Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Fire and Leaf: A Collection of Naruto One-Shots ❯ Haunted, Part 1: Memory ( Chapter 1 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

By: Yamisui

Top of Form

Author's Note: “Fire and Leaf” will eventually become a collection of Naruto one-shots. However, the first story“Haunted”will have three parts. I suppose each part could stand on its own as a one-shot, but the riddle of what it means to be “haunted” is finally solved in Part 3, so for thematic continuity I recommend reading the three parts in order.

As a note for Part 1, the term “hitai ate” refers to the forehead protectors the shinobi wear.

Haunted

Part 1: Memory

“Why do you keep coming here?” the boy asked curiously. “The dead aren't lonely.”

Kakashi glanced up sharply, his one visible eye narrowed to a slit. His reflexes were sharp; perhaps the sharpest in Konoha, but he hadn't sensed the boy's approach.

If there had even been an approach . . .

The boy looked uncannily familiar.

“Who are you?” Kakashi asked, frowning. He stood in a forest clearing in the rain, still and silent as a gray statue. The rain had soaked through the thick vest he wore, and plastered his shock of white hair against his head.

He'd been standing here for a very long time.

Since dawn, in fact, and in that entire time there had been no other visitors to the cemetery. The only sounds he'd heard were the water on the surrounding spring leaves and the voices memory conjured up as he stared at the rows of stone before him. There had been no sound until the boy spoke.

“You know me,” the boy insisted, smiling a little. It was a quiet, self-effacing sort of smile, and this time Kakashi allowed himself to recognize the person standing before him.

“I know you,” he agreed, nodding. “But I haven't seen you in so long . . . so very long.”

The boy's smile wavered a bit. “It hasn't been that long. You come here every day.”

Spiky black hair. Goggles that made his eyes look larger than they were, so he seemed even younger. A round, honest face that gave new meaning to the expression “wearing your heart on your sleeve.”

A jacket bearing the crest of the Uchiha.

“You've seen me?” Kakashi asked, unusually earnest. “You've seen me every day? Heard what I've asked, and never answered?” A pause; the Jounin's throat tightened. “Why? Why did you never answer?”

Obito shook his head, his smile fading completely. He seemed sad.

“You come here when you're troubled,” the boy said quietly. “And even when you're not. You ask `What would you have done, Obito? What would you say to me if you were alive?' Well, I'm not that wise, Kakashi. Death didn't make me wise.”

Kakashi swallowed hard against the sudden tightness in his throat. His eyes burned. Seeing his friend as if he were alive . . . as if his body hadn't been crushed beneath the rubble . . . Speaking with him, face to face, as he had never dreamed he'd do again . . . Suddenly he was himself twelve years ago, newly free of his arrogance and filled with newfound loyalty. And his anguish now felt as raw as it had then, in the shadow of grief. One fist clenched at his side in an effort to keep himself from stepping closer to his friend. He was afraid that if he did, the spell would be broken and Obito would disappear.

“You knew something I didn't,” Kakashi insisted. “You showed me the courage it takes to protect your comrades, even in the face of death. If that isn't wisdom, then every name on Konoha's memorial stone belongs to a fool.”

Obito took a step toward Kakashi, skirting around the gravestone. He looked somewhat nervous, as he had in life whenever he was about to take a stand.

“If that's what you learned from me, then you've learned it,” Obito insisted. “You've changed for the better; you aren't selfish anymore. So now it's time to live your life . . .and to let me go.” The last part was added in quieter tones, which made it all the more cruel.

Kakashi lowered his head. Rain trickled down his forehead, running over the hitai ate fastened there.

“I let you go long ago, when I shouldn't have,” he argued in a low voice. “I let you die. You were a sacrifice to my selfishness.” His gaze lifted, drinking in the sight of the young ghost before him. “That's why you're still that age---still the boy I remembered. I let you die too young, when there was too much left for you to do . . . for me to say . . .”

Obito's mouth compressed into a grim line; a solemn look like the one he'd worn the day he died.

“Then say it, Kakashi,” he finally replied. “Say what's on your conscience and let me go.”

Briefly, Kakashi closed his eyes, weighed down by old grief so intense it was practically fresh. It was burned into his eyes, those memories. He had been too blind to acknowledge the person who was most loyal to him until it was too late; until Obito's body lay crushed and broken. He could still see, with his eye and Obito's, that last glimpse of half a face, with blood running like tears from beneath an eyelid his friend had shut to spare him the sight. Those broken lips, curved into a smile . . .

“I do say it,” Kakashi exclaimed abruptly, anguish plain in his voice. “I admit my guilt time after time, but it's never enough. You still haunt me.”

This time it was Obito who bowed his head in sorrow . . . sorrow for his friend. The rain fell soft between them.

“I forgave you long ago, when I chose to give you the eye,” Obito answered gently. “But it's you who haunts this place. It's you who can't forgive yourself.” He stepped back again, closer to the grave. “Let me go, Kakashi, so you can finally be free.”

Slowly, the fist at Kakashi's side unclenched.

“What are you, then?” he demanded, suddenly angry. Whether it was anger toward Obito's cruel, gentle honesty or toward himself, he couldn't fathom. “What are you? A ghost?”

The boy shook his head.

“A memory, which you summon again and again, to call back the pain you think you deserve to feel.”

Silence. The answer stung, like a blade through the heart.

“Then you're not really there,” Kakashi said softly, blinking rain from his eyes like tears.

“No,” Obito murmured, “I'm not.”

Kakashi sighed; a long, slow sigh better suited to an old man. With one gloved hand he wiped the water from his face, heedless of the fact that the rain immediately soaked again what he'd just dried. He just wanted it out of his eyes, so he could see clearly.

As he lowered his hand, he looked again and saw that Obito was gone. There was only a pathetic bit of stone, with the name of someone he'd once known carved into it. He stared at it for a long time, until at last he became aware of the slight ache in his legs, and the chill seeping through his clothing.

“Well, then,” he said, inclining his head respectfully toward the grave. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

He turned and slipped quietly through the trees, returning to the village.

His calm footsteps carried him toward the river and over the bridge, to the place where three young people stood leaning against the wooden railings.

“Oi,” came the flat greeting. “You made us wait two hours in the rain.”

Kakashi blinked. The sight of them dispelled the strange mood he'd been in.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said, rubbing his sopping hair and feeling a bit like laughing. Here he was about to spend a normal day training his students after spending the morning talking to the dead.

His three Genin misinterpreted his newfound cheer, and their faces narrowed into identical scowls.

“Why are you late?” Naruto demanded.

Naruto always asked that, as if in the hopes that one day Kakashi might actually give him a legitimate reason. Kakashi shrugged amicably, and decided to tell him the truth.

“I was visiting a friend,” he answered.

Naruto scowled, apparently not buying this at all. Kakashi didn't mind; in that sense this was just like every other morning.

Together, he and his team finished crossing the bridge, heading for the training grounds.

His memories didn't follow.

But he always knew where to find them again.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form