The Eyes of a Scarecrow
AN: I'm bored and this idea came up. Don't own Naruto. I'm crazy. Et cetera.
Sensei
Kakashi Hatake never spoke about why he left Anbu to work with Genin.
He would never tell you.
Not if you threatened to burn his Icha Icha collection.
Or if you asked nicely.
Nope.
He would never tell anyone.
But the truth was, Kakashi Hatake loves kids.
Not like that you perverts.
He likes being with them.
He likes the fuzzy feeling that he gets when he passes while they play on his way to the Hokage's office.
He likes how purely happy they are when they smile.
He even likes how the first thing they say when they see him is "You're weird."
Children don't glare at him because he is the son of the White Fang.
Children don't expect him to be the perfect Shinobi.
Children don't think of him as the Ex-Anbu, the Copy Ninja, the Yondaime's student.
Children don't judge him, because of who he is.
No.
To children, Kakashi Hatake just is.
The only harmful things that children can attach to him is a name and the fact that he is a ninja.
He is not Wolf.
He is not the Sharingan thief.
He is not the genius prodigy.
They don't even consider him a Jounin because "strong ninja don't trudge through the village".
No, strong ninja are either really scary, the Hokage, or arrogant bastards.
Kakashi wears a mask to be mysterious, not because he sees the ghost of his father in the mirror.
Kakashi covers his eye because he thinks it's cool to only have one, not because he is ashamed of his mistakes.
Kakashi is lazy because he lacks motivation, not because he gets lost in his thoughts about his dead loved ones.
Or it's just because he's weird.
It is because of this, that he decides to become a Jounin sensei.
He wasn't forced out of ANBU.
He didn't really feel like passing on wisdom to the next generation.
No.
He wanted to find and teach a group of kids who would keep that childish inclination.
He hoped that it would lessen the pain he feels of simply living.
He could have gone to the Academy to teach there.
But he didn't want to.
Even within the teachers there, the social hierarchies and taboos were still there.
But in the Jounin sensei program, he could escape the expectations of the village and be around the wonders that are children.
But these children are older.
Hovering between child and adult.
When he receives his first team, he gives them the Bell Test.
It is the hardest test the Jounin are authorized to give to Genin hopefuls.
He makes it especially brutal, making them choose between the rules and an impossible situation.
He stresses the importance teamwork for Minato.
He hammers in the need for sacrifice for Rin.
He demands that they adhere to his philosophies for Obito.
And for himself?
He pushes them to the limit to see if they still cling to that childish inclination to do what is right and what is important.
What's really important.
He wants to see if the children will still ignore rules, expectations, and taboos because they're stupid, illogical, and impossible to follow.
He wants to find a group that will be able to resist that change from child to adult.
The first group fails his test.
So do the next.
And Kakashi never passes any of the teams he is assigned to test.
A little bit of his heart breaks each time he fails them, as each of them are already too changed by the rules of society for him to stand.
They are children for Kami's sake.
He himself clings to the words Obito once said, and he desperately holds on to the hope that there is a group that will hold their comrades close.
He knows what it's like to lose them.
He knows the pain that follows each death.
And dear Kami he hopes that one group will finally see that "Those who break the rules are scum, but those who abandon their comrades are worse than scum."
After five years, Kakashi tells the Hokage that the next team he has to test, will be his last.
He says that if the next group doesn't pass, he wants to be reassigned to Anbu.
Surprisingly the Hokage agrees, and hands him his new team file.
When he sees who they are, he regrets it.
He sees sunshine hair and a golden smile.
He sees the sleek dark locks and troubled eyes.
He sees pastel pink tresses and caring expression.
It is the first time he wants to refuse team before he even tests them.
Keeping his word to the Hokage, he tests them anyway.
He was downright furious when they behaved just like the others did.
He scowls at them and shunshins away to release his pent up emotions.
They were just like the others.
And yet...
When he comes back, he is absolutely astonished when he sees both the Uchiha Brat and the Rabid Fangirl offering their food to the Loser.
At first he thinks its a fluke.
He makes a shadow clone to observe from afar as he shunshins in front of them and releases a playfully small amount of killing intent.
All the while he watches their horrified expressions for the signs.
The signs of childish chivalry and kindness and camaraderie he so desperately wants to see.
The Loser defends them with his unflinching morals.
The Brat supports them with firm logic.
The Fangirl unites them with fervent spirit.
He questions them one more time if they are sure they are willing to face the consequences of their actions.
For he knows that if they truly did, they would face social punishment anyway.
None of them deny it.
He prepares a weak attack and gives it away with his body language.
They stand firm against him, willing to go against him to protect one another.
He leans forward sticking his hands on his hips like he's about to royally chew them out.
He watches their expressions as he tells them they passed.
Their smiles are almost worth all those years of failure.
In a blink of an eye he switches with his shadow clone and watches as it walks Sasuke and Sakura out of the training grounds.
He leaves Naruto there for a few minutes.
He watches Naruto struggle on the log loudly for a bit.
Then he walks up to him and unties him with the quick efficiency of a Jounin.
Which really just meant pulling at part of it to make it unravel itself.
The orange Genin yells at him for a bit.
Kakashi says nothing.
Then after a moment, he raises a hand and ruffles Naruto's hair.
The boy stared at him in shock for a moment before grinning a different smile; a sunny mix of his father's and mother's smiles.
Kakashi decides that he likes it.
Now, he thinks, he hopes, that it was worth it.
On their first C rank mission, he wants to kill the two Kiri nins who dare attack his team.
But he doesn't.
They don't need to see that side of him.
They don't need to know about his tenure as the Red Wolf.
Not yet.
Not ever.
Because he knows that he himself has a bloodier, and far more brutal record than both of them combined.
So he threatens the two instead.
He tells them that if he ever sees them again, he will personally take the two in to Konoha's T&I.
They shiver because they know.
They know that Konoha uses a different kind of torture than the brutal maiming that the other hidden villages use.
Other villages would cut your arms off if to prove their point.
Konoha would shred the nerves in your arms so you couldn't use them, but you still felt the agonizing pain of injury.
Because Konoha is the nice village and doesn't use too inhumane of methods, they had mastered torture that involved just the same amount of pain, yet left no lasting damage.
If Konoha so wished, they could keep a torture victim alive for years and not leave a single scar behind.
Mental torture.
Where they could use memories, or just mental pain.
Physical torture.
Where they make victims scream in agony with a single touch, yet not draw a single drop of blood.
Medically induced torture.
Where they could break all your bones, tear all your muscles, and crush all your internal organs, and put you back together just enough for the pain to return.
They leave no marks.
They leave no damage.
And those who are not sent back to their villages as dead souls trapped in a living body, kill themselves before they can be pulled from their cells.
Kakashi knows because he spent part of his time in Anbu as an Intelligence officer.
Someone who asks questions and oversees the entire torture process.
He whispers this to the two Kiri Nuke-nin just before they continue on to the Land of Waves.
He knows he won't ever see them again.
For most of the journey there, he is glad.
He's had plenty of comrades who have shunned and feared him for his involvement in T&I.
Inoichi is retired, and he isn't seen with anyone other than former coworkers, his team, or his family out in public.
Everyone avoids Ibiki altogether.
The children would either do the same, or brush it off without truly understanding.
He didn't want either of those.
When Zabuza appears, he's not sure he can keep those secrets secret.
If Zabuza puts his all into this fight, Kakashi will have to show it to protect their lives.
When he is trapped and Zabuza begins to tell them of the Bloody Mist, a bit of him fears that it will make them wonder about him.
Or that Zabuza will tell them that Kakashi had killed more people than Zabuza himself had.
Because Kakashi had had his first kill at age six, and had more than two hundred under his belt by the time he was thirteen.
He was more of a killing machine than Zabuza.
Kakashi watches as Zabuza plays with his students as he helplessly sits on the sidelines, and suddenly, he doesn't care.
By the end of this mission, he will see Zabuza's corpse.
Just before he is able to kill him, however, he is thwarted by a boy.
He doesn't know whether to be grateful or annoyed.
But once he analyzes the fight and figures out that Zabuza was indeed holding back, and that the boy was his partner, he understands.
As he watches his students train, he understands.
He's not the only one.
Nor will he be the last.
Teaching is both a means of healing and repentance.
When he buries them, he prays to the Shingami to let them go to the same place.
He is pleasantly surprised when his students feel the same way.
During the chūnin exams, Kakashi sees a dark shadow form between Naruto and Sasuke.
Rivals becoming enemies like no other.
He takes Sasuke away for a month with a promise of training, as he tries desperately to restore the bond between the two.
But he is too late.
Sasuke looses the childish spark.
There is nothing he can do to save him.
Because once it's lost, it's gone.
The team breaks apart.
Sasuke goes to Orochimaru for power.
Sakura apprentices under Tsunade.
Naruto leaves the village with Jiraya.
And Kakashi goes back into Anbu.
Kakashi watches as Sakura's spark fades to a dull grey during her long working hours in the hospital.
When she loses her sixth patient, it's gone.
Facts and cold reality replace it.
He avoids her for weeks afterwards.
When she finally corners him and demands an answer from him, he explains it to her.
He explains how the only reason he wanted to teach was to try and preserve the childish faith in them.
He tells her that he failed her.
He tells her that he's sorry.
She cries into his shoulder because she knows he's right.
She cries because he shouldn't have to say sorry.
She cries because she understands, even if just a little, why he held that little attribute so dear.
What goes unsaid is the fact that Kakashi didn't do it just for them.
He did it to try and heal himself.
To try and fix what he had broken.
That was the real reason, whether he admitted it to himself or not.
But he wasn't going to tell anyone that.
The first reason sounded better anyway.
When Naruto comes back to the village, Kakashi almost refuses to see him.
It happened to Sakura.
Of course it would have happened to Naruto as well.
Only, it didn't.
Not really anyway.
It was still there.
Kakashi was ecstatic that it was.
But at the same time, he knew that Naruto was trying to hide it.
He was a ninja now, fully fledged.
He should be able to hide it better.
But it bothers Kakashi a lot that Naruto felt like he needed to hide it.
He could act like he didn't have it.
And that was what bothered Kakashi the most.
So, he gave them the bell test again.
He was even more brutal this time around, showing them the full extent of his ninjutsu knowledge.
But this time, he wasn't testing for the spark.
He was testing for resilience.
To see if they could see reality, and still turn around and scream in someone's face that it was wrong.
To see if they could accept reality and still find something similar to that spark.
And just.
Keep.
Going.
He was never more proud than when they were able to turn the test around and beat him.
He then decides that despite breaking apart, despite everything that has happened, even though he knows that sooner or later Naruto will lose that spark, he knows that they will never lose faith in each other.
As a Jounin sensei, as their Jounin sensei, it's all he could ever ask of his students.
AN: Aaaaaaaaand that's a wrap! I really don't know where this came from. Or it it's any good. Hehehe... Erm... Review? Maybe support this idea of these random Kakashi centric drabbles? Tell me if you like it? Tell me if you want me to post more? No flames? End all you sentences with question marks? ... Told you I'm crazy.