"Have you seen the new guy?"
"Who?" There were a lot of new guys in ANBU, and all of them were faceless. Technically none of them were supposed to know who each other was, but some were better at guessing than others.
"The big f*cker, the one with white hair. Saw him in the Hokage's office."
A yawn. "Well if he's one of us he'll find his way down here eventually."
The rain is coming down in sheets. Shikamaru enters Hokage Tower through the front entrance, rather than through a window as most ANBU would.
Ushered into the Hokage's office for a mission report, he finally gets to see the man Tanuki had described as the big f*cker, large and imposing as he stood ramrod straight behind Kakashi's chair, completely still. So still, in fact, that Shikamaru wasn't sure the guy was breathing at all—he's so caught up in trying to spy the minute rise and fall of the shoulders, the tiniest expansion or contraction of this guy's chest that he almost misses one of the Hokage's questions and fumbles his way through the answer, earning him a funny look.
"Are you alright, Stag?" He asks, as if he doesn't have some brand-new guard that Shikamaru doesn't recognize looming behind him. He's never seen the mask this agent was wearing before, red around the eyes, two red stripes on each cheek with a pair of ears at the top of the head. The mouth vaguely resembles a muzzle—a dog, then?
"Yes, sir," he nods, suddenly grateful for the mask that sits on his own face so he couldn't be caught staring. "It's been a long day, is all."
"Of course," Kakashi gives the written report in his hand another glance, before smiling up at Shikamaru, the corners of his eyes crinkling. All of them had become very adept at reading his expressions under the mask with only his eyes to guide them. This smile is a lie, he can tell. It doesn't reach his eyes. "Why don't you take off for the day, hm?" The Hokage props his chin against his fist, waving the report at him like a fan, as if trying to shoo him away.
"Thank you, sir." Shikamaru nods and returns the Hokage's smile, before he turns away and makes for the door.
Shikamaru can feel another set of eyes on him, itching at the back of his neck. The big f*cker, standing behind Kakashi, is staring at him from behind the mask.
Before he closes the door on his way out, he catches a small red glow, right out the corner of his eye.
"So, did you see him finally? What'd you think?"
A sigh. He shuts the door to his locker with more force than necessary and leans his back against the cool metal. "I don't know—"
"You don't know? C'mon Nara, you've gotta give us something better than that—YEOUCH!" Someone smacks Crow as hard as they can on the back of the head.
"No names, Crow, remember?"
"—what the f*ck, you hit so hard Slug—"
"Well..." Crow's whining stops almost immediately, "anyone else notice it doesn't look like he's breathing?"
"A zombie guarding the Hokage?" Ino asks, incredulous, as she idly flips through a magazine. It's a slow day at Yamanaka Flowers. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
"It's true!" Kiba tells her, brandishing the small bouquet of purple-white violets he had originally announced his intention to buy.
"It is so not," she fires back, abandoning her magazine to look him in the face, "who even told you that?"
"From some guys I know—" Ino rolls her eyes, "—I'm serious! C'mon Ino, you know I can't talk about that sh*t—"
"Then why are you telling me about the Hokage's zombie guard—" she air quotes when mentioning Kakashi-sensei's supposed new zombie guardian, "—if you're not supposed to be talking about it? No one's in here, and I already know that you and Shikamaru—"
"I heard it from him!" He waves the bouquet around again, showering the floor and the both of them in purple petals, "he's the one who said it didn't look like the new guy was breathing!"
"Oh my god." Ino leans back with a sigh, letting out a chuckle, "I have no idea how they let you into ANBU. You'd crack so fast during an interrogation—"
"—this isn't about me!"
"Are you gonna pay for those or are you gonna shake all the petals off of them?!"
Kiba digs around in the pocket of his pants and hands over the ryo necessary to pay for the flowers. Ino snatches up the cash and tucks it away safely in the lockbox before he can take it back. He sets the flowers down on the counter and leans his palms against it. "So you believe me now?"
Ino chews her lip. Kiba she could believe was making something up or exaggerating—he loved doing that, he liked to exaggerate to impress the girls when he told stories about the war, or about a mission to get them fawning over him. Ugh. But Shikamaru—no, he wouldn't do that. Everything was as factual as it could get with him. If he said it looked like that guy wasn't breathing...
"You're not lying about Shikamaru saying that to get me to believe you, are you?" She asks, quirking a brow at him.
"What? No—"
There has got to be a logical explanation for that. Some shinobi were so skilled at controlling themselves that they could mimic death. Some of her dad's friends in T&I had tried to teach her how when she was younger, but she was never very good at it. But what would be the point of employing such a technique in the presence of the Hokage? There were no threats to avoid—not in casual company.
So what the f*ck?
"Ino?"
Her reply is solemn. "That's weird, Kiba. I don't like it." The grim switch in her tone catches him off guard, and he suddenly becomes much more serious to match.
"You don't think it's anything bad, do you?"
"Well I mean that's the thing—I don't know."
Slug is on a mission.
She's just gotten back from a mission, actually—an important one, with some information that the Hokage would need to see immediately.
So she needs to get to the Hokage and deliver this stuff quick, and then she needs to get home and wash the gunk out of her hair.
But when she gets to Hokage Tower, she sees the lights in his office are already off. When she peers in through the window, there's no one home. Well f*ck.
"As soon as you get word I need you to bring it to me, Slug-chan, alright?" And he didn't say it in that stupid cheery voice he normally gave orders in. She knew the difference, Kakashi-sensei wasn't f*cking around. Slug lept off Hokage Tower and began to make her way across the rooftops towards his home.
He didn't move to the Hokage's Residence after his inauguration. He stayed in his apartment—the apartment from her youth, where she and her friends would gather after a mission and he would cook for them and everyone would laugh over Naruto's sh*tty attempt at chasing cats or his piss-poor farming skills they ended up having to redo.
Kakashi has received ANBU at his home before. She and Stag standing in his living room while the TV droned nonsense in the background, delivering a report of far more importance than whatever sh*t was playing.
When she gets there, she raps on the windowsill—the one on the right, the one he told them to use, always. She raps once, then twice, and then in the pattern he taught before it pops open and admits her entry, and she slips inside.
No sooner had she crossed the threshold and gotten both feet on the floor when she finds herself swiftly and suddenly pinned against the wall. Slug can't help it—she screams, and whoever is holding her digs their thumbs into her wrists. With a bolt of ice-cold fear in her chest she realizes they were very nearly as strong as her as she pushes back against them with all her might. She manages to work one arm free and the both of them finally go tumbling to the floor, Slug on top, her one free hand pummeling their abdomen and—
"That's enough!"
The person beneath Slug tosses her off them like a ragdoll. She lands on the floor with an undignified yelp and wonders just who the f*ck they are—
—when she looks up at the towering figure, she sees them already retreating behind the Hokage. The big f*cker, Tanuki called him. Bright white hair, face concealed behind a porcelain mask similar to her own. Dog, it looks like. She’s never seen a Dog down in the locker room before.
"Sorry about that Slug-chan—" Kakashi chuckles as if embarrassed. "I'm assuming you've got that report for me?"
Slug quickly pulls herself to her feet. "Yes sir," she pulls the scroll from her pack and hands it over to him. "Sorry for the confusion—"
"No, it's alright.” He takes the scroll in-hand. “Why don't you take a couple days off, hm?"
She blinks in surprise, but ultimately concedes—she could use a couple days. "Uh—yeah, sure. Thank you sir."
Kakashi-sensei smiles at her then, the corners of his eyes crinkling. A familiar sight, but a little different. The spark doesn't reach his eyes.
"In his apartment?"
"Yeah—f*cker tackled me to the ground."
Someone laughs. "Wait, seriously? Someone got you on the ground?"
"I mean it's not super weird, is it? The Hokage has ANBU around his residence all the time!"
"Yeah but not in it!"
"Maybe he was delivering something too?"
"Then why attack me?" Slug asks, "it doesn't make any sense."
"Nothing about this makes sense." Stag agrees, "maybe someone should just unmask him."
"What the f*ck—how?"
"I don't know." Stag sighs, "f*ck—man, what a drag—"
Chaos erupts. The locker room explodes into a flurry of speculation.
In the dark of his room, Kakashi removes the mask from his loyal guard’s face.
Beneath it are tree-ring scars, a split lip now healed and a single red eye, sometimes black when the Sharingan is not active. Star-white hair and the face of the boy he once loved—not that he would admit it at the time. At the time he had been a stupid boy obsessed with stupid rules that governed the lives of himself and his comrades, each of them vying for an end to the war that seemed to stretch out endlessly before them. Obito wanted to become Hokage to bring an end to it, but he died, crushed beneath the rocks that should have crushed him, and now Kakashi is Hokage instead.
Obito died when he took a bone shard to the belly, trying to protect his cousin, trying to protect Kakashi. He crumbled to dust in Naruto and Kakashi’s hands, slipped through his fingers like sand once again. He wanted him back. He wanted to bring him back, he wanted to show him Konoha could change, that he would change it. He wanted something of his past to remain. He scooped handfuls of Obito’s ashes into his pockets and when he returned he emptied them all into an urn he kept on his headboard, sleeping next to them each night.
And when he became Hokage, he used Senju Tobirama’s forbidden ninjutsu to return a piece of his past to him. He could get away with this—every Hokage has ANBU guards, though he knew now this one would look unorthodox. He could imagine the gossip that was already stirring.
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
The dead man in his bedroom says nothing.
“The next time someone does that knock on the window, wake me up. They won’t hurt me.”
The dead man in his bedroom says nothing.
“Come to bed.”
Finally, he moves. Mechanically, he strips off his clothes, down to his underwear, and then he climbs into bed beside Kakashi. Kakashi wraps his arms around the ghost beside him and an arm is thrown over him in turn.
“Obito.” The head turns to look at him. “Good night.”
The dead man in his bed says nothing.
