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Entropy	By : ersatzbeta Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 1332 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, nor do I profit from writing this or any other fanfiction.

Chapter List
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Chapter Twelve
Instead of reading while on the living room futon, as he usually did on Thursday afternoons, Kakashi was using this activity as cover for planning a visit to the memorial. He had to figure out what to do with Sasuke. He could just abandon him to the tender mercies of the ANBU squad, but, frankly, it was an unattractive option. Kakashi couldn�t just leave him alone-- not only would it violate his mission parameters, but it also broke the unspoken rules about leaving traitors, former or not, unattended while in the village. Kakashi shifted in his seat uncomfortably.

Could he bear to bring Sasuke with him? His visits were intensely private. While Sasuke and he had become close during their enforced and prolonged contact, the young man was still in many ways a stranger. A familiar stranger, perhaps, but nothing like a friend. Kakashi didn�t have many who would be privy to this part of his life.
Come to think of it, there wasn�t anyone who was that close anymore. Kakashi scratched his face through his mask. His fingernail snagged on a thread and he stared at it as it hung between the cloth and his face. There were a few people who knew that he went to the memorial on a regular basis, but not one of them knew exactly why or for whom. Kakashi got up and went to his room for a fresh mask, one without flaws.
Half across the threshold of his door, Kakashi paused. The photos on the windowsill caught his eye. He smiled, though the people in the pictures couldn�t see it. He had been so isolated from his age-group. He�d been a jounin before most of them were genin, and while Itachi had been as quick a study, his genius didn�t quite make up for the age gap between them. Kakashi stripped the old mask off. Besides. They moved in different circles. Kakashi had had a lot of solo missions, and Itachi�was an Uchiha. He was busy being groomed for the police force and leading squadrons and generally networking and being an obedient son. Until he started killing people he wasn�t supposed to kill. Kakashi shrugged. They probably wouldn�t have gotten along anyway.

He hesitated, then walked over to the window and its pictures. It struck Kakashi, in the instant he saw himself reflected in the glass, that his face was the face of someone else, someone he didn't know. He turned away from the window and He hurried to cover himself. After he put on a new mask, he turned the photos on the windowsill face down. Kakashi returned to the living room, not daring to look at himself again, not when he couldn�t be sure of what he would see.
He settled onto the couch again as he pondered how much further he wanted to let Sasuke into his life. Yes, he�d willingly taken him in, but Kakashi hadn�t realized how much more connected to the village he�d been until he suddenly had to limit himself to orbiting Sasuke. Lounging on the futon was a poor substitute for wandering Konoha�s streets: Sasuke wasn�t trusted anywhere, wasn�t welcome anywhere, and by default neither was Kakashi. He was used to being invisible among the citizens. Somehow, Kakashi was surprised at how much people hated Sasuke. Bad feelings rose whenever people saw them coming, fog-like, palpable and wet and lingering long after the fact.
They lived in a house that they�d built together--and a nice one it was, Kakashi noted with pride as he glanced up from his book. But it was in the middle of nowhere because no one would have them. At any given time, Sasuke was no further away than ten yards. Kakashi felt claustrophobic thinking about it--not specifically because Sasuke was Sasuke, but because he was another human being. He had forgotten how exhausting and how tiring constant contact was. Kakashi rolled over on the futon and stretched his limbs as far as he could. It wasn�t enough. He wanted some space, just this one thing that was his and not shared between the two of them. He sighed and shut his book. He didn�t see any point in pretending to read any more.
Kakashi tried to fight down the resentment he felt. He was aware, peripherally, that Sasuke probably felt the same way. It likely was even worse for him, living with the understanding that one screw-up would be the end of the line. Making a mistake was remarkably easy when everyone around Sasuke was watching, waiting, and even expecting him to do wrong. Anxiety stole into the spaces between Kakashi�s ribs as he tried to imagine himself in the same situation. He shook his head. Empathy would get him nowhere. He didn't need to keep thinking this way. Kakashi drew in a breath and held it as his heart pounded harder and harder, and sparks floated before him. He needed to focus because there wasn't anything he could do to help Sasuke survive; the point of survival had already come and gone. What he needed was faith, to watch and wait and believe that this now-grown boy would do right. Kakashi exhaled.
He wondered what Sasuke would say if he were given the choice whether or not to go. Sasuke didn�t get a lot of choices these days. Would he ask a lot of questions? Might he prefer the ANBU watchdogs to sitting near the memorial? Kakashi�s gaze slid out the window. He noted the faintly-there chakra signatures. Making this offer felt like he�d be holding out an olive branch. Kakashi scratched his chin. What would Sasuke make of it? For that matter, he wondered what the ANBU would report to their superiors. Kakashi got off the futon again. Only one way to find out.
Sasuke was out in the yard, motionless on top of a stump. Kakashi followed his line of sight to a dark place between the trees. There wasn�t anything there, as far as he could tell, but it held Sasuke�s attention well enough. Kakashi drew close to him. He remained standing.
�There�s something I have to do,� said Kakashi. �Something I�ve been putting off since you came back.�
�Came back?� said Sasuke.
He sounded cool, aloof, but his chakra was agitated. Sasuke had had too many homecomings, most of them bad.
�Well, not came back per se,� said Kakashi. �Since you came back from prison. And the hospital after that.�
�Ah.�
Sasuke�s chakra stilled. Good thing too. It made Kakashi�s skin crawl with its tightly leashed possibility of violence. Sasuke stood a fair chance of gutting him at this range, not that Kakashi wouldn't do his best to defend against attack.
�I have to go to the memorial,� said Kakashi. �Unless you want to be babysat by them--� and here his fingers crooked at the trees �--you have to come along too.�
�You don�t want to take me with you,� Sasuke said.
Kakashi knew it was a statement of fact, but that didn�t mean it wasn�t full of nuance and implication. He answered just as honestly as he dared.
�Not really. Mourning isn�t exactly a spectator sport,� said Kakashi.
Sasuke blinked twice. It seemed Kakashi had startled him. The corners of Sasuke's mouth dropped and his eyebrows knitted together.
�Did it ever occur to you that I might have my own dead to mourn?� Sasuke said.
Kakashi was silent. He buckled and unbuckled his weapons pouch for a minute, letting the conversation settle down into his patchworked understanding of Sasuke.
�Does that mean you want to go?� said Kakashi.
Sasuke shrugged. He kept his eyes on the forest.
�It�s as good a place as any, I guess," he said. "But if I don�t like it, I won�t go again.�
�Right then," said Kakashi. �Be ready to go by daybreak tomorrow.�
Sasuke grunted.
Kakashi wanted to say something else, words suspiciously like a thank you forming at his lips. But Sasuke didn't deserve his thanks and so he did not speak. After an awkward minute or two of silence thick between them, he left Sasuke for the relative safety of the house.
Despite it still being a Thursday afternoon, Kakashi broke with tradition entirely. He headed for his bedroom instead. He locked and sealed the door behind him, stilled his breath, and listened hard for the scrape of bare feet against wood or the rustle of clothes. Sasuke hadn�t followed him, for once, and Kakashi was glad. He sat on his bed and watched the trees. The forest was quiet. The wind barely stirred the leaves and the insects were complacent, calling sporadically in the warm sunlight. Kakashi stayed at the window until long past the fall of dusk.
A/N: Originally, this chapter didn't exist. I skipped right from Kakashi's impulse to visit the memorial...to the visit itself. I wasn't happy skipping over what gets covered in this chapter, but I am also not entirely satisfied with how this turned out. I'm not sure. It feels a bit choppy to me, like maybe I tried to put in too many ideas, or I didn't give enough depth to what is here.
Interestingly, this chapter marks a break in the original material. The following several chapters I wrote later, to help fill in the huge gap the first draft left between Kakashi taking Sasuke in and their subsequent get-together. They needed a lot more time to grow into each other than I had previously allowed for. (Well, okay, I lie. I'd gotten stumped on the growing-to-trust-and-like each other part and had skipped right to the sex in the original draft. But! I like the context of said sex so much better now. I hope you all will too!)
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Entropy