you're going?"
There was a collective mumble and shuffling of feet from the men assembled. Yamato adjusted his pack straps with a shrug. Aoba scoffed as Genma tsked around the senbon between his lips, and Raidou elbowed Hayate into Iruka, who fussed at being jostled into Gai, who only stood there gravely beside the outdoor seating of the Godaime's favorite tea shop. His round, deepset gaze was unsettlingly dark and foreboding.
"Does it matter?" the taijutsu master said in a soft tone so uncharacteristic it made the Hokage's honey brown eyes widen, "We're going whether we're ready or not."
A chilly wind licked across the sandy road beneath their sandaled feet. A frail snow of fallen white petals drifted ghostlike through. The filmy skin of the broken flowers bore an unspoken, jarring likeness to the pale jounin she'd sent out on a mission without safe access to any of his chakra.
Kakashi.
That odd, precocious twerp of a man who she'd known since he was just a wide eyed slip of a boy. Ravaged even then by the cruelty of this world, it had taken decades for him to reach a point of interaction with her that wasn't stiflingly cordial and obedient. She'd always known the near silent Hatake to be an uncompromising asset to any team, a seemingly inexhaustible force of reckoning-but all these men standing in accordance before her now were a blatant reminder of just how wrong she had been.
The man couldn't balance the chakra necessary to climb a tree, let alone the energy needed to merely open his Sharingan. And, she'd sent him out regardless.
They were right. She'd been callous in her judgement, inhumane in her expectations of the man who humbly bore the title of legend. She'd fallen for his guileless charms and entrancing wit, let herself be hassled into making a decision that had resulted in waking up one morning to the anxious pawing and whining of two of Kakashi's ninken outside her bedroom window. What he had gone through, the pain he must have endured, simply to send out this chakra expending plea for help...
The Godaime could hardly fathom it.
Now, Kakashi had been captured by an elite, swiftly growing band of rogue-nin - the very same ones responsible for poisoning his chakra center - and Naruto, Sakura, and Sai were alone with Pakkun trying to throw together a rescue.
Tsunade could only watch them as the men walked away, tears streaming silently down her cheeks. Wordless.
What had she done.
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...
"Ouch! Hey!" Naruto protested as Pakkun's toenails dug into his shoulder where the squat, little pug was perched like some overweight, wingless pigeon, "Your nails are like a cat's!"
Pakkun gave a little scoff of displeasure at this and promptly batted the blonde haired ninja over the skull with a muddy paw.
"Say that again and I think you'll feline not very... well..." he trailed off lamely.
Naruto paused midstep, in the midst of clambering up through the castle sewer drain, and glanced over his shoulder at Pakkun flatly.
"Don't say anything." the canine grumbled, one paw clamped firmly over his snout, both eyes watering, "The stench in here isn't very punny."
Naruto groaned.
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...
Izanami twirled a luxuriant sashay before her wide, ornate mirror, the skirt of the long dress she clasped to her front flowing out before her. Two dull eyed maidservants stood dutifully by the side, awaiting further instruction.
"Now this," she purred to her smug reflection, "this is much more to my liking. Don't you think, Aina?"
The older of the two maids, a stooped, grey haired woman with a tired, seamed face mumbled something inarticulately to the floor.
Izanami's fierce blue eyes scorched. One carefully sculpted eyebrow squinched dangerously.
"What was that?"
The other maid seemed to sense the lurking threat in the daimyo lady's tone. She stammered, trying to think of something to say that might prevent the impending doom before it struck.
But Izanami grew impatient, lifting a hand into the air carelessly as if a fly had just landed on her.
"Forget it. Get out of here and bring someone else in who knows a little more about fashion, will you?"
The two maidservants bowed gratefully and slipped out into the hallway in a hurry.
...
...
"What'd they get you in for?"
Kakashi sighed, slumped against the far corner of his dingy prison cell, muddied sheet swaddled about him not a little pathetically.
There was a moment's pause of hesitancy before a snuffling growl responded to his question through the dripping walls.
"Ah." Kakashi said softly, eyes falling to his lap, "Well, that would explain it I guess."
A soft whine of agreement replied, something about the tone implying a struggle to hold back tears.
"Well, that's not a very nice thing to do to someone. I can see why you might prefer it down here."
A moment's contemplative silence stretched between the two prison cells. Kakashi picked at some dried mud on his sheet.
"What if sometimes I think I might prefer to be elsewhere"
The Copy-ninja's mismatched eyes widened in shock before sliding closed in an expression of fervent awe. The off-beat sound of water droplets plinking to the pooled water of the cell floor colored the frigid air.
Kakashi allowed himself to grin minutely.
...
...
Sunset smoldered to a brilliant orange glowing mist that shimmered with waves of heat as it descended over the frondlike, grassy plains of River Country.
Seven figures cut darting paths through the tall, stiff grasses, leaving buoyant waves of bending stalks in their wake.
"I think we're getting close." Genma said, bounding through the marshy terrain with a chakra-infused loping.
"If you're talking about getting closer to the heart of shit," replied Raidou drily, with a playful pinch of his nose, "I think we're getting close."
"Running through it, really." Iruka offered.
"We have found mother nature's asshole, boys!" Aoba chortled.
Not to be outdone, Gai charged forwards ahead of them all, sending huge clots of refuse smelling mud hurtling back at his compatriots.
"Balk not, my friends! We shall never be overcome by any spinchter, no matter how grand and fertile!"
"Ew." said Genma.
"Thank you." said Yamato.
"I'm dead, you guys know that right?" Hayate asked from where he glided in a ghostly sheen beside Aoba.
...
...
Clinging stealthily to the outer walls of the castle courtyard, Sakura thinly avoided being spotted by the castle guards as she dropped into a low split between two gothic window ledges. She cast a thin genjutsu over herself to refract the light as the two guards passed by on a parapet above her and to the right.
The temperature had begun to drop, and she held her breath, her entire body shaking, so they wouldn't see the fog of her exhaling. Soon it would be night, and the festivities would start.
In other words, the auction of her sensei among all the other unlucky captives who'd been shunted into Izanami's and Hijame's underground fighting carnival.
The guards finally passed. She waited another few moments of tightly wound stillness, before propelling herself up and into the air, executing a rapid backflip. The pink-haired kunoichi landed on the balls of her feet, leaned back against the vertical wall separating the two large, iron-wrought windows. She lifted herself by her hands and rolled further up the wall in a backwards cartwheel.
She slid over atop the window's brick canopy that jutted out from the rough stone, straddling it. Bending forwards, latching herself firmly to the edge of the canopy along the curve of the structure, she peered into the window from upside down.
Inside the castle the room was filled with low, flickering candlelight. It cast an almost rosy hue to the interior, where several of the guests who'd arrived early mingled in their long, silken dresses and finely decorated ceremonial robes. From the corner of her eye, she spotted one of the kunoichi with the silver tattoos of interlocking vines stamped around the roots of her hair.
The woman's hair was colored an acidic, bright green; long and curly, but shaved close at the temples.
Sakura's lips twisted. What a ridiculous haircut, there was no way anyone who spent that much time on their hair could really be worth their salt in a fight. She snorted, remembering her own days of vanity when she'd put her own life at stake for the sake of how she thought she looked. It'd been one of her proudest moments, when she'd cut her own hair with a kunai knife. She could still remember Kakashi's cool double-take at her when they all came out of the first part of the chunin exams. How strong and beautiful just that simple glance had made her feel.
He'd always been such a quiet observer of their growth, thinking about it made her chest ache. Why had they never looked back at him with the same interest? Sakura sighed and shook her head, refocusing her attention on what was going on inside the window.
She watched as the green-haired kunoichi discreetly picked up a glass of bubbling champagne and sauntered across the room to talk to one of the guests. A young man with sweeping, inky black bangs, aristocratic features, and cold, hard eyes the color of obsidian. He wore a loose grey shirt with a wide collar and short sleeves, unzipped partway down his chest; dark colored forearm guards and loose pants a shade darker still, gathered together at the waist by a slew of dark blue cloth that'd been fastened in place with the jaunty tie of a ropy purple belt at his hips.
He was the most beautiful man Sakrua had ever seen.
He was a ghost in the flesh.
He was unrecognizable for only the briefest pang of a moment. And, then all her memories of him came swooping back at her in a chaotic rush of feelings.
The soft shine of almost liquid blue light reflecting off the boy's black hair from the sunlight beaming through the windows, dizzying her from where she sat behind him in the rows of desks in the Academy. The narrowed, icy cold glare of eyes darker than the blackest of pitch. The rapid, furious onslaught of bitter hatred that curtailed the boy's every move as he sparred against the lanky, bristling stalk of their sensei in a shadowed glade.
The stuttered gap in her heartbeats when he'd silently appeared behind her, his breath hot and electrifying on her neck.
"Sakura" he'd whispered, "Thank you..."
Sakura lurched back up away from the window with a snap of her back, green eyes wide and her chest constricting.
No.
No. It couldn't be...
Sasuke?
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...
"What'd you find?"
Sai's toneless voice whispered into Yori's ear as he slid neatly up behind him in the expansively adorned dining room. He and a few of the kitchen staff were setting up the places for all of tonight's guests. The rogue-ninja, gone turncoat in disguise, jumped slightly in surprise.
How did he get roped into this again?
As if in silent reply, one of his own pale hazel eyes caught the light reflecting off the empty length of a wine glass, shining his own bright gaze back at him. The reflection wobbly and thin, as if it were a memory.
A memory of not his eyes, but the resolute, determined stare of his older brother's.
Iokua.
"This is wrong... Yori, I can't let him do this."
The firm print of his long, lost sibling's voice pressed through his recollection - pinning him to the present. Yori shook himself. As dangerous as it was to let his focus stray... His brother had been right. What Hijame was doing was wrong.
Enough was enough.
And, as Sai cast him what could almost be considered a somewhat concerned look from across the table where he'd moved to set up more glasses, Yori realized - I'm not alone in this. Not anymore.
The thought was just as much a relief as it was a source of uncertainty.
He struggled to fold an ornately decorated fabric napkin into a replication of the other servant's perfect swans, came out with something that more resembled a squatting moose, gave up, and snuck back over to Sai so he could whisper in the other boy's ear.
"From what I've heard, they've got him locked away."
Sai nodded, looking very carefully at the alignment of the stack of plates before him, ears pricked in case any lurking staff might be trying to overhear. Yori glanced around once before leaning in closer with a hushed voice.
"I'm not sure which wing, but my best guess is that they've kept him in the lower levels of the Castle. In the dungeons."
A transient stiffness that might have been distaste, might have been fury, flickered over Sai's frame at this news. He nodded again and took a brief moment of consideration before speaking.
"Alright, I'll check whereabouts the West wing and you can check the-"
"You two!" a sudden, brassy voice barked at them from the kitchens, "Get a move on, we have to get this table loaded before the guests arrive - And that's not to mention prepping for the next several courses that will be following after!"
Yori straightened too quickly and knocked over a just recently placed pitcher of water.
It fell with a loud burst of glass to the stone floor and cold water sloshed everywhere. The loud, brassy voice was suddenly accompanied by the furious face of a short, blustering middle aged man with a moustache.
"Idiot!" he screeched at Yori, "Watch what you're doing! Do you want to lose your hands?" The short man stomped over and grabbed Yori tightly by the elbow, "Dumb girl-You're of no use here, why don't you go up to Izanami's quarters and finish helping her prepare for the feast and auction-Go! Hurry! Now!"
And, with an alarmed look at Sai at the word "auction", Yori allowed himself to be ushered away up the hall and stairwell to the quarters of the demonic woman who'd started this whole mess herself.
He gulped as he ascended and, catching himself fiddling with his black and white maidservant's uniform in his nervousness, quickly dropped his hands to his sides.
He had a bad, bad feeling about this.
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...
"They passed through here a couple days ago."
Iruka waved his thanks to the hunched, old woman and her grandson by the Kayanami Kanagawa pier, turning back to the group. He scritched awkwardly at one temple, smiling in an uncertain mien before delivering the rest of the news.
"Apparently he caused quite a commotion."
"Who, Kakashi?" barked Genma, "Nevah."
"What did he do?" Yamato asked a little hesitantly. Not sure he really wanted to know.
"Ah, well," Iruka pieced, "Maybe the more correct question would be 'What didn't he do?'"
Gai bust out laughing at this, tossing back his glossy bowl cut with a somehow fond sounding chortle.
"That's my eternal rival there for you, always the hippest chink on the scene."
At this, all of the others froze, staring at Gai in blatant horror.
"What?" he said, "This mission has been rated Mature for a reason."
Yamato squinted, his head hanging in exasperation.
"Could you not though? That's extremely offensive."
"Yeah." Raidou said.
"Totally." Hayate's ghost confirmed.
"Really. Not cool, man."
Iruka, who was beginning to feel interrupted coughed loudly, but no one noticed him. Gai continued defensively.
"Fucking nonsense, gimps!" he cajoled them, "Everyone with an asshole knows that cussing makes you dam-ned coot."
They stared at him. Crickets chirped somewhere in the low hanging tree across the street. It was full of unpicked fruit.
"Should I?" Genma, senbon in mouth, gestured quickly between the Green Beast and himself, eyebrows raised purposefully.
A mingled chorus of assent was his reply and, without further adieu, Genma swiftly spat his senbon directly into the nerve center in the back of Gai's neck.
"Yeet!"
The bulky, rubber suited man bellowed at once, wheeling on his feet before tumbling to the wooden pier with a dramatic crash.
"Thank you." intoned Yamato.
"Right. So, I was saying," Iruka began, only to be interrupted again by Gai who began to gesticulate wildly by their feat.
"-Mouthy bastard curd! You've struck me bitchly undue!"
Iruka rolled his eyes and sighed heavily.
"Really now, you've got to hit him with at least three, Genma. I'm trying to tell a story here."
Two more senbon swiftly joined the first, lined in a precise, straight series of punctures along the back of Gai's neck. Finger raised midpoint, mouth open and eyes bleary, he promptly fell face-first back to the wood.
"Cunted motherprick..." he wheezed out in a garble before finally growing still.
"Continue, Iruka-chan." Hayate's ghost coughed.
"As, I was saying," the schoolteacher said, unperturbed, "It appears that Kakashi-san made quite the impression on some of the locals here."
"Really?" Aoba scoffed. Iruka flushed and tugged at his ponytail mincingly before continuing.
"Er. Yes." he stated, "It seems there were several explosions, an old lady shoved into the water, and numerous witnesses claiming that they saw a silver-haired man running around naked."
"Wha-aat!" Genma, who'd been checking over Gai, began laughing so hard he had to catch himself with a fist on the pier, "What even-"
"-How ridiculous." Yamato parsed, flushing himself a bit.
"The fuck." Raidou agreed.
Aoba opened his mouth then closed it. Opened it again with a rapacious smirk.
"I guess you could say,"he delivered in a sly tone, "that Kakashi's bun very busy..."
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"Shut up."
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"You look like you're expecting a fight."
Said the green haired kunoichi with the silver crown tattoo as she stalked over to him. Sasuke set down his drink.
"Are you trying to start one?" he asked in a cool murmur.
The flash of candyfloss pink in the corner of the window looking out into the glaring orange sunset was gone.
"You know what they say... " the kunoichi smoozed, eyes flickering down and up his frame as she took a step closer, "All's fair."
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"The new girl is here, Lady Izanami."
The elderly maid bowed once as Yori was shoved without aplomb into the daimyo's wife's dressing room, looking horrified. The door swung closed behind him with a foreboding clang.
"Uh." he said, and he picked at the laced fringe of his skirt. Sweating and feeling distinctly itchy in his disguise.
Izanami's eyebrows arched high and her ice blue eyes widened furiously.
"Well, just don't stand there!" she bellowed, "Help me tie up this back! Now!"
Literally forgetting how to form words, the rogue-ninja impersonating one of the palace maids let loose what could only be considered a squeak. He ran around behind her but tripped over his feet, crashing in a slick face-plant hard on the polished floor. He groaned.
"What in Kami's name are you doing?!" the daimyo's wife shrieked, "Stop wasting my time! Idiot!"
"R-right." Yori coughed, remembering to raise the tenor of his voice last minute. He tip-toed up behind her and stared wide-eyed at his own pale face in the mirror over her shoulder. Izanami snapped her fingers in front of his nose, making the auburn-haired boy squeak again.
He set about hurriedly fastening the clasps of her gown around the corset mesh-work. His hands were shaking terribly and he kept attaching the wrong bits. Izanami hardly seemed to notice. She swayed in place, swooshing her long, layered skirts out before her and smirked at her reflection.
"Finally." she said, "Everything is falling into it's place."
Yori squinted at the pearled, sequined, and frilly mess that'd ensnared his fingertips. Sweat beading on his brow. What in Kami's name was this contraption?!
"I'm sure you've seen some of our guests by now, haven't you-"
There was a stark pause as Izanami raised an intimidatingly arched brow and glared at Yori's ducked face through the mirror. He scrambled to bow, fingers becoming further and further trapped in the corset of her dress, face blushing horribly.
"Y-yes." he said in his most girlish voice, "Yolanda..."
Inwardly cursing Sai for getting him into this mess, the young rogue-ninja in disguise felt his heart quaking in the soles of his feet. They were dressed in high heels.
"Did you see that one lady with the strapless dress and the coif with the little crown? Absolutely darling, don't you think?"
"Darling. Yes."
Izanami twirled, sending Yori scrambling in a penchant run about her as she spun; his fingers still tangled in her corset. He panted, feeling rather faint underneath the beaming lights shining down from the tall mirror.
"And, that young man with the eyes dark and wide as a baby fawn, well he was dressed quite unusually with that garish purple belt, wasn't he?"
Yori, becoming increasingly distressed and having no clear idea as to any of the words slithering out of the lady's mouth, bobbed his head. Uh oh. One of his fingers had become jammed. His eyes widened and he stiffened, his blush from before melting away in a tide of paleness. This wasn't good.
"He certainly was very handsome, but not, I think," the daimyo's wife grinned lasciviously at her reflection, "the prettiest one there tonight."
She tilted her head in a mien of sweetness and, sending a calculated glance over her shoulder at Yori, murmured.
"And, my pet, just who do you think that person will be?"
Ice flooded Yori's veins. He felt the sudden urge to pee. His knees quaked under his maid's dress and he bit his lip to stop his teeth from chattering. Fingers snagged in the back of her dress, praying to Kami that she wouldn't notice, he mustered a timid squeak.
"Y-you?"
...
...
Dust and grit shook down from the ceiling of his dungeon cell, raining down on his back and shoulders in sheets as the enormous animal caged beside him rammed powerfully against the walls.
Kakashi, drawing a deep breath through his hands to shield himself from the cloud of debri, backed up three steps and then sprinted at the far wall, slamming into it with his newly repaired shoulder. All he managed to do was scrape the skin off his arm, the stone was too thick. Without chakra at his disposal-lest he fall back under the sway of the poison Hijame had imbued him with, his reality besieged by the horrors of his past-he couldn't so much as shake the wall.
The Copy-Ninja, wincing a little at his freshly torn skin, backed up again, bracing himself for another charge. In his solitary unbandaged eye there glinted a fierce wildness. It spoke of an inhuman resolve that dappled the fringes of madness. Kakashi drew another hand-cupped breath.
Sprinted through the sloshing mud and slammed the wiry length of his forearms against the unmoving stone.
"Ah!" he gasped at the pain, shaking his head as he backed away again. Loose silvery white strands of hair swayed before his grim face. He wasn't making any progress on the surface of what he was doing. By all rights, running and throwing his body against the stone wall with all his strength would accomplish nothing. Nothing but further exacerbate his injuries.
There was another loud, wall juddering boom of crumbling stone and mortar as the colossal beast in the cell beside him crashed against the stone corner. A distinct, tormented howl that vibrated in the roots of Kakashi's teeth and nail beds. Making his tufty hair momentarily prickle up straight as goosebumps hummed over his body.
"Almost... There..." Kakashi panted, rubbing a crimson tendril of blood from the corner of his eye where he'd scraped his temple against the stone. He steadied himself, the taut frame of his lean musculature shivering with exertion ever so slightly.
"RRRRRRUUUAAAAAAAA-" The beast roared.
"HHHRRRAAAAAAAHHHH!" The Copy-Ninja screamed and, pumping his arms hard, he flitted across the dusty cell and crashed his shoulder and side against the rock with a loud slam of flesh hitting stone. He fell back into the cold mud with a splash and rose back up shakily, propping himself with one elbow while he huffed into the palm of his hand. His uncovered eye was narrowed to a fatigued squint above his fingers. His bare chest heaved slowly, mud coating the patchwork of freshly healed pink skin and a pale shade of radiance that was all of his own coloring. Blood dripped from him.
He stood back up, swaying a little, and tightened the knotted sheet he'd wrapped sternly about his hips before it could slide off. Somehow... Someway...
His animal friend snorted, and the lumbering sounds of his movement through the stone wall were loud and echoing in the darkness.
They would escape together.
...
...
...
**Author's Note**
Hello there. This story has been in the works for a long time. But, it's snagged my heart and has it in a chokehold so I feel compelled to truly bring it together. It's driving me crazy. Literally.
The end is in sight. I have a plan. Sort of. I can see it in my mind's eye. The issue is putting it into words. I've hit a really difficult point where I've been working on the same plot point for... years. Trying to make it come out just how I see it.
But, as some of you writers and readers may most certainly know, working over old material can be so tedious, especially when your mind's eye has barreled onwards so far ahead. But, I have not forgotten Kakashi.
He's such a beautiful character I feel like through writing about him I get more of a sense of who he is to me-And through sharing that sense I feel validated. It's kinda like a give and take, the more I put into a fanfiction, the more I learn about how I interpret or feel about characters and events.
For anyone who has managed to read this far along, for those that have stuck by me throughout the years-For those who have stood behind me as I have been barraged by flames and self doubt- You are my angels.
I will finish this story. Believe it!
3
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