‘you weren’t even there that day.’
Gai's hands are stained with mud, like he's been scratching at the surface of his mother's grave. As Kakashi approaches, he folds them carefully in his lap, eyes locked on the disturbed dirt. An urn, fresh, sits next to the headstone. The other boy doesn't call out to him, doesn't turn to look at him, even as Kakashi slows to a stop, and kneels next to him. Folds his hands into his lap, clears his throat, and greets him with a subdued: "Hey, Gai."
The midmorning sun is weak and watery, blocked out by clouds that occasionally spew a rain so fine it's nearly mist that's cold enough to make fingers and toes feel like blocks of ice. Gai's clothes are damp, but he isn't shivering. He's pale, his lips pressed tightly together in a flat, unhappy line, and he doesn't turn to Kakashi, and he doesn't look at Kakashi.
That's fine, he thinks. He gets it, a little. It's early April. In one month, it will be seven years to the day that Hatake Sakumo cut himself open in his study and died there, and in one month and two days it will be seven years to the day that Kakashi found his corpse. Seven years is a long time, though. He tells himself he doesn't remember the way the body and the congealed blood had smelled, the limpness of his father's hands when he'd grabbed them, rigor mortis already come and gone.
Maybe he doesn't get it. Sakumo was a dead man for as long as Kakashi could remember him.
He'd briefly made an appearance at Gai's fourteenth birthday dinner in January, enough to get overwhelmed by the joy and the excitement, enough to hold out a card to Gai with a stiff bow, enough to see Maito Dai's broad smile, the pride in his expression for his son, and enough to feel his broad hand touch down carefully on Kakashi's shoulder, thanking him for coming, something kind and knowing in his eyes that had made Kakashi... The point was, he'd left early. That's all he'd known about Maito Dai, that brief moment of unwavering affection and gentleness for a stranger, just because it had made Gai so obviously happy to see him.
For once, Kakashi finds silence unacceptable. He opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again. His gaze flickers from Gai's hands, muddy, to the disturbed dirt, to his mother's headstone, to his father's urn. Back to his hands. There's something crawling around at the base of his throat.
"I'm sorry," he says, lamely. It's the first time he's seen Gai since it happened. He'd been in the hospital during the funeral and the cremation. He'd been in the hospital when Dai had met his end far away in an effort to protect three children. "I know it's, um..."
Words fail him, because of course they do.
"You know?" Gai's voice trembles. "You weren't even there that day."
Rising to the other boy's anger would be childish. Kakashi has been a blooded jounin for three years, he is not childish. He sits still, he waits for his own flash of irritation to pass. Gai's father is dead, and Kakashi has not been a good friend to him.
"No," Kakashi replies quietly. "No, I wasn't. Do you wish that I was?"
A sharp shake of the head, and then the tears start, frightening in how subdued they are. Gai reaches up to wipe them away, and Kakashi catches his wrist to keep him from smearing the grave-dirt on his face, presses his hand back to his thigh and holds it there. This only makes the tears come faster, and Kakashi turns his gaze to the rest of the headstones in the graveyard.
"No," Gai murmurs listlessly. "No, I don't wish you were there. It was... it was horrible, Kakashi."
As a jounin, it would have been Kakashi's duty to die in that fight too. The thought passes as soon as it appears, immaterial. He would have died as surely as Maito Dai had, and his body would have been mined for the Sharingan, and he'd likely be buried in a yard much like this one. Something in his throat twists. "Do you want to tell me about it?" He asks, his hands pale and cold, his striking hand gripping Gai's so tightly in his lap that it appears to have no blood in it at all.
Choking on the words, Gai tells him about the fire, the awful sick-slide feeling of the miasma of chakra that burned his father into slag. He tells him about the fear that had stilled his body and seized his heart, about the way pieces of his father had broken off in his hands when he'd gone back to retrieve the body with Genma. His words trail off. The silence looms again.
"Sorry," Kakashi says again. The word feels foreign in his mouth, stupid and clumsy. Useless. Maybe he is sorry he wasn't there. It would have changed nothing. Being sorry changes nothing too. Apologizing just makes Gai cry harder. His gaze flickers again through the cycle-- Gai's dirty hand clasped in his own, the disturbed grave dirt, the urn, back to the hands. It has started to mist again, like the sky itself has had all its tears wrung out. Gai's soft hiccuping sobs are the only sound in the quiet little graveyard. "Gai," he keeps his tone even, flat-calm, "what were you doing when I got here?"
Gai tries to pull his hand away but Kakashi doesn't let him go. He sits, he waits, he doesn't look at him. After a moment, the quiet, stuttering confession comes: "I-I wanted to bury him with her. I submitted an official request, but..."
Kakashi knows. An appeal to exhume a civilian woman's grave would take forever, if it didn't just end up lost in the endless paperwork shuffle. He hums, and Gai trails off. The rest is fairly obvious. He thinks about his father's bones, buried seven years in a grave not at all unlike this one.
"Do you want help?" He asks. Gai looks at him sharply, and he shrugs. "I have two hori-hori. We can dig together. I'll be careful."
"I know," comes the reply after a long moment. "Thank you."
Silently, they dig. Kakashi's arms tire quickly, still not back up to strength from his hospital stay. Gai continues to sniffle, his eyes leaking constantly. They set the hori-hori to the side once they reach the head of the casket, kneeling on it six feet beneath the ground, and they remove the remaining dirt with their hands. They stare at the treated, damp wood of the casket, and then Kakashi turns his lone eye to Gai. "Do you want to open it, and put him inside?" Gai turns his wide-eyed gaze to him, like he hadn't quite thought this far ahead, and he frantically shakes his head. Kakashi waits. After a moment, Gai nods.
Kakashi stands, and presses close to the wall of earth, cold and damp, to get his feet off the lid of the casket. Gai stands next to him, trembling. "I can help," Kakashi tells him, and ignores his warbled thanks. The lid pops open with some difficult wedging, and the urn containing the ashes of his father is placed carefully on the chest of the desiccated skeleton of the woman inside the coffin. She has been too long dead to smell like anything but old leather. Kakashi turns his gaze from her to look at Gai, staring white-faced at the body of his mother, and without asking he reaches up and carefully closes the lid once more. "Come on," he says. "We should give them some privacy."
They scramble out of the grave, slipping in the mud, and fill it with dirt again. Kakashi thinks this would have been much easier if he'd had an actual shovel, and then he has the thought that he could have used an earth jutsu to do all of this, but... maybe it means something to Gai to do it with his hands. Kakashi isn't supposed to be using his chakra yet anyway. Once the earth is packed back into the grave, the pair of them are kneeling, filthy, panting, and Gai is still weeping softly. Kakashi catches his hand again, when it comes up to wipe the tears from his face. "Don't get the grave dirt in your mouth," he cautions quietly, and then falls quiet. Gai gives him an odd look. He stands, pulling Gai to his feet. They both tremble coltishly from the cold. "Let's go get cleaned up."
He turns, and pauses when Gai's grip on his wrist stops him. "Kakashi," he tugs on his hand until their eyes meet. "Why did you..."
Kakashi thinks about Hatake Sakumo, doomed to eternity beneath the dirt. He thinks about how often he's considered digging him up, taking his body out to the woods, and leaving them for whatever scavengers might eat the wasted skin and bone of his body. He thinks about how he's never done it, because he was afraid. He thinks: Gai was going to do this alone.
"I wanted to," he says. His voice is not soft, because that is not something he is capable of, not at thirteen, angry, cold. "And I could. Come on. You can shower at my place."
And the sun was high when I rolled into town / Stood by a nameless hole in the ground / The air was sweet and hot / Maybe it was the right grave / Maybe not
