はたけ・カカシ 「HATAKE KAKASHI」 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ura_no_ura) wrote2012-04-01 04:09 am
ura_no_ura) wrote2012-04-01 04:09 am
[IC] Appointments
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Action-- September 15th
Including the bright eyed, aggravatingly insistent attention from a certain clumsy old man.
...
Had he become a man that was worthy of Tiger's trust?
Was he even worthy of his own?
Barnaby knew that his visit was just a way to distract himself from the delicately tied pastry box that he carried by his side. It was a small, rectangular package that was tied up with a simple length of string.
It was sheer simplicity.
Taking a breath, Barnaby closed the door of his flat behind him and stepped toward the one that was directly across the hall. It was the one that Kakashi had claimed ownership of, and a silent reminder of the ghosts between them.
Memories of that night were hard to forget. He debated even approaching.
All he needed was a few steps. He gently set the package in front of the door and rapped on it with his knuckles three times in quick succession.
He would have stayed, but the image of a foreign city was far more appealing.]
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He had been relaxing in his living room with a glass of Scotch and his favorite book when the knocks came.
The chakra signature at his door isn't one he can immediately put a face to, so it can't be Gai or Sasuke.
He closes the book and sets it on the couch, padding over to the door barefoot, and opens the door, catching an eyeful of Barnaby's backside. It looks like he's heading back towards his own apartment, despite having knocked on Kakashi's door, and Kakashi almost considers just letting him. Maybe it's better this way, if they don't have to look each other in the eye. Maybe they can keep living their lives by avoiding the other, carefully navigating Luceti like the moon and the sun.
And for the duration of one heartbeat and the next, Kakashi almost just closes the door again. But his foot bumps into something, and he glances down, quirking a brow at the small box on the floor.
Huh.
That's... unexpected.
Barnaby... remembered his birthday.
Barnaby... got him a present.
(And for a moment, Kakashi remembers presents that never were, presents that were simple but meaningful, and always delivered with a bashful smile.)
He doesn't realize he's curled his fingers into fists until he hears the leather creak from the pressure. And it's with some effort that he manages to get out a single word past the sudden constriction in his throat. ]
Barnaby.
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It was a bitter irony. It was only in a dream that Barnaby ever had a decent night's sleep.
Barnaby consciously kept his breathing steady even if those wings provided a clear show of his guarded emotional state.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Just like he'd been trying to remind himself when the nights drew on and became too dark.]
...
Kakashi.
1/2
(And maybe for a moment, you were.)
But all the conscious attempts to cut, block, and shut down intrusive not-memories and not-thoughts during the day only meant they would haunt him when he was most vulnerable, when he was sleeping at night and dreams made him forget if it really was or if it wasn't, if they ever were, or if it never happened, and then he'd wake up in the morning and turn to reach for a lover who was never there, fingers closing in empty space before he realized what he was even doing.
Sleeping became difficult, until it stopped happening at all. He sleeps in snatches now, and never deep enough to dream. He sleeps the way men sleep on missions or the battlefield, never able to fully let the mind rest, lest it wanders off too far and never wake up because the enemy's steps are too soft, their knife hand too swift.
But even the not-sleep he's been subsisting on hasn't been enough to chase away the memories. It's almost at the point where Kakashi's considering if he should just Sharingan himself into blissful ignorance. It almost seems like it'd be the most practical, logical course of action.
Watching the way Barnaby's wings tense now, reading the way his body's pulled as taut as a wire, only seems to reinforce that fact. But yet. There's a box at his feet that's making it impossible to just pretend that what they had, however briefly, never happened.
Bending down, Kakashi picks up the box, and considers it for a moment, then glances back up at Barnaby's back. Reading the way his wings furl in an attempt to protect their owner from-- From what? From him?
Ah, yes. But then, Kakashi did almost snap his neck that one night.
Even still.
There's a box in his hands and Barnaby hasn't run off into his apartment yet. From the weight and sweet scent of it, he thinks it might actually be some sort of cake.
How ironic, that Barnaby remembered his birthday, but forgot Kakashi absolutely hates sweets.
You didn't have to, he almost says, but that'd be stating the obvious. Barnaby knows he most certainly didn't have to. But he did it anyway. ]
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[ His voice comes out rough. ]
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There was no way to win.
Barnaby peered over his shoulder at the man he had called lover for years-- no, weeks. He remembered the way his eye lit up when he laughed over something that the dogs did, and the way they fell into eachothers arms on those nights--
No. It was only a few. He flushed at the memory of those sweet, hazy nights. It was something that Barnaby had hoped to forget. But, it was impossible to ever forget.
He slid his hands into his pockets and slowly turned around, not daring to make eye contact. It was too intimate.
He wished he had left his glasses in his room.]
Yeah. [His own tone was almost noncommital.] I was planning to drink anyway.
[Just a glass of wine in front of a fake city that was far easier to dream about.]
1/2
(It most certainly is a terrible idea.)
Maybe Kakashi shouldn't be doing this at all. Maybe he should be backing up and shutting the door. Maybe he should walk to the nearest mirror, reveal his Sharingan and tell himself to forget, let it all fade into nothing, one big fat nothing, like it never was. Maybe then he can pretend that Barnaby hadn't seen him or known him for what he really is at all, peeled away the parts of him that he holds around himself like armor. Maybe he can offer to do the same for Barnaby, to make it easier for the both of them, so that they both can forget and go on living at the edges of each other's lives as total strangers who never knew each other at all. Who never laughed or cried or screamed or loved.
Or lived.
Because for a moment, they did. Or at least, Kakashi did.
And that's the hardest part of all. How do you forget what it was like to be alive, to not have the weight of too many lives hanging around your throat. To have a reason to live beyond the duty, beyond the promise to live on to memorialize the silence. To give meaning to the loss and the madness, the terrible ways you all end up losing your minds because you've cut out too much of what makes you you in order to survive the long nights and the knowledge of what hides in the shadows.
How do you forget that for a moment, you weren't a shinobi, but just a man who could love and live like anyone else, who could smile and dream like anyone else, who could have a family and loved ones you called your friends like all the people who walk in daylight and sleep through the night and never need to know the weight of a kunai in their hands, or the way her heart felt when you tore it out of her chest, or the way the world ended because you were trash, and could not protect anything that mattered in the end, because your hands were made to end lives, not to keep them going.
How can you forget any of it at all, when trying to forget is what's been slowly driving you insane, when you can't even look him in the eye because you can't bear to see the nothing they reflect, when all that you remember was nothing in the end. One big fat fucking nothing, just a fool's dream, a whisper of what never was, and could never have been. ]
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Mm. Alright. Roof's nice this time of the night. I'll grab the Scotch.
[ He manages to say after a moment, then looks down at the box in his hands again. He supposes he could get Barnaby to eat some of it, even if he has no intention of eating the cloyingly sweet thing. ]
Here, hold this.
[ Without waiting for Barnaby to object, he shoves the box into the blond's hands, then turns and heads back into his apartment, but leaves the door wide open, with the intent of grabbing the bottle of Scotch and another glass for Barnaby. ]
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Like what his Aunt Samantha always gave him. Used to give him. He still didn't want to believe that she was murdered by the hands of a man who manipulated him for years. The man he used to think of as a father.
Barnaby looked up at Kakashi's retreating form, teetering on the edges of the unknown himself. Like Kakashi, those were the few times he could actually say that he was happy. The others were with Kotetsu, particularly when he learned that the old Tiger had survived. Otherwise all he knew was the black, clinging tendrils of despair and a vengeance that ultimately ended in failure. Twenty years of fighting, and he was exhausted.
Now he knew something else. The reality-- the actual, real life that was his-- was terrifying to return to.
Perhaps he should have stayed with Saori. Perhaps he should fall back into the old ways and hunt down the Malnosso with a renewed vengeance. They were the ones who promised them protection from the Cultists.
The crimes were unforgivable.
'Ouroborous, Ouroborous ouroborous ouroborous' could change to Malnosso, Malnosso malnosso malnosso' if he wasn't careful.
He wanted this to end. He wanted some friends for a change. He wanted a chance to live.
Silently he followed Kakashi inside the flat, taking the open door as a silent invitation for him to enter. Even if it wasn't, he would have entered anyway.
It was his choice. He only wanted to act on his own will.]