Naruto: structural differences
For lesstraveled.
There's this old legend that says that kissing someone is sort of like litmus paper for a relationship. If kissing someone leaves a pleasant taste in your mouth, it's a sign of a kindred soul, destined to be with you forever. If kissing someone leaves an unpleasant taste in your mouth, it's fated that you two will never get along. If kissing someone leaves no taste in your mouth, the possibilities are endless and most likely than not fruitless.
It's a stupid, childish story, of course, and no one believes it past puberty, when everyone chases around everyone else on the Academy campus trying to win a kiss, but it's like the story of the four-leaved crimson clover. There's a little truth in it, all covered up with crazy aspirations and lofty dreams, and in hidden shinobi villages where the backbone of daily life is magic, stories like that never fade.
*
Kakashi's studied blood types before, when he was younger and just newly a Jounin. When you're a Jounin, you have an option of carving your blood type onto the back of your forehead protector if you want, but most of the Jounins know their blood types since day one and don't need the extra reminder. There are stories all the time about how the last things some Jounins ever end up saying is their blood type as they're waiting for the medical squad to give them a transfusion. Stories about how some more heroic types transfuse the blood themselves to comrades to keep them from dying, stories about botched transfusions when someone mishears AB as B. The most famous conspiracy is the one about how Jounin teams are arranged by blood type, and how there's always an O around just in case, both because of the blood type--universal donor-- and because of their perceived personalities. Mother of the group, they'd say, and it was a running joke the first year Kakashi was a Jounin, because he was the youngest out of all of them, even though back then, they were all young.
Chakra is a bodily process. It's produced by the body, albeit the body and the spirit combined, but just like lymph nodes, digestion, circulation, the electric signals in the brain that make everything function, chakra's a part of the body, so it's no surprise that blood types figure in as well. O blood type, Kakashi once read, is possibly the oldest blood type. On the other hand, old bloodlines, like the Uchiha clan and the Hyuugas, have an unusually large number of ABs. Unlike with A or B, all chakra types work with O and, to some extent, AB. But extensive use of particular chakras with certain blood types-- for instance fire chakra in an A blood type or earth chakra in a B blood type-- risk severe depletion of stamina and possible misfire of ninjutsu techniques on the user.
A lot of it's superstition, Kakashi knows. Jiraiya's a B, and he can use earth chakra much better than a lot of the ABs or Os Kakashi has met before. And bloodlines likely to have the same blood type; blood is genetic, after all, and so many of the old bloodlines work off incest. But all the same, Kakashi had had a slight chill when he found out that Sasuke was an AB. He's known three Uchihas in his life. Kakashi will never know Itachi's blood type, but the other one, Kakashi knew he was an AB as well.
He'll never forget. The blood, all the blood, is what Kakashi remembers the most about that one.
*
O is for "warrior", loyal, passionate, and jealous; AB, a mix of the farmer in A and the hunter in B, a mix of A's calmness and B's unpredictability, is for "humanist". Kakashi's fond of these descriptions. He's always had a weakness for cynicism.
*
Time is relative. The time in Wave Country with his Genin team, when everything still looked as if there might be the first happy ending Kakashi's ever had in his life, had seemed endless when Kakashi was staring up at the trees and watching Naruto and Sasuke rise up and down like colored kites on a flimsy string. But later sitting with Asuma and Kurenai during the Chuunin exam, watching Asuma's cigarette smoke drift away, it had seemed to Kakashi as if he hadn't spent any time with his team at all. Those seconds of Orochimaru taking heavy step after heavy step towards him, an unconscious and exhausted Sasuke sprawled out on the floor behind Kakashi, had seemed like forever when it had happened, yet it was ultimately shorter than the time he spent with Kabuto in Sasuke's hospital room, which seems, now, shorter than the time it takes Kakashi to blink.
It's because of the lack of leisure time during his childhood, or something, or it's just that Kakashi has absolutely no sense of the time-space continuum that most people live in. Or that he's lived too long and too short a time to understand who he really is and to hope for the best but still expect the worse; that, in itself, is almost naive enough to be a sin.
In any case, sometimes it seems like all the days have been strung together after all, and Sasuke's only been gone for maybe a day. That kind of immediate betrayal is still fresh and hard to swallow, some kind of personal defeat. Other times it's like Sasuke's never been, and Kakashi doesn't know what he is grieving for, certainly nothing like Sasuke, solid with dark eyes and a violent voice.
Mostly, though, it just feels as if there's some weight on Kakashi's shoulders that isn't really there, something that twists his shoulders when he's asleep at night. He misreads the calendar a lot, forgets what month it is. Kakashi spends protracted minutes thinking about Sasuke's hair growing long during that training on top of the mountain before the fight with Gaara, dark around his face like Itachi's had been that day Kakashi had fought him. For Kakashi, Sasuke has been gone for such a long time and such a short time that all of him is like something dead and rotting on Kakashi's back. It's a stench, really, this kind of sick imagination; Kakashi has nightmares about Sasuke as a corpse, his flesh retracting from his fingernails as if they were actually growing, and Orochimaru's hair long and black, all wrapped around Sasuke like it was his own, like it was some suspended night sea.
It's a story as old as legends: neither a father nor a lover, Kakashi mourns for Sasuke, Sasuke as a little boy newly Genin and prematurely angry, and Kakashi had looked at him and decided then and there that he knew Sasuke, even though he realizes now that he didn't, not entirely.
*
Quarter moon.
Kabuto.
*
The interesting thing about kage bushins as opposed to regular bushins is that a bushin is a simple image of the person as a shell. The chakra forms itself into the image of the person and assumes the role as such, hence a copy of the person. The kage bushin, on the other hand, while being a chakra copy of the person, is not just the shell. The chakra, in the instant that it forms the person, twists itself into fake veins and arteries, fake organs, a living breathing fake skin covering, fake cartilage for the nose and the brittle material of the toenails. The chakra forms all of that and relays messages to the opponent that it's a real person so that it's indistinguishable until you try to destroy it. That's the tricky thing about chakra, the reason why shinobis are known to be stealthy and invisible. The chakra is the backbone of their attacks, and chakra, even by itself, is something afraid of being known.
But still, one has to keep in mind: chakra is chakra, and life is life, and there is nothing more profound than the differences between 'that which may be' and 'that which is'. When it's all said and done, blood is still thicker, and chakra is weightless.
*
"He killed a man today," Kabuto says as a greeting, jumping down from a tree and landing with a crouch at Kakashi's feet. His smile is easy as he looks up, almost worthlessly so, baring just the slightest hint of his teeth so that the weak light could catch it like the silver of his hair. Kakashi can smell the leaves on him, all ozone and chlorophyll, and wonders how long Kabuto's been sitting in the tree, soaking in all that fake brightness and green plant life.
Kakashi doesn't have to ask who the 'he' is; there's only one basic assumption both Kabuto and Kakashi understand, and that assumption is Sasuke. Instead Kakashi pulls out a kunai and draws it in a line close to Kabuto's cheek, but in the end they think alike after all, so Kabuto already has his kunai against Kakashi's. Kabuto's sitting like a cat, crouched on the ground and knees up, the metal of both their weapons close to his cheek like a cold kiss, and he's smiling so broadly that Kakashi peevishly hopes his cheek muscles freeze up and cramp. "Nasty today, aren't we?" Kabuto asks, pushing Kakashi's kunai gently out in front of him, but doesn't make an effort to hide the way he gets up. Feet quick, no palms facing the ground, hands and arms close to him, and his eyes never leaving Kakashi's face, Kakashi knows that Kabuto doesn't want to trust him anymore than Kakashi trusts Kabuto.
"Headache," Kakashi offers, half facetious and half serious. There's a pulse pounding in his temple, but that's on par for a confrontation between him and Kabuto. The only mistake he ever makes is not taking aspirin before a meeting. He forgets it every time. "It's sort of been a bad week."
"Yes," Kabuto says. Kakashi blinks. 'Yes' really doesn't make sense in this conversation, but like Sasuke, it's the only bit of agreement they ever have, and he might as well accept it. "You should take better care of yourself, Kakashi-sensei. You work too hard."
Kakashi feels the pulse in his temple turn into sirens going off in his head, and he edges his back foot into a better position as if any moment Kabuto was going to attack him. Kabuto's eyes are darker than Kakashi's ever remembered, his skin lighter, and there's something just wrong about his posture, that cocky, assured, self-defacement. "Thank you for those sentiments. I'll take them to heart."
"You'll need them."
"Is something going to happen?"
"Have you ever seen Sasuke-kun kill?" Kabuto asks. The way he asks Kakashi knows that he's expecting the answer to be no, so Kakashi thinks really hard about all the times he's ever seen Sasuke fight. That time in Wind Country, those fights during the Chuunin exams, he thinks of it all again, but the only thing he can really think of is a memory he doesn't want to share with Kabuto: Sasuke on the roof with Naruto, his hand full of the blue of the chidori, and Kakashi's heart pounding so fast in his chest it had sounded just like a thousand birds to his own ears. But that time, he hadn't really killed anyone; he had just been prepared to kill. Still, though, Kakashi doesn't forget. The Sasuke he had decided he knew isn't the same Sasuke Kabuto knows.
"Have you?" Kabuto asks again.
"No."
"The way he attacks." Kabuto hesitates, pushes his glasses further up his nose. The way the moon's shining, the glasses don't flash, but Kakashi finds it hard to look at Kabuto's eyes all the same. "Like he's putting everything he has in his life into it. Like every single person is his brother."
"Did he get hurt?" Kakashi asks, because it's the only thing he can.
"Does he want to come home, you mean?" Kabuto answers. Kakashi stays silent. He's given up asking that question now, because he knows the answer, so he mouths it along with Kabuto when Kabuto says, "Not yet. Not quite yet."
Every single time he hears it, it hurts less, and Kakashi knows why. It's because each time, Kakashi expects it more and more, and Kabuto never, ever, disappoints.
*
The reason for the legend of the kissing taste is simple. Ritualistically, the "kiss" between a man and a woman was really a way to determine the compatibility of chakra with each other, but the truth was that it ended up determining the blood compatibility instead, because what really makes one person's chakra different from another had nothing to do with the chakra itself but the way the chakra reacted with other bodily components, such as the blood. The taste in the mouth, then, was the residue of the blood-type-loaded chakras reacting with each other through the saliva, rejecting or accepting each other.
Kabuto had once said to Kakashi, "Someone once told me you were like me," and Kakashi had shaken his head almost mournfully, looked Kabuto in the eye, and said, "Don't flatter me. You're more intelligent than I am." Kabuto doesn't taste anything when he leans in to kiss Kakashi before he leaves, and he takes this to mean that for once, Orochimaru is wrong, and that he and Kakashi really aren't alike after all. But when it's all said and done, blood is thicker than chakra, and chakra is weightless; when it's all said and done, Kakashi doesn't trust Kabuto anymore than Kabuto trusts him; and when it's all said and done, Kabuto and Kakashi think alike, though in strangely different ways.
*
Remember: kage bushins are pure chakra.
*
Kabuto had pressed something into the palm of Kakashi's kage bushin as he kissed him, and once Kakashi, completely sure that Kabuto's gone, terminates that ninjutsu, he picks it up from the floor. It's Kabuto's hair tie, a string that's the same gray as Kabuto's hair, thick and longer than Kakashi had thought it would be. Kakashi wraps it around his wrist, undoes it, wraps it around his finger, and looks at it for a long time. When he's back home and standing in front of his bathroom mirror, he tries to tie his hair back in a ponytail like Kabuto, but the string keeps slipping and unraveling when he ties it down. It's hard when it's not an elastic, Kakashi realizes. He bites one end of it so he has two free hands, and it's easier this time around, but it still doesn't stay for long. Kakashi doesn't have any practice. His fingers are clumsy when he ties knots, trying not to get any of his hair into it.
In the quasi-darkness of his poorly lit bathroom, the faucet dripping and the paint peeling around the shower, Kakashi realizes that the color of his hair is a lot like the color of Kabuto's.
Kakashi rips the string out of his hair immediately when he starts wondering if this is how Kabuto starts his day every morning as well, Kabuto's teeth strong and white as they're clamped around one end of the string. And because it's late and Kakashi's mind thinks in circles, Kakashi wonders if Sasuke's hair is long enough to tie back yet, if he's cut it himself with his kunai, if Kabuto has taught him how to tie his hair back so that it doesn't get in his eyes, if Sasuke even cares. Kakashi goes to sleep wondering when he started caring. He's spent so long not caring, spent so many of his days coming in late and last and lethargic, and then something changed, and now it hurts to care so much.
In the morning, Kakashi learns that Orochimaru's already started to attack.
I just realized that in no way did anything I want to show up in this fic actually show up. For instance, the thing that started this fic was that Kakashi was an O, a universal donor, and Kabuto and Sasuke were both ABs, universal receipients. And another thing that didn't show up well in this fic: what actually happened between Kabuto and Kakashi? Kakashi forms a kage bushin to meet up with Kabuto instead of himself because he doesn't trust Kabuto. And Kabuto knows that, but because Kabuto's never studied blood like Kakashi has, he doesn't know why kissing a kage bushin is different from kissing a real person. It's sort of a bad premise. I'm not sure what I was thinking. And I'm making Obito an Uchiha for this fic, just because. It worked, damnit. I still liked the way this fic turned out, despite being totally bogus and completely WRONG in every single way, but it holds a dearness to me for "Quarter moon. Kabuto." *is a dork, she knows*
ten points to ravenclaw if you can tell me the poet and the title of the elegiac poem referred to in this story.
There's this old legend that says that kissing someone is sort of like litmus paper for a relationship. If kissing someone leaves a pleasant taste in your mouth, it's a sign of a kindred soul, destined to be with you forever. If kissing someone leaves an unpleasant taste in your mouth, it's fated that you two will never get along. If kissing someone leaves no taste in your mouth, the possibilities are endless and most likely than not fruitless.
It's a stupid, childish story, of course, and no one believes it past puberty, when everyone chases around everyone else on the Academy campus trying to win a kiss, but it's like the story of the four-leaved crimson clover. There's a little truth in it, all covered up with crazy aspirations and lofty dreams, and in hidden shinobi villages where the backbone of daily life is magic, stories like that never fade.
*
Kakashi's studied blood types before, when he was younger and just newly a Jounin. When you're a Jounin, you have an option of carving your blood type onto the back of your forehead protector if you want, but most of the Jounins know their blood types since day one and don't need the extra reminder. There are stories all the time about how the last things some Jounins ever end up saying is their blood type as they're waiting for the medical squad to give them a transfusion. Stories about how some more heroic types transfuse the blood themselves to comrades to keep them from dying, stories about botched transfusions when someone mishears AB as B. The most famous conspiracy is the one about how Jounin teams are arranged by blood type, and how there's always an O around just in case, both because of the blood type--universal donor-- and because of their perceived personalities. Mother of the group, they'd say, and it was a running joke the first year Kakashi was a Jounin, because he was the youngest out of all of them, even though back then, they were all young.
Chakra is a bodily process. It's produced by the body, albeit the body and the spirit combined, but just like lymph nodes, digestion, circulation, the electric signals in the brain that make everything function, chakra's a part of the body, so it's no surprise that blood types figure in as well. O blood type, Kakashi once read, is possibly the oldest blood type. On the other hand, old bloodlines, like the Uchiha clan and the Hyuugas, have an unusually large number of ABs. Unlike with A or B, all chakra types work with O and, to some extent, AB. But extensive use of particular chakras with certain blood types-- for instance fire chakra in an A blood type or earth chakra in a B blood type-- risk severe depletion of stamina and possible misfire of ninjutsu techniques on the user.
A lot of it's superstition, Kakashi knows. Jiraiya's a B, and he can use earth chakra much better than a lot of the ABs or Os Kakashi has met before. And bloodlines likely to have the same blood type; blood is genetic, after all, and so many of the old bloodlines work off incest. But all the same, Kakashi had had a slight chill when he found out that Sasuke was an AB. He's known three Uchihas in his life. Kakashi will never know Itachi's blood type, but the other one, Kakashi knew he was an AB as well.
He'll never forget. The blood, all the blood, is what Kakashi remembers the most about that one.
*
O is for "warrior", loyal, passionate, and jealous; AB, a mix of the farmer in A and the hunter in B, a mix of A's calmness and B's unpredictability, is for "humanist". Kakashi's fond of these descriptions. He's always had a weakness for cynicism.
*
Time is relative. The time in Wave Country with his Genin team, when everything still looked as if there might be the first happy ending Kakashi's ever had in his life, had seemed endless when Kakashi was staring up at the trees and watching Naruto and Sasuke rise up and down like colored kites on a flimsy string. But later sitting with Asuma and Kurenai during the Chuunin exam, watching Asuma's cigarette smoke drift away, it had seemed to Kakashi as if he hadn't spent any time with his team at all. Those seconds of Orochimaru taking heavy step after heavy step towards him, an unconscious and exhausted Sasuke sprawled out on the floor behind Kakashi, had seemed like forever when it had happened, yet it was ultimately shorter than the time he spent with Kabuto in Sasuke's hospital room, which seems, now, shorter than the time it takes Kakashi to blink.
It's because of the lack of leisure time during his childhood, or something, or it's just that Kakashi has absolutely no sense of the time-space continuum that most people live in. Or that he's lived too long and too short a time to understand who he really is and to hope for the best but still expect the worse; that, in itself, is almost naive enough to be a sin.
In any case, sometimes it seems like all the days have been strung together after all, and Sasuke's only been gone for maybe a day. That kind of immediate betrayal is still fresh and hard to swallow, some kind of personal defeat. Other times it's like Sasuke's never been, and Kakashi doesn't know what he is grieving for, certainly nothing like Sasuke, solid with dark eyes and a violent voice.
Mostly, though, it just feels as if there's some weight on Kakashi's shoulders that isn't really there, something that twists his shoulders when he's asleep at night. He misreads the calendar a lot, forgets what month it is. Kakashi spends protracted minutes thinking about Sasuke's hair growing long during that training on top of the mountain before the fight with Gaara, dark around his face like Itachi's had been that day Kakashi had fought him. For Kakashi, Sasuke has been gone for such a long time and such a short time that all of him is like something dead and rotting on Kakashi's back. It's a stench, really, this kind of sick imagination; Kakashi has nightmares about Sasuke as a corpse, his flesh retracting from his fingernails as if they were actually growing, and Orochimaru's hair long and black, all wrapped around Sasuke like it was his own, like it was some suspended night sea.
It's a story as old as legends: neither a father nor a lover, Kakashi mourns for Sasuke, Sasuke as a little boy newly Genin and prematurely angry, and Kakashi had looked at him and decided then and there that he knew Sasuke, even though he realizes now that he didn't, not entirely.
*
Quarter moon.
Kabuto.
*
The interesting thing about kage bushins as opposed to regular bushins is that a bushin is a simple image of the person as a shell. The chakra forms itself into the image of the person and assumes the role as such, hence a copy of the person. The kage bushin, on the other hand, while being a chakra copy of the person, is not just the shell. The chakra, in the instant that it forms the person, twists itself into fake veins and arteries, fake organs, a living breathing fake skin covering, fake cartilage for the nose and the brittle material of the toenails. The chakra forms all of that and relays messages to the opponent that it's a real person so that it's indistinguishable until you try to destroy it. That's the tricky thing about chakra, the reason why shinobis are known to be stealthy and invisible. The chakra is the backbone of their attacks, and chakra, even by itself, is something afraid of being known.
But still, one has to keep in mind: chakra is chakra, and life is life, and there is nothing more profound than the differences between 'that which may be' and 'that which is'. When it's all said and done, blood is still thicker, and chakra is weightless.
*
"He killed a man today," Kabuto says as a greeting, jumping down from a tree and landing with a crouch at Kakashi's feet. His smile is easy as he looks up, almost worthlessly so, baring just the slightest hint of his teeth so that the weak light could catch it like the silver of his hair. Kakashi can smell the leaves on him, all ozone and chlorophyll, and wonders how long Kabuto's been sitting in the tree, soaking in all that fake brightness and green plant life.
Kakashi doesn't have to ask who the 'he' is; there's only one basic assumption both Kabuto and Kakashi understand, and that assumption is Sasuke. Instead Kakashi pulls out a kunai and draws it in a line close to Kabuto's cheek, but in the end they think alike after all, so Kabuto already has his kunai against Kakashi's. Kabuto's sitting like a cat, crouched on the ground and knees up, the metal of both their weapons close to his cheek like a cold kiss, and he's smiling so broadly that Kakashi peevishly hopes his cheek muscles freeze up and cramp. "Nasty today, aren't we?" Kabuto asks, pushing Kakashi's kunai gently out in front of him, but doesn't make an effort to hide the way he gets up. Feet quick, no palms facing the ground, hands and arms close to him, and his eyes never leaving Kakashi's face, Kakashi knows that Kabuto doesn't want to trust him anymore than Kakashi trusts Kabuto.
"Headache," Kakashi offers, half facetious and half serious. There's a pulse pounding in his temple, but that's on par for a confrontation between him and Kabuto. The only mistake he ever makes is not taking aspirin before a meeting. He forgets it every time. "It's sort of been a bad week."
"Yes," Kabuto says. Kakashi blinks. 'Yes' really doesn't make sense in this conversation, but like Sasuke, it's the only bit of agreement they ever have, and he might as well accept it. "You should take better care of yourself, Kakashi-sensei. You work too hard."
Kakashi feels the pulse in his temple turn into sirens going off in his head, and he edges his back foot into a better position as if any moment Kabuto was going to attack him. Kabuto's eyes are darker than Kakashi's ever remembered, his skin lighter, and there's something just wrong about his posture, that cocky, assured, self-defacement. "Thank you for those sentiments. I'll take them to heart."
"You'll need them."
"Is something going to happen?"
"Have you ever seen Sasuke-kun kill?" Kabuto asks. The way he asks Kakashi knows that he's expecting the answer to be no, so Kakashi thinks really hard about all the times he's ever seen Sasuke fight. That time in Wind Country, those fights during the Chuunin exams, he thinks of it all again, but the only thing he can really think of is a memory he doesn't want to share with Kabuto: Sasuke on the roof with Naruto, his hand full of the blue of the chidori, and Kakashi's heart pounding so fast in his chest it had sounded just like a thousand birds to his own ears. But that time, he hadn't really killed anyone; he had just been prepared to kill. Still, though, Kakashi doesn't forget. The Sasuke he had decided he knew isn't the same Sasuke Kabuto knows.
"Have you?" Kabuto asks again.
"No."
"The way he attacks." Kabuto hesitates, pushes his glasses further up his nose. The way the moon's shining, the glasses don't flash, but Kakashi finds it hard to look at Kabuto's eyes all the same. "Like he's putting everything he has in his life into it. Like every single person is his brother."
"Did he get hurt?" Kakashi asks, because it's the only thing he can.
"Does he want to come home, you mean?" Kabuto answers. Kakashi stays silent. He's given up asking that question now, because he knows the answer, so he mouths it along with Kabuto when Kabuto says, "Not yet. Not quite yet."
Every single time he hears it, it hurts less, and Kakashi knows why. It's because each time, Kakashi expects it more and more, and Kabuto never, ever, disappoints.
*
The reason for the legend of the kissing taste is simple. Ritualistically, the "kiss" between a man and a woman was really a way to determine the compatibility of chakra with each other, but the truth was that it ended up determining the blood compatibility instead, because what really makes one person's chakra different from another had nothing to do with the chakra itself but the way the chakra reacted with other bodily components, such as the blood. The taste in the mouth, then, was the residue of the blood-type-loaded chakras reacting with each other through the saliva, rejecting or accepting each other.
Kabuto had once said to Kakashi, "Someone once told me you were like me," and Kakashi had shaken his head almost mournfully, looked Kabuto in the eye, and said, "Don't flatter me. You're more intelligent than I am." Kabuto doesn't taste anything when he leans in to kiss Kakashi before he leaves, and he takes this to mean that for once, Orochimaru is wrong, and that he and Kakashi really aren't alike after all. But when it's all said and done, blood is thicker than chakra, and chakra is weightless; when it's all said and done, Kakashi doesn't trust Kabuto anymore than Kabuto trusts him; and when it's all said and done, Kabuto and Kakashi think alike, though in strangely different ways.
*
Remember: kage bushins are pure chakra.
*
Kabuto had pressed something into the palm of Kakashi's kage bushin as he kissed him, and once Kakashi, completely sure that Kabuto's gone, terminates that ninjutsu, he picks it up from the floor. It's Kabuto's hair tie, a string that's the same gray as Kabuto's hair, thick and longer than Kakashi had thought it would be. Kakashi wraps it around his wrist, undoes it, wraps it around his finger, and looks at it for a long time. When he's back home and standing in front of his bathroom mirror, he tries to tie his hair back in a ponytail like Kabuto, but the string keeps slipping and unraveling when he ties it down. It's hard when it's not an elastic, Kakashi realizes. He bites one end of it so he has two free hands, and it's easier this time around, but it still doesn't stay for long. Kakashi doesn't have any practice. His fingers are clumsy when he ties knots, trying not to get any of his hair into it.
In the quasi-darkness of his poorly lit bathroom, the faucet dripping and the paint peeling around the shower, Kakashi realizes that the color of his hair is a lot like the color of Kabuto's.
Kakashi rips the string out of his hair immediately when he starts wondering if this is how Kabuto starts his day every morning as well, Kabuto's teeth strong and white as they're clamped around one end of the string. And because it's late and Kakashi's mind thinks in circles, Kakashi wonders if Sasuke's hair is long enough to tie back yet, if he's cut it himself with his kunai, if Kabuto has taught him how to tie his hair back so that it doesn't get in his eyes, if Sasuke even cares. Kakashi goes to sleep wondering when he started caring. He's spent so long not caring, spent so many of his days coming in late and last and lethargic, and then something changed, and now it hurts to care so much.
In the morning, Kakashi learns that Orochimaru's already started to attack.
I just realized that in no way did anything I want to show up in this fic actually show up. For instance, the thing that started this fic was that Kakashi was an O, a universal donor, and Kabuto and Sasuke were both ABs, universal receipients. And another thing that didn't show up well in this fic: what actually happened between Kabuto and Kakashi? Kakashi forms a kage bushin to meet up with Kabuto instead of himself because he doesn't trust Kabuto. And Kabuto knows that, but because Kabuto's never studied blood like Kakashi has, he doesn't know why kissing a kage bushin is different from kissing a real person. It's sort of a bad premise. I'm not sure what I was thinking. And I'm making Obito an Uchiha for this fic, just because. It worked, damnit. I still liked the way this fic turned out, despite being totally bogus and completely WRONG in every single way, but it holds a dearness to me for "Quarter moon. Kabuto." *is a dork, she knows*
ten points to ravenclaw if you can tell me the poet and the title of the elegiac poem referred to in this story.