Dirty Little Secret

CHAPTER 8



The order from the Hokage came exactly two weeks and one day since he had informed Kakashi that he was taken off active duty. The jounin had just woken up, the sun barely peeking out from under the horizon, when someone knocked on his door. Losing the Sharingan and limping with one leg didn’t mean that he had lost his other abilities and he quickly – or, as quickly as he could – moved and opened the door.



Gai stood before him, looking familiar and yet so different than the last time he had seen him – still dressed in that outrageous green jumpsuit and bright orange leg-warmers, impeccable hair in its usual perfectly-shaped bowl cut. He wasn’t smiling though, face pale and drawn, large dark circles under his eyes. Frankly, Kakashi thought, he looked like death warmed over.



“Gai.” He said.



The other man bowed lightly.



“The Hokage-sama sent me to give you a message.” His said, voice hoarse and empty, lacking its usual energy and vibrancy.



“Come in.”



They went to Kakashi’s tiny kitchen – now in much better shape than it had been when he first came home months ago – and Kakashi offered him one of the two chairs in the room. They were crooked, rickety things, proof that a person could be a legendary nin but that didn’t mean he was very good with a hammer and nails – at least when he was using them for the thing they were designed to do, instead of on somebody’s head.



Gai sat down gingerly, apparently expecting the thing to fall apart under him, which it didn’t – just because they were ugly that didn’t mean they weren’t strong enough to hold his weight – and watched Kakashi as he fussed around his stove to make tea. When it was done the host offered his guest a cup and joined him at the table.



Heavy silence reigned in the room for a few minutes, each man trying to find the words of comfort for the other. Kakashi had tried looking for his friend a few times, but Gai hadn’t wanted to see anyone, talk to anyone, devastated by his loss. He had thrown himself into his work in an attempt to forget and was absent from Konoha more often than not. In the end, Kakashi had given up and decided that Gai would see him when he was ready. He wasn’t sure whether it was the case now – after all, the eccentric man was here per Naruto’s orders, not out of his own free will.



Finally, Gai appeared to come out of his stupor and reached to move Kakashi’s silver locks away from right eye to take a good look at it.



“They’re mismatched again.” He stated, sounding almost amused. Kakashi tentatively smiled back.



“I know.”



Indeed, he had noticed that the first time he had seen his reflection in the broken, dirty mirror of his bathroom – one dark gray eye, almost black, and one pale blue one. The new scarring around it was minimal, if a little darker than the rest of it.

“I heard about Lee.” He said gently and Gai looked down in his cup, as if he was looking for answers of all the questions in the universe in the greenish depths of the tea. After a while, he spoke.



“We were supposed to reach your destination from the south end of the village, remember? When the Hokage finally took out Danzo. Remember?”



Kakashi nodded.



Gai’s callused finger ran over the rim of the cup, tracing the cracks and imperfections of the glaze.



“We fell into an ambush. The place was supposed to be safe – we controlled that part of the city. We still don’t know how Danzo’s men got in.” his voice sounded as dead as the rest of him looked. “It all happened so fast – Lee was at the back and saw them first – ironic as they were right in Neji’s single blind spot. They must have been aiming for me because he just jumped on my back. The jutsu put a whole in him the size of a fist.” He took another sip. “He didn’t even say a word afterwards – one moment he was here and the next he was… gone. I have never been able to get used to when that happens, you know. Even after all these years on the field.”



Kakashi nodded. Consciously one accepted the thought that people were fragile beings, even if they were trained nin and when they died it was quick and ugly and brutal and didn’t resemble the long deathbed speeches gorgeous actors gave in overdramatic movies at all. And when they were unfortunate enough not to die quickly they were too busy choking on their own fluids or screaming in pain to be able to say goodbye. However, even if the mind was used to that reality, the heart was not, especially Gai’s. That had been one of the reasons why Kakashi kept Team 7 at an arm’s length – he couldn’t be like his friend, couldn’t allow himself to grow close to people who he knew could be dead tomorrow. It hurt less this way. He had suffered enough with Minato-sensei and Obito and Rin. He had promised himself not to go through it again. He broke his promise, of course, eventually.



“Neji and Tenten?” he finally asked softly.



Gai shrugged.



“They’re trying to deal with it, each in their own way. Tenten appears to be better at it than Neji. Losing Hinata and Lee in the space of a few weeks was a little too much, even for him. That and suddenly being moved to the main family - suddenly being the Hyuuga’s sole heir that puts too much pressure on him.”



“People do say that one should be careful what they wish for – they might just get it.” Kakashi commented and sighed. Hanabi had been dead for years and now that the other heir was gone, Neji had become a free man, more than that, the next in line for the Clan Head position. The jounin doubted that the young man had imagined it would happen this way though.



“I know.”



Gai sighed and rubbed his eyes, than ran both his hands over his face, as if attempting to wash his worries away with the gesture.



“Naruto-sama orders you to the Hokage tower this afternoon. He didn’t say why.”



Suddenly, he was in a hurry to leave and Kakashi followed him to the front door. There Gai stopped and turned to look at him again.



“Kakashi… whatever people talk about, don’t pay attention to them. The good shinobi is not just made by his body.” He reached and touched Kakashi’s chest and then his temple.



“That and that are more important, okay?”



And without any further words, he was out, leaving Kakashi to stare after his retreating back in surprise.



“Thank you.” He said to the empty stairwell afterwards.



Despite Gai’s words, Kakashi felt deeply apprehensive as he walked through the streets to the new tower – now appearing to be a storey taller than the last time he had seen it. Behind it sprawled the Hokage mountain, the torn visages of the previous rulers looking down on the village. During the war they had been badly damaged and sometimes the jounin wondered if it was even possible to fix them. Either way, he doubted that Konoha had the money for such a project at the moment.



This time, he waited for an audience considerably less time than the last and when he was ushered in by a tired-looking assistant he saw that other than Naruto sitting behind his desk, the room was empty of secretaries – and of their workstations too. The blond was regarding him thoughtfully, but he appeared much calmer than he had the last time, more pensieve than anything.



Kakashi bowed.



“Hokage-sama.”



Naruto waived at him and pointed to a lone chair in the middle of the room, then pressed the button of his intercom.



“Satou-san, please bring us to cups of tea, would you?”



When the same assistant – a middle-aged man with graying hair and deep-set eyes – brought the tea and then left, Naruto said:



“I did say that I wouldn’t leave you jobless, Kakashi.”



The jounin bowed again, then said.



“Yes… Hokage-sama, I was hoping…”



“Yes?”



“That you would consider a teaching position for me.”



“Teaching? You mean a Genin team?” Naruto looked incredulous.



“No! No, of course not, Hokage-sama. The Academy.”



There was a lengthly, tense pause.



“You want to be Iruka’s colleague?”



“I do have plenty of experience, Hokage-sama.” Kakashi pointed out. “I could pass it to the new generation – isn’t that what the Academy is all about?”



Naruto drank from his tea for a while, pinching the bridge of his nose, looking like he was thinking how to formulate his answer. It made Kakashi nervous and apprehensive – apparently his idea wasn’t as well accepted as he had hoped it would be.



Finally, Naruto spoke.



“Kakashi… You do realize that the Academy is full of noisy, annoying, immature brats, right? As much as the war affected them, they’d still be brats.”



“I can deal with it.”



“Can you? I mean, can you deal with it in a way different than throwing a kunai or setting your ninken on them? Can you connect to them and make them trust you enough so as to listen to you?”



Kakashi’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.



“With all due respect to you as my Sensei, but you weren’t capable of doing that with only three much older children. What is left for a whole class of seven and eight-year olds? Teachers, especially those who deal with small children are born, not made, Kakashi. They either had the mojo or they don’t.”



Kakashi was looking in his cup, too hurt to even try to cover it and straighten his shoulders.



“I am sorry that I had to say this, Kakashi.” Naruto’s tone became softer, gentler and Kakashi shook his head.



“No, Hokage-sama. You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking.”



Suddenly, Naruto got up and went to him, crouched and put a hand on Kakashi’s.



“I do need your knowledge and experience though.”



The older man looked at him dubiously.



“You know more about inter-village politics than anyone else. You know who to watch out for and who can be trusted. I want you to become my personal assistant and advisor.”



“You want me to be your secretary?”



“Eh… that too. Though I wouldn’t put it like that.”



“I see.”



He was quiet for a moment, thinking about it, then hesitantly nodded.



“If that is what you believe is best for Konoha, than it would be my honor, Hokage-sama.”