My little drabble-y thing…set before the Gaiden,
and takes a closer look at Hatake Sakumo. I really
hope it isn't too wacked out and confusing, since...it makes perfect sense in
my head...:grin:
Effigy
Hatake
Sakumo was a good man.
“He was always the first
one to help you out of a pinch,” or, “He just had this aura about him that’s
hard to explain, but it was…comforting, in a sense,” or, “You knew he’d drop
everything he was doing and come to your aid if you needed it.”
Hatake Sakumo loved his
family. He found a wife with the same silver hair as he—though that was not
intentional—and the trait was passed to their only child, a boy who learned to
walk before he could crawl, a boy who saw someone else’s blood before his own,
a boy they named Kakashi. He had blue eyes, so dark as to be almost black, and
he looked just like his father.
“He could be your twin!” People
would exclaim when they saw them on the street. And it was true. Kakashi adored
his father, and he liked to stay close, one hand clutching Sakumo’s leg as they
meandered through town, the silver of their hair glinting in the sunlight.
As he wished to instill
proper values in his son at an early age, Sakumo took him to the
The grass swayed and
rippled around them as they stood there, Kakashi perched on his father’s
shoulders, his hands clasped on the top of his head with his chin resting over
the knuckles. Even though he was only two, Kakashi detected the air of
solemnity in his father’s countenance as the hard stone faces of the Hokages
gazed with unseeing eyes over the village like sentinels. This place was important;
he could feel it.
“Do you see them, Kakashi?”
His father pointed to each likeness in turn. “That’s Shodaime, the man who
founded Konoha, and his brother Nidaime. There was bad blood between them,
despite the love they had for one another.” He was silent for a spell,
recalling the old tales of an epic battle near a waterfall that had been
drilled into him since he was a youngster at Academy. “Very sad,” he murmured,
and then moved on. “The last is our Sandaime. You should recognize him.”
The boy smiled. He had not
taken to wearing the navy blue mask that would conceal the lower half of his
face yet, so instead of having only the eyes as a gauge, one could read his
expression clearly.
He had dimples when he
grinned, and the effect made him appear impish, a mischievous pixie out of the
fairytales where castles and knights and dragons reigned.
“Sandaime,” he repeated,
the word slightly awkward on his tongue. He did know this man, with his
funny triangle hat and his silly dress—Sakumo explained once that they were robes,
not a dress, but Kakashi couldn’t determine the difference—and all of his jokes
and laughter. “I like him.”
Sakumo tilted his chin back
to meet his son’s eyes, sharing the sentiment. “I do, too,” his smile was full
of respect. “He understands how to run a village, and he takes the people’s
interest at heart while contradicting it when it’s necessary, as a true leader
should. We may gripe about it at the time, but he does what he thinks is right
for us in the long run, and more often than not, he’s correct.”
The same as you, Kakashi thought as his father’s
attention returned to the Monument, though he kept the observation on the
inside, because he had the impression that he should. Once he had a better
grasp of vocabulary, the means to make what he wanted to say sound more eloquent,
then he’d tell him.
He’d tell him he was a hero
like Sandaime, like the Legendary Sannin. He’d tell him that being the son of
the White Fang made him proud, and that when he watched him wield his long
knife—the weapon that earned him his nickname—, the point flashing as it sliced
through the air, sharp and deadly and beautiful, he yearned for that fluid
grace, that tangible equilibrium that exists when a man and his blade are so in
synch it is impossible to distinguish where one ends and the other begins.
And later, when he stands
at the unmarked grave, he’ll wonder if, had he said those things then, his
father would have remembered, and found the will to live.
Sakumo spoke to him again. “That’s
where your honor is, Kakashi,” he explained, the Monument that loomed overhead
seeming to grow in stature and presence, as if it were an
all-encompassing entity. “Yes, the Hokage may be the strongest shinobi of the
village, but he is essentially a servant. He will do what he must; sacrifice
what he must, in order to protect his flock. A shinobi or kunoichi bares the
same burden. Once you choose your path, you will have to follow wherever it
leads without question, and without hesitation.” He paused. “I won’t lie to
you, son. To be a ninja is to be a tool, one fragment of an overall whole. There
are exceptions, of course, like the Sannin, but their breed is rare, and they
only come along when they’re really needed most.”
The corners of his mouth
turned up. “It’s not an easy life, and you’ll be forced to do unpleasant
things, but it can be rewarding all the same.”
Kakashi was quiet after his
father finished, turning his thoughts over in his mind. There was so much of
the world left for him to see, and so many things he had yet to learn, however…
“If you can do it, so can
I,” he said in his sturdy little voice, and extended his arm toward the
carvings in the mountain, hand curled in a fist. “Honor.” He liked the way that
sounded.
The sun began to sink
behind the clouds, the sky awash in pinks and reds and oranges, like watercolor
blended on a canvas.
Sakumo gave Kakashi’s knee
a squeeze.
“Honor,” he echoed.
He leans
against the porch rail while he watches the stars, a premonition of dread
settled in his heart, and he cannot for the life of him figure out why. He’d
been on countless missions of this sort before, and he knows what he is doing,
has confidence in the men who will accompany him, yet something is amiss, so he
worries.
“Sakumo.”
He hears the creak
as the door swings open, hears the soft shush of her feet on the wooden
planking as she pads toward him, and rests her head against his shoulder. In
response, he folds her into an embrace, because he thinks this may be the last
chance he’ll have to hold her this way.
She clings to him, sensing
his urgency, and it frightens her, though she would never admit it. The White
Fang’s wife will not show weakness in front of her husband; her job is to be
his anchor, the one solid surface he can turn to when everything else around
him crumbles to dust and ashes, when the disorder of an already turbulent world
transcends any semblance of stability and becomes a chaotic nightmare from
which he cannot wake.
The shadows are in his
eyes, and she sees them.
“What is it?” she asks
gently.
He breathes, in and out,
and she moves with the rise and fall of his chest. “I don’t know. I just…I feel
like I’m walking to the headsman and offering him my neck…”
The fear is a beast gnawing
her bones. “Why would you think that? At dinner you said the briefing went
well, and your team is as ready as it will ever be.” She kisses his cheek,
partially for his sake and partially to calm her nerves. “You’ve never been one
to second-guess yourself, Sakumo. Now isn’t a good time to start.”
For a moment, he allows his
apprehension to retreat back to where it came from, and he gathers her closer,
touches his lips to the tip of her nose like he always does before capturing
her mouth.
His kiss is insistent,
fiery, and strangely tender, and it makes her mind reel, but this is the Sakumo
she knows, so she will cherish it.
“You’re right,” he whispers
when he releases her. “I’m being an idiot.” But he still isn’t convinced.
He leaves the next morning
before the sun comes up, his wife and his son waving and yelling for him to be
careful and come home soon.
“I’ll keep training and
take care of Mom and the dogs, don’t worry!” Kakashi assures him, and then
mouths the word, “honor.”
Sakumo remembers the
Monument, so the smile he was about to force doesn’t have to be forced any
longer.
His boy will do well regardless,
and the knowledge gives him peace.
Hatake
Sakumo was never the same again after he returned. He was disgraced,
dishonored, ashamed. The one thing he swore not to do he had done, and the
mission was a failure because of it.
Men that should not have perished
were dead, and the blame was stamped across his forehead, burned into his skin,
seeped over his hands…
He had disobeyed an order. Perhaps
his reasons for doing so were logical, however that did not change the fact
that people were dead. He lost his head when his friends were captured,
abandoned the game plan entirely and chose to go after them when he should have
remained on course, and even the companions he rescued told him so.
“’The hell were you
thinking, Hatake? Trying to play hero…we’re in deep shit now! The guys are
getting ripped up out there!”
He realized as soon as he
did it he’d made a mistake, and that there was no possible way for him to
rectify it. He always followed orders, had gained respect because his
resolve was made of tougher stuff than iron, and constant.
“Follow the path to the
end,” he told Kakashi. “Don’t ask questions, just do it.”
For the first time and the
last time, Sakumo did not take his own advice, and the cost was higher than he
could pay. How could he look his son in the eye, knowing that he had fallen
short when excellence was crucial? How could he accept his wife’s selfless
forgiveness when knew he deserved none of it?
It was a wound that rankled
and festered and spread its corruption throughout, and there was only one way
he could conceive of to contain it, to prevent it from infecting the two
individuals he loved the most…
They were innocent, and he
would not allow his sentence to fall to them. They did not deserve the
contemptuous stares and the ill-concealed whispers, stigmas that his folly
generated.
Because he loved them, he
was not afraid to be condemned for them.
“Honor,” he murmured, and
the sword, his own macabre angel, sang her hymn through his flesh, the final
testament of the White Fang.
The Kakashi
before this day believed his father was invincible, the strongest, the fastest,
the most competent shinobi of them all. He does no wrong. He can’t. Hatake
Sakumo isn't capable of failure.
But he is capable of
dying, and no amount of denial can prove otherwise.
There is a body on the
floor, and it isn’t moving.
No…no…it’s not…
Hatake Sakumo is dead, his
sword lodged in his gut, blood pooled around his still form like a puddle of
crimson tears.
The blade weeps, he thinks,
and starts to laugh because he knows what he sees can’t be real but it is
real, so real that he can smell the scent of the grave and feel the blood,
tacky between the pads of his fingers as he rubs them together.
“This is what it means to
be a shinobi, is it?” He says to the corpse, which has no more words left to
offer. “This is it?” His voice is rising, and he grips the handle of the
sword. “A cold, hard machine that kills and kills and kills and doesn’t care…” He
yanks, and the dead tissue gives up the sword, along with a river of blood.
He examines the weapon, and
his tone is dangerously quiet.
“If that’s what they want,
that’s what I’ll give them.”
Kakashi tells himself he
wears a mask because he is a tool, yet the truth hurts too much, so he leaves
it alone.
Hatake Sakumo was a good man, but his legacy has been
forgotten.