Gracie Abrams is eking out a solitary existence, fighting day-in, day-out against the drain of working customer service and nursing two newborn kittens in her off time. Out on her own ever since her sister moved in with her boyfriend, the burden of...
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"You're in the Anbu black ops now, right?"
Kakashi's brows flattened. "I am."
It was clear from his unmoved expression that Kakashi didn't believe that was anything to brag about knowing. I supposed he was right. He was a pretty famous black ops member, so anyone in his world ought to know about him.
"Your—your father died when you were young. When he...killed himself after his comrades turned on him for not completing a mission in order to protect his teammates."
That caused a reaction.
Kakashi's entire being froze, and I cursed the lack of nicer details about Kakashi's young life.
It's not like I could tell him I knew he was a prodigy and one of the youngest shinobi in history to become a jonin. It's not like I could say his sensei was Minato. Kakashi of the Sharingan, or Kakashi the Copy Ninja, was known by all for his prodigious history.
There were really only three pieces of information that might get him to take me seriously.
Should I have chosen Obito's death or Rin's sacrifice, instead? Was the knowledge of his father enough, or did he still need to be convinced?
"Um...and I know you don't sleep very well. Nightmares of Rin...impaling herself on your lightning blade...keep plaguing you, don't they?"
My voice had mellowed, turning lower and lower under the weight of that frozen, silent gaze.
I dared a glance upward, meeting that hollow look for an instant. What I saw nearly made me fall off my stool.
In the anime, the darkness of Kakashi's past was usually portrayed through shadows and glimpses of melancholy, all wrapped up in the stoic figure of our hero.
In flesh and blood, the stuttering pulse visibly moving through the studded vein in his neck took my attention first. But then I looked into the face of a character I loved dearly, and I never hated myself more than in that moment.
I'd purposefully brought up the worst moments of Kakashi's existence and dared spit them in his face.
Whitened shock belied the venom roiling in his eyes. I'd never feared Kakashi, ever, in all the time of watching Naruto.
Is he going to kill me?
My momentum tipped on the stool, nearly sending me crashing to the ground, when one of Kakashi's gloved hands struck out, holding onto my collar. Slowly, my body righted itself, my eyes turning dizzy from where they peered at the hand gripping my collar.
"How...do you..." Kakashi's face loomed close, and those shadows that seemed to cloak the man found their way to me, somehow gripping me within their invisible, icy tendrils. "How do you know all that?"
