#cosmicconundrum

April 28, 2021:

Latte Secondary, Snapper, Peregrine.

@cosmicconundrum now u got me, cause even though ive watched the start of kakashi’s anbu arc several times, ive never actually finished it cause i always drop it when it starts focusing on itachi sjsjsjs... i was saving it for when i reached there w/ my gf

What i can say abt it is that ANBU really was... A Time for Kakashi

Afterall, when Kakahi joins up he joins freshly out of murdering rin, he’s traumatized and he’s called fucking Friend Killer Kakashi, which is... not good... he’s violent and kills without having to and has terrible episodes thanks to his trauma and he closes off to his friends a lot.   Minato dies and we see kakashi so full of that “darkness” that he really almost goes along with murdering the fucking hokage. But kakashi is loyal , and thinks for himself so he doesnt.

Still, after that it seems kakashi is a bit at loss, navigating the world by himself. He’s tense and stuff a lot but he seems to mellow out compared to his beggining days in anbu. We see that when he spares tenzou’s life (claiming it to be an asset for the village) but we truly see him just.. calming down and basically lose that aggressive violence stored up from his earlier years at anbu when he meets with tenzou while chasing after orochimaru (how he decided to lie to protect tenzou).  kakashi is anbu at the beggining because they didnt know what to do with him, and kakashi stays anbu because he thinks thats all hes good at, destroying things. But kakashi goes out of his way to protect ppl he calls comrades and thats how tenzou comes to respect him so much (and so does his other teammates in anbu).

 Kakashi doesnt really baby his team, they are anbu after all, but he makes it clear that he’d sooner die then let anything happen to any of them, and with time i guess that trait of him became clearer and clearer, and thats why Kakashi is Kakashi of the Sharingan instead of Friend Killer Kakashi.

In the end, kakashi just wants his team to trust each other and rely on eachother. He wants them to be their best and he will do what he can for them to get there. He’s their guide but he doesn’t think of himself worth of any praise or as someone to be looked up to, just someone who’s giving the tools he has so they can shine On their own. Like ive said before, seems like kakashi thinks of himself as someone whos bound to die and be forgotten eventually, and thats how he goes through life. again, havent seen much abt him and itachi but like i said, he doesnt really seem to baby itachi despite his age, we see him gt dissapointed at his team for distrusting the boy, and see him bet his opinion out as to why they do what they do as anbu in the hopes itachi understand, but he carries on with the mission like “this is what we must do, and you can count on me to get it done”

He thinks himself a tool to help others and he thinks being anbu is just a curse he must carry on, so getting pulled off anbu really must felt like someone pulling the carpet out under his feet. Losing that routine and that certainty that this was his Life until the end must have put him in a really strange position.

But like, i say kakashi “mellows out” but kakashi was still traumatized and not coping with it.... i feel like just.. the anger died down and he was just left out fedling tense and depressed, he was shut out from his friends outside of work and i believe he’d barely even show up eithout the anbu mask, to the point his friends felt the need to intervene. So like, he still wasnt ok, though i feel like his connection with tenzou put some focus in his life for a while

Wow this is probaly confusing coming from my brain nonstop at 4am so i’ll try to make a few quick points or something like that of some random thoughts

- kakashi went through some character changes in anbu, from the aggressive, hurting kid at the beggining, to a mellowed out, friendlier man we know today (though of course his skills were still very much honed, and we also know lots of times he coukd never get off the tense, high alert, assassin mindset, which was very bad since it wasnt allowing him to heal completely)

-  kakashi  cares for his subordinates but somehow doesnt expect them to care for him, and shows to be uncomfortable by being looked up on

- he’s really accepting of their fates of tools of konoha and doesnt question it that much, but offers his assistance to keep his team alive no matter what

- tenzou was def important to kakashi. I feel like thats one of the first times he gets invested in someone for a long time, and tenzou is someone he managed to help in the end, like, a thing he did good instead of ruining, and i love how they developed their friendship and im pretty sure tenzou just being there helped slow kakashi’s descent into a further depression

Thanks so much for the compliments. Obviously it’s been a very long time, but it is still my hope to complete this fic someday. I’m really glad there are still people who love and appreciate this story. <333