#gatesopen

"come home and shout at me. come home and fight with me. come home and break my heart, if you must. just come home."

Kakashi finishes adjusting the ties on his armor, spine and shoulders stiff, trying to gain control of the small amount of exposed expression before he turns around. Still, his lone eye is flinty when he turns to look at Gai, and he allows the silence after the plea to stretch on, and on, past the point of uncomfortable and into painful territory. Is he supposed to be tempted by the idea of fighting with him? He hates fighting with Gai. He hates this conversation.

They both know it's a selfish ask, anyway. Are they allowed to be selfish?

"What's 'home', Gai? You?" He asks, voice tight with... with irritation, with pain. Kakashi hates that he can't quite muster the derision he'd like with the question- with a little more scorn it would have been reprimand for the presumption, but without it the question sounds genuine. Is his home here in Gai's room? Is it dragging himself off Gai's couch to work out and spar early in the mornings, and then getting a filling breakfast shoved at him until he relents? Is it the casual touches on his shoulders, his elbows, the small of his back, his flank, is it the fingers carding through his hair? Kakashi is a little afraid that the answer might be yes.

Gai has opened his mouth to reply, but Kakashi doesn't want to hear it. He doesn't want to argue with him, or watch the flash of hurt in his eyes when Kakashi snaps at him again- so he steps into his space, chest to chest, and then gracefully folds his legs beneath him until he's kneeling, his hands resting on the backs of Gai's thighs, his cheek pressed to his stomach as he stares up at him. The other man's mouth freezes in a shocked little "o", even as his big, hot hands settle one on the meat where his neck runs into his shoulder, and one on his jaw. Gentle pressure. His body armor presses into the fronts of his thighs, like Kakashi might try to crawl inside of him.

He strikes before Gai can untie his tongue.

"We will never be able to promise that to each other, Gai, you know that," Kakashi's voice is low, soft. "Our lives don't belong to us, and they never will. Stop asking this of me."

i don't know what to do.

          Tenzo doesn’t know what to do either. 

     Hatake has to know the two of them are there, even if he acts like his sole focus is the names on the massive black stone monument before him-- he never lets go of that hyper-awareness that clings to him even in sleep, even in the village. He hasn’t turned around, though, and he hasn’t twitched or turned his head slightly to the left the way he does when he wants to invite someone closer, so Tenzo’s been standing here for a few minutes in the rain like a fucking idiot while the older man before him mourns his many dead. 

     Gai had joined him pretty soon after he’d gotten here, greeting him by dipping his chin and staring with serious, sad eyes at the slight slouch their mutual friend is sporting, the defeated line of his shoulders slumping further as the rain soaks into his shirt. Tenzo thinks they may just stand there all night and watch Kakashi cut himself open on his own grief and regret, handling the bloody shards of his heart with careless hands, but Gai speaks. I don’t know what to do, he says. An admission that Tenzo wouldn’t be capable of committing to aloud, perhaps even a request for help? He sounds sad, and frustrated, and for a moment Tenzo lets himself wonder.

     What had Kakashi told his precious eternal rival about Ro? Probably very little, though they’d been seen in public enough together that their little team-as-family deal was a bit of an open secret. Hell, before Shisui had bitten it last year (murdered, murdered by Itachi, and his mind still can’t fully wrap around that because... just because. It was Shisui. It was Itachi. It wasn’t supposed to happen), it wasn’t an uncommon sight to catch the four of them out of uniform wandering around in parks, little-prince Sasuke perched high on one of their shoulders and chattering happily to his four pet murderers. It wasn’t a secret they were all close. It wasn't a secret that they hung around Genma, around Hayate, around Yuago and around Gai himself.

     What they’d been trying to do to Danzo was a secret, though, and Tenzo watches Gai out of the corner of his eye and wonders: what do you know? What did Kakashi tell you? Did he tell you anything? Did he trust you? Was he trying to keep you safe? Gai, from what Tenzo has seen in the past, doesn’t have a subtle or deceptive bone in his body, and the grief and determination burning in his eyes seems real enough. The shock, too. Nobody had seen what Itachi had done coming. Tenzo thinks maybe he should have, or Kakashi should have, his teammate and the Captain who trained him-- but no one had. 

          It’s just a lot. The boy had been thirteen. 

     The whole clan, gone. The whole clan, minus Sasuke. And Tenzo knows from the despondent and lost look he’d seen in the Captain’s eyes as he’d stripped out of his uniform in the locker room earlier this morning: Kakashi blames himself for missing something. His guilt crushes him. He knows, looking at Gai now, that Gai can see it too. 

     He’s never really understood Kakashi’s all-consuming grief for his dead, never understood how every screw up is a failure to their memory. He’s never understood his crushing guilt, and he’s never understood how he let it pound him back into place any time he really tried to step out of line. After Shisui died, he thought-- well, he thought maybe he’d gotten it a little bit, but it wasn’t enough. And Gai has been there... the whole time, not just the last decade since he started his career in ANBU, but the whole goddamn time, and he thinks if Gai doesn’t know what to do then maybe there is nothing to be done. 

     Bearing witness to a man tearing himself up out of guilt and grief isn’t exactly how he’d expected to finally find himself on common ground with Kakashi’s boisterous and honest friend, but he supposes beggars can’t be choosers. He straightens, trying for an encouraging smile that falls vastly short of being either, and nudges Gai with his elbow carefully in a gesture he’s picked up from Kakashi himself. “Well,” he starts philosophically, and loud enough that he can see Kakashi’s head tilt as he’s forced to acknowledge their presence. “We can get some food and somewhere dry. Seems like a good start.”

     Interrupting a man when he’s mourning doesn’t seem right, not with how seriously Kakashi has always taken it, but Tenzo isn’t going to stand here while the three of them catch their deaths in the rain out of some obligation to the many ever-present dead. There’s something weird going on, and he’s no leader or genius and he’s no shoulder to cry on, but he can still try. Maybe Gai can show him the ropes.

turns out after three months of tense, enforced silence -- the young genin had much and more to say. his father, blessedly, willing to listen to the boy's ramblings; like a feral cat jumping off the walls, from coherence into abstract thoughts. about how it feels to be a jinchuriki, about the power it gave him, COMPARABLE TO THE INNER GATES, but without the draw backs -- safe from the one time he completely lost control. . . and woke up in a puddle of gore and bone that used to be a person. yeah, gai needn't know the details about that.

the two tailed beast rests her great head on a trenchant paw, she too is befallen of lee's rants NOW THAT THE FEAR IS GONE. his thoughts, unfiltered, rained down on the nekomata with reckless abandon. and she takes it with the grace of a mother.

and lee was about to move onto a new subject AGAIN, when the jônin finally gets a word in edgewise. -- the jinchūriki pauses briefly, he'd love to go back for gai, of course, pick up where his father had lost him at last -- if lee himself was able to follow his scattered string of thoughts. his previous position, standing in front of the couch, allowed for a visual reenactment of his thoughts; but having given it some more thought, lee sat down next to his father, and snuggled closer to his side. ( HOW HE MISSED THAT ) the familiar scent, the feeling of gai's chakra.

@gatesopen

Is this a genjutsu? The man looks exactly like him! Or … a henge? Wait a minute… brother?

Horror strikes Gai’s chest like a hammer, hollowing out a space for dread to fester and swell. Dad couldn’t have… couldn’t have hid a secret like that, could he? But he’d hidden his mastery of the gates, too.

@gatesopen​          said         : "my boy! we must go shopping," gai begins, pausing when lee gives him a curious look, the gentle 'for what, sensei?' that follows warming his heart. their setup is relatively new, and he simply wants lee to be as comfortable as possible. "for the decorations for your bedroom, of course! it was previously a guest room, and there isn't much that makes the room look like home. we have to fix that!"

lee  is         ever    slowly         getting  used  to  the  sounds  of  another  nearby  .        gai’s  footsteps  in  the  hallway  or  the  shower  running  in  the  morning  ,  just  small  ordinary  things  .        but  the  leaf’s  young  treassured  them  ,  for  they  were  proof  of  him  no  longer  being  alone  .                                 he   was    loved    now    /         HE    WAS    WANTED    NOW    .                   and  now  gai  opened  lee’s  door  ,  something  which    startled    the  boy  ,  though  lee  smiled  at  his  papa  nonetheless  .             his  words  confused  lee  .        he’s  been  so  happy  here  .        the  room  was  twice  as  big  as  his  old  one  ,  it  had  a  large  window  to  let  sunlight  in  ,  a  writing  desk  and  a  bed  .                      an    actual    bed    !!                     it  was  so  comfortable  and  warm  ,  worlds  better  than  his  old  ,  thin  floor  mat  .          lee  felt  bad  questioning  his  papa  .       but  he  could  not  stop  the  question  .   .   .

❛                   for    what    ,    sensei    ??                    ❜                                                     the  answer  only        confused        lee  more  .       he  wanted  to  protest  ,  why  give  lee  more  decoration  ,  toys  and  who  knew  what  else  gai  thought  of  .                    why    waste    money    on    him    ??                           every  time  gai  -  sensei  was  so  kind  to  him  ,  a  warm  feeling  spread  in  his  body  .    starting  from  his  stomach  ,  travelling  up  his  chest  ,  eventually  making  him  blush  .    it  was  something  he  recognized  as         FEELING    LOVED         .      it  was  nice  ,  lee  never  felt  that  way  before  ,  as  much  as  he  strived  for  any  adult’s  approval  .             the  young  boy  wanted  gai  -  sensei  to  feel  loved  too  ,  lee  couldn’t  buy  him  things  ,  not  with  the  little  money  he  had  .      but  he  could  help  in  the  household  !!

          There is blood in his eye. 

     Fast enough to keep a kunai from burying itself deep in his skull but not fast enough to escape it entirely-- it had cut a long slice on his forehead just above his eyebrow, sluggishly bleeding even now until red coats the entire right side of his face, tacky and metallic on his lips. Blinking only temporarily clears his vision, and he can’t tell if the haze settling over his mind is a side effect of the haze over his vision or if all of that is just exhaustion. 

     He’d watched Ebisu take a blade deep into the meat of his arm, earlier. Lost sight of him after that, and the best he can do about that is hope he made it to a medic instead of fighting until there wasn’t any blood left in him. The battle is otherwise extremely confusing, seeming to come in fits and starts and Genma takes advantage of it-- flickering in and out of the shadows, cutting throats and lifting senbon from corpses to reuse, fast and quiet enough to escape most notice. It feels like it tears on forever, an unknowable amount of time, the moon hanging red above them like a malicious eye, unbroken by anything and all he knows is the fighting until. 

     There’s a flicker of blue-green chakra in the distance, and as he sinks a kunai between the cervical vertebrae of an enemy and flickers away again he spares a thought for his other teammate-- Don’t die, Gai. 

     It’s the first coherent thought he’s had in who-knows-how long. There’s concern there, real fear that opening the seventh gate will end up shattering his friend’s bones and. And he’s distracted, someone almost got the drop on him. He hits the dirt and buries a foot in their gut, popping back up and slitting their throat with a groan of effort. The blue-green feeling at the edge of his senses is a balm as much as an irritant, fear mixing with relief because as long as he can feel it he knows Gai is alive and. 

          As soon as he thinks that, it flickers out abruptly.

     His breath catches in his throat, but he keeps fighting. Tells himself he doesn’t know what happened, it could mean anything. Raidou lands hard next to him and Genma lets himself lean against his shoulder for a moment, fatigue hitting him all at once as he tries to catch his breath past the tightness in his chest. His eyes are on the horizon, the direction he’d last felt Gai in-- not that he would have missed the wild blaze of red setting the sky on fire if he hadn’t. 

     And he knows what it means even as something heavy and numb curls in his gut. His breath catches in his throat and for a moment he freezes completely, fingers digging into his teammate’s arm as he tries to find his feet again. Genma lifts a hand to wipe the blood out of his eye, like that might change the color of the explosion of chakra on the horizon, or the heavy, bloody feeling that fills the air even this far away. He’s seen this before and he knows what it means: Gai is dead for sure as soon as the storm falls quiet. 

     He doesn’t... he doesn’t know what to do. Gai has been a constant in his life for almost thirty years. What is he supposed to do? Running to the source is impossible-- abandoning his comrades and dying on the way isn’t in his cards, and even if Gai wouldn’t haunt his ass forever for doing either, he’d never make it in time. Gai is going to die miles away, and there’s nothing for him to do. 

     “Oh,” he breathes, inaudible except to Raidou, who gives him a worried look even as the battle around them seems to pause and hold its breath. “Oh, you... big-hearted idiot.” Genma closes his eyes and lets out a breath as sounds like great thunderclaps ring in the distance. The tremor in his voice is almost, almost nonexistent. 

          Maito Gai has found his opportunity to lay down his life for something, someplace, someone that he loves. 

     He straightens and tries to silence the shivering scream that wants to tear out of him, bloodied hand pressed to his breastbone. Gai is dying to try and save the world. He doesn’t have the time to be selfish about it-- might not even live long enough to. 

          To mourn him. 

    Genma uses his pain to still the exhausted shaking in his hands and gives the horizon one last, long look. If Gai is going to die for this, they’re going to win. There’s nothing else to do but fight on, whether he feels like a puppet with its strings cut or now. He grits his teeth, adjusts his grip on his kunai, and steels himself again because Gai would never forgive Genma or himself if he bit it out here because he was too focused on what was going on over there. 

@gatesopen

          It’s hard for him to get used to, too.

     He’ll never say it aloud because weapons shouldn’t complain, but he’d liked Tenzo. It’d been a name he picked for himself. A name that friends and loved ones he’d lost had called him, and moving on to another one feels like. It feels like... It doesn’t matter what it feels like. 

     Tenz-- Yamato is trying not to get philosophical about it. The purpose of having no identity is so that he can slip into something new at any time, and his complacency was his own problem. It’s Yamato now, and Yamato is a fine, nondescript name that will serve him well. It might even be a little reassuring that someone else is struggling with the change. 

     He leans further over the balcony and watches strangers ebb and flow below. Foot traffic is kind of heavy on the street tonight, and he wonders if there’s some sort of festival or celebration he’s forgotten about. He barely even knows what day it is-- Kakashi’s kids are going to kill him, whether it be via blood pressure spike or heinous accident. Gai’s presence is downright trance-inducing in comparison.