#i just like the fact that her earliest memory of him is watching him wheezing and gurgling and being like 'this dude rocks'
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5 Scars, 1 Decision to Heal
This is a gift for Dami over at the KakaGai Hell Discord! I hope you enjoy! >.<
Rating: General
Pairing: Hatake Kakashi & Maito Gai (can be read platonic or as the prelude to romance)
Warnings: None, Read More is just for length
Word Count: 2k
5 Times Gai made Kakashi consider Scars, and 1 Time Kakashi Understood
1.
The first time Kakashi heard hushed respect in his father’s voice, they were in the presence of Sarutobi Hiruzen. That made sense, Kakashi thought: he was a man famed as the Sandaime, the Professor, the strongest shinobi in Konoha, and the student of both the First and Second Hokages. If there was anyone that the legendary White Fang would respect, it would be Sarutobi Hiruzen.
The second time Kakashi heard hushed respect in his father’s voice, it was quite different. He was about to start at the Academy and a bruised and scarred kid in a green bodysuit was thanking Kakashi for an insult.
“At this rate, this kid could become even stronger than you.” Sakumo said quietly, his palm a heavy weight on Kakashi’s head.
Kakashi didn’t understand. The kid was weak. Not only had he been rejected from the Academy even though he looked a little older than Kakashi, but he was covered in dirt and abrasions. That meant he was weak enough to get hurt, and stupid enough not to hide it.
Kakashi asked for the kid’s name anyway. If his father respected these people, then Kakashi could do that much.
It didn’t make sense, but Kakashi trusted his father.
He trusted his father when he suggested Kakashi make Gai his rival. He trusted his father when he said that Sarutobi Hiruzen was a great man. He trusted his father when he said that Kakashi shouldn’t worry about him—that Sakumo was fine, even if it looked like he hadn’t left his bed since Kakashi left for his mission five days earlier. Even if the dishes were molding and Kakashi heard whispers about the White Fang, about his fall from grace—
Kakashi trusted his father.
He did, until there was no more father to trust.
Maito Dai and Maito Gai were the only people who attended Hatake Sakumo’s funeral.
They cried more than Kakashi did.
Two weeks later, Kakashi moved out of Hatake Estate and into a chūnin barrack. It was a cramped, one-room affair, but that meant it was easier to clean.
Most importantly, it didn’t have blood-stained tatami.
It didn’t have any scars.
2.
The first time Kakashi got a scar that couldn’t be hidden by clothes, he got a sharingan and ninety-eight pounds of guilt to go with it.
They were all signs of his weakness. Signs of his failures.
But that didn’t mean he was willing to get rid of them.
The Uchiha petitioned for the removal of Kakashi’s sharingan. There was no proof it had been given willingly, Fugaku said. (Disregarding the fact that not only was Rin a witness, but that the Yamanakas could have proven it from both of their memories if necessary.) It was sacrilege for a kekkei genkai to be wielded by someone outside of the clan. (The entire notion of shinobi having honor was questionable, in Kakashi’s humble opinion.) Keeping a kekkei genkai without a matching bloodline would kill the host by chakra drain—
—that part actually had some validity. Kakashi nearly died of chakra drains three times in that first year, before he finally figured out exactly how far he could push himself, how to recognize the warning signs when the sharingan began to consume more than Kakashi had to give. Effectively losing an eye meant an imbalance in depth perception and narrowed field of vision, both of which were easily deadly for a shinobi. Reading gave him a skull-splitting headache for the first two months, and his handwriting suddenly went from precise to nearly illegible and always slanted at an angle no matter how he turned his head.
Rin looked at him differently, too. Even with one eye, Kakashi could tell. Her smiles were brittle. They shattered the moment she looked away.
She often looked away.
The scar was a sign of his weakness. The sharingan, a mark of his greatest mistake.
It was a mark he deserved to bear.
3.
Gai wouldn’t leave Kakashi alone.
Part of that was probably Kakashi’s fault; Maito Dai didn’t leave a body behind, but Gai held a private funeral for him anyway. Kakashi was the only one to attend.
Over the next few years, Gai kept accumulating scars—some of them drawn by Kakashi’s own hand. They never tried to seriously injure each other—if weapons were involved, they fought until one part was disarmed or forced to concede. If taijutsu was the arena, then a successful pin for five seconds constituted a win. Kakashi never used fatal ninjutsu techniques.
But accidents happened. Sometimes Gai didn’t dodge as quickly as Kakashi thought he would. Not hurting Gai in those instances became part of Kakashi’s practice, although not one he ever told his “Eternal Rival”. Gai’s ego wasn’t as untarnishable as he claimed it to be.
Gai’s scars steadily grew in number, overtaking his body with rough lines and calloused flesh. Kakashi’s own scars were fewer in number, but they, too, accumulated as the years passed.
Their scars were different. Gai’s were a show of his dedication, the effort he put into perfecting something that no one thought possible of him.
Kakashi’s laced his skin with memories that couldn’t be shut out.
4.
When they were seventeen, Gai got rejected. He had brought her dozens of bouquets, composed entire sonnets, exclaimed about her to Kakashi every rare chance he got. Apparently, she said he was too much for her. Kakashi could see her point, but Gai really didn’t deserve the daffodils thrown back in his face.
Gai only mourned for one day before he got up again, the same as at the end of any fight, and poured his sweat and tears into taijutsu. He used that motivation to master the fifth gate.
Two months later, he was interested in another girl. He courted her with exactly the same amount of gusto as he had the first time around. This girl accepted. When she broke up with him politely two months later, Gai was still certain that true love existed, and absolutely willing to have his heart broken a million times over in order to find it.
Kakashi pretended to read while listening to his rants. He pretended to read while Gai sobbed in passion or mourning. He pretended to read while watching how the accumulating scars on tanned skin never reached Gai’s humongous, tender heart.
Kakashi pretended that he didn’t think Gai was just as cool as he was ridiculous.
5.
The first time Kakashi saw Gai truly affected by a scar, it wasn’t his own.
Rock Lee was probably the first person in the world (other than Hatakes) who truly respected Gai. Unfortunately, while Lee and Gai’s ostentatious personalities, bullheaded stubbornness, large hearts, and bushy eyebrows all gave them obvious similarities, there were important points in which the two differed.
Those points led to Lee’s self-destruction.
While Lee had grown up in peacetime, with romantic dreams of shinobi and what it meant to be one, Gai had been faced with the stark reality of it from the earliest time he could remember.
Gai understood consequences, and he understood how to judge an acceptable loss—at least, most of the time. Gai had known death firsthand before even leaving the Academy, and had seen his own father make the ultimate sacrifice of the eighth gate. He understood risks, and he had the ability to weigh them, whether most people realized that or not.
Yet, Gai gave such tremendous power as the gates to a child who was full of more idealism than reason, more impulse than temperance. He gave that power to a boy who certainly would one day become a fine shinobi, but who had never seen death or destruction or the scars shinobi so often didn’t survive. Gai gave that power to a child who had never had anything more precious on the line than his own pride—and Lee suffered a powerful price for it.
Kakashi couldn’t be beside Gai for those early days after Lee’s injury, because Gai wasn’t the only one who had make a mistake. Instead, Kakashi spent weeks sleeping for mere minutes at a time on a sheer rock face, training himself and his own childish student—one who had seen far more than many full-grown shinobi ever did—in the vain hope that they would both survive whatever Orochimaru would bring them next.
He thought that Sasuke’s past would teach him how to use his power well. Naively, Kakashi thought he had chosen better than Gai, that Sasuke wouldn’t suffer the same consequences.
He was wrong.
Kakashi and Gai had both failed their students—but Gai’s was an error of judgement, one in which he had placed his own history and capabilities onto a kid that wasn’t quite ready.
It took less than two months for Kakashi to realize his own error had been far worse. His own error had been one of the heart: specifically, of neglecting Sasuke’s.
By then, it was too late.
The most painful scars, Kakashi knew by that point, were the ones he could only see, and do nothing to heal.
+1
Four years later, scars mottled the Earth itself. Konoha carried more than her share of them. Even months after Pein’s attack, rubble stood in half the districts and gouges were still being filled in with dirt and cement. Tenzō had long since erected temporary and permanent structures for the village’s basic needs, but post-war, there were too many necessities and not enough resources to allocate to them. One of the only projects completed during the first few months of the Rokudaime’s tenure was an additional ward to the hospital, designated for rehabilitating physically debilitated shinobi.
No one had come out of the Fourth Shinobi War without a scar. Some of them were simply more noticeable than others.
“Doesn’t the Hokage—” Gai wheezed as he struggled to pull himself into an upright position in the hospital bed. Kakashi remained by the window, listening to the sound of hammers banging in the distance. He knew better than to offer help for something Gai could do himself—no matter how much time, and pain, it could cost him. “Have better things to waste his time on than—visiting an old rival?”
“I’m hiding,” Kakashi shrugged. He glanced over his shoulder to see Gai’s expression. “Maa, no need to look so disapproving. It’s only until I make a decision.” He held a palm up in pacification. “I promise I’m not shirking my duties.”
“Ah.” Gai nodded wisely, but his voice was breathy, hoarse despite the water bottle he had already half-drained. “I have—every faith you’ll make the best choice!”
With entirely burnt chakra pathways, Kakashi could only imagine the pain and fatigue Gai was going through—at least a dozen-fold what Kakashi himself had ever experienced with the sharingan. It was a miracle he was talking at all.
Well—not a miracle. Gai’s strength wasn’t the gift of any God.
It was something he had formed himself.
“You still have faith, Gai?” Kakashi murmured. “Even after all this?”
Gai’s bushy brows descended towards the center, the corners of his lips tugging down as well to form a frown. He was always sharper than people knew.
Tanned and scarred fingers clenched around his bottle of water. Plastic crinkled beneath the grip that had lost decades of strength in a single, life-changing moment.
With Gai, Kakashi knew: it was strength that could be gained again.
“In you, Kakashi, I always have faith.”
Kakashi turned back to face the window. His fingernails dug into the meat of his palm, hidden within his pocket. The other hand rose. He brushed fingerprints against the scar that bisected where the sharingan had once sat—a constant reminder still of Kakashi’s biggest failures.
But that scar no longer stole Kakashi’s sight.
That scar no longer stole Kakashi’s chakra.
That scar no longer blinded Kakashi to the changes he could make in the world, and in those around him.
It had taken over twenty-five years for Kakashi to understand why Gai could be who he was—why he could accumulate scars that were only surface-deep, why he could take even worse ones in stride and use them to drive himself forward:
Gai didn’t define himself by his scars.
Perhaps it was time that Kakashi learned how to do that, too.
(I, uh, also made this edit. xD I dunno why.)
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salt the earth. (DreamSMP)
Summary: Ghostbur doesn't sleep. When everyone does, though, he tries to piece together fragments of his previous life at L'manburg.
And he remembers.
(Alternatively: Ghostbur remembers the past, but pretends he doesn't.)
*Crossposted on A03 under Riken. 1k words apx.
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He practices putting on a lovely smile whenever he sees the others. It’s a perfect smile trained in front of the lake— not too overbearing, not too sparkly. It’s a bit demure, rather. But that’s what Wilbur wants: to be a comfortable presence.
When the lights flicker off in every resident home, and the only light left is the slice of the moon above and the gently bobbing lamps, Wilbur wobbles along the wooden path of a fractured country. There’s a certain beauty that only pulls from nostalgia, but he can’t place a finger on what he’s nostalgic about. The citizens of L’manburg have tried to repair its damage as best as they could (Damage from what? He always thinks to himself. Nobody ever answers.) by slapping glass over jagged holes and pouring water to drown the ghosts of the past away.
Today, he feels a certain urge to go to a house. Usually, Wilbur doesn’t have an itinerary— he follows the wind. Yet tonight, it’s different.
At the edge of Fundy’s house, he pauses. There’s a flash of luminescent green silhouetted against a nearby tree. Dream steps out, his mask unnaturally sharp in the rim light.
“Wilbur,” Dream’s voice issues. It’s clean. Really sharp. Almost authoritative, but it’s clear Dream isn’t attempting to be outright aggressive. “I’ve noticed you’ve been...wandering these nights.”
“Yes,” Wilbur says, and his voice echoes, though it’s quiet in the wind that’s begun to pick up. He flexes his fingers, which he can see the floor through. He’s never paid much attention, but his skin glows gently, emanating a silvery light. He wonders how nobody’s noticed him wander around at nighttime, save for Dream.
Dream waits two heartbeats. “I won’t stop you.” He tugs on his hood, concealing his face entirely, and grabs onto a tree branch. In three pulls, he sails onto a rooftop and melts into the darkness.
Fundy’s house is clean.
Clean and devoid of anything sentimental, save for a badly scrawled drawing of fish plastered hastily on the cabinets.
Wilbur presses his fingers against the cabinet. For a dizzying moment, his fingers phase through. Even in this state, Wilbur knows he can interact with objects. He tries again, and this time his fingers rub against the raw grain of the wood.
The library is an archive of books that make a haphazard story with far too many holes and much too little content. Wilbur’s gone through every page, every word, trying to rebuild himself, what Wilbur alive was like. Nobody answers his questions, save for Dream who responds with even vaguer sentences. Who were you close to when you were alive? Well, Wilbur, have you ever seen the way flowers lean towards a sun?
I don’t remember anything at all, was the constant answer. Which was a small lie, one he feels guilty about, but for some reason there’s a small dark part of the man that relishes in the fact Dream doesn’t know everything about him.
Because he remembers the smell of bread, despite never eating as a ghost.
A strange sense of happiness upon seeing Fundy (but Fundy treats him like he’s nothing).
Flashes of braces and an overwhelming urge to playfully smack Tommy (but the more he thinks about it, the darker his mind clogs up and the heavier the headaches thud against his skull).
Niki (and there’s absolutely nothing that clings to his subconscious akin to guilt when reminiscing upon a theoretical past with her. She smiles gently at him, though it’s a bit sad).
Dueling with Techno (Techno always won, but Wilbur remembers winning once using mind games. The ring of training sword against sword is perhaps the most clear thing he’s ever heard).
A book lays in his hands, the cupboard ajar. Wilbur doesn’t even know how he’s acquired Fundy’s diary, but it’s in his hands, meticulously wrapped. He wonders why Fundy ridicules others for holding sentimental things when the fox himself has a diary.
He opens the page, and takes a sharp breath.
-
It takes only two nights. Wilbur never sleeps, after all. He knows the sleep patterns of everyone by the first 24 hour mark. The earliest to wake is Eret, save for Sam who has his moments of all nighters. Dream sleeps for one hour (though Wilbur often wonders if Dream actually needs sleep).
By the end of his second night scouring diaries, a crack of lightning splits Wilbur’s skull in a slap of pain. In his abode, he slumps to the floor, screaming, but nothing comes out except for strained wheezes.
When Eret wakes up, he sees Wilbur bobbing around the lanterns, polishing them aimlessly. He thinks nothing of it and walks away.
Wilbur doesn’t speak for the entire day.
The third night, he remembers it all.
Dream finds Wilbur huddled among a flourishing patch of grass, his eyes staring vacantly across the lake. The lanterns scatter warm light across his cold cheeks. Wilbur doesn’t move.
“Wil—”
“I’d forgotten what it’s like to taste salt and feel air whistle through my lungs,” Wilbur rasps. Dream’s shoulders twitch a bit, and then he kneels down to meet Wilbur at eye level. Wilbur doesn’t avert his eyes or look up at Dream.
Dream takes off his mask. His eyes glow.
“So you’ve remembered.”
“I have,” Wilbur agrees, listlessly brushing his fingers against a stray flower. “I understand.” There’s no anger in his voice, no hopelessness, just a flat slate.
Dream whispers something in his ear. He doesn’t react, but once Dream leaves, he crumples his shoulders and presses his head against the soil. He takes in gulping breaths like a starving man.
Wilbur remembers all, but he knows now there’s a reason why everyone tried to feign innocence. So he makes a promise to himself to pretend to be Ghostbur, a ghost who loves all and disregards nothing. He makes a vow to keep the dark memories behind to make everyone happy.
He vows to stand on the same land he salted before and not just watch L’manburg rebuild, but to help, salted earth be damned.
But for now, Wilbur really craves a drink.
#DreamSMP#MCYT#L'manburg#Wilbur Soot#Technoblade#Ghostbur#Dream#Eret#Nihachu#Fundy#Awesamdude#Wilbur#this idea has been living rent free in my head for a day now and I have more oh god
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Betrayal in Olympus by one they trusted most AU? :o
ok ur gonna hate me but theres so many instances in astoria where it ALMOST happens th way i described exactly
there is. quite a bit of terrible betrayal from a trusted person in this series LMAO. i think the closest instance to what i said has to be hades’ season 3 where he breaks their engagement off to protect mc and she literally says she’ll never forgive him, except hades doesn’t die or almost die, she does,,
but YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YES!
i like the way u think my friend
ok ok ok ok ok
au where the gods realize that mc’s mother had hera’s potential after she dies. so they take mc to olympus to raise, knowing she’s the vessel of hera now. there’s no fight from her father, and only josh seems to care, but he can’t do anything in the face of 11 ancient gods.
they let her visit with him, from time to time, on olympus, but aside from that, her only real friend is alex.
alex has always been a constant in her life. from her earliest memories, they were there. she trusts them above anyone else, and that feeling only grows the more time she spends around them.
she’s had a crush on them for so long, but she falls for them when she’s around 20. she keeps a tight lid on that, and has a hard time looking aphrodite in the eyes once she realizes it.
come 25, alex is still her best friend, and they’re pretty much the only person she cares to hang around. over the past ten years they’ve made countless promises to each other, helped each other grow and learn and grieve and find happiness again
she’s undeniably in love with alex.
and she’s surprised when she finds out that they love her, too. in that same special sort of way, where their lips meet and their souls touch and dance and become something more than either of them
now the thing is this
mc know why she’s there on olympus- zeus told her as much when she first moved up there.
but there’s a part of her that never really believed the gods could be so cruel as to kill her, to replace her with someone else. not after they already took her mother.
and, more than that..... alex has promised her, time and time again, that they would keep her safe. that they would protect her, from anyone, anything.
maybe, at first, she didn’t really believe that, either. but they promised it so often, with such conviction, backing it up with their actions time and time again, that she couldn’t help believing in them fully
so she’s 25
and she’s in love with alex
and she trusts them more than anyone and anything
and the gods tell her that it’s time for them to awaken hera
and, she thinks, it’ll be okay- alex will protect her
but they don’t
they step back, ashamed, head bowed as they pull their hand from hers
they watch her with eyes that are filled with sorrow and guilt and heartbreak, but she can hardly care when they’ve just broken her own
they say they’re sorry, and she can only shout that she’ll never forgive them for breaking their promises
she refuses to see them, won’t speak to even aphrodite, and requests to change residences. hades lets her stay with him until the ritual day comes, and though it draws near, she can’t even bring herself to be afraid- all she can think about is alex and how they hurt her
the gods, she’s never had any close connection to, really. so for them to come through on what hey said, to awaken hera and leave her for dead... it doesn’t surprise her, really.
but alex. alex betrayed her. abandoned her.
it hurts the most of everything.
when time runs out for her, she’s escorted to the throne room, where all eleven top-tier gods have gathered for the ritual to awaken hera
mc meets the gaze of each god in there, willing them to be faced with the fact that they’re about to kill her, to remember how she looked at them when all is said and done.
her gaze lingers on aphrodite a little longer, and her heart aches, but she moves on, passing over alex, and onto the next god
zeus gives some long-winded speech, which she drowns out in favor of watching the agents and minor gods milling about in the background.
when the ritual is just about to begin, she notices from the corner of her eyes that alex has disappeared. her heart sinks further, for all of a moment before a silver stag and doe burst into the throne room, and the room falls into chaos
several gods jump up and summon their auras, too- but not to stop alex’s. they stand with them- with her.
she’s so surprised, and looking around wildly for alex, that she doesnt see zeus approach until he’s already grabbed her arm
she shouts and tries to pull away, but she was never going to be a match for the god’s strength. she never even trained with her aura, the gods only let her keep the ring because she would become Hera, and they wanted the proof that there was connection enough between the two of them that Hera could be awakened at all
stag and doe ram into him though, emboldened by the hearts of aphrodite’s aura, pushing him back and making him stagger, enough so that his grip on mc loosened and she can get herself free
alex swoops in in front of her, a shield to the sword that’s been hanging over her head for the past decade
the fight is terrible. gods rip into one another, feuds thought long forgotten rising back to the surface as some fight for their goddess, and others fight for the right for humans to live their own lives, or even just to honor the one they’d considered a friend.
it’s brutal
and through it all, alex stays right by her side
there’s no time to exchange words, not while they fend off the king of gods himself
something has to bend
something has to break
unfortunately, it’s alex who does, when zeus’ lightning spears right through their stag and doe both, shattering the auras, and hitting them right in the chest
they fly back into mc, and she’s barely able to stop them both from crashing to the ground
she holds onto them as they sink down, all their energy, their strength drained
she’s openly crying, and doesn’t much register how the sounds of fighting have quieted around her, or how zeus hasn’t immediately taken her away, or the golden light that shines on them both. (her aura, she’ll realize later.)
there’s only her, and alex, and that sweet smile she missed so much that’s always soothed her, heart and soul
they reach a hand up and brush a thumb over her cheek, wiping away a trail of her tears
“im sorry” theyll say. “i never wanted to hurt you.”
“then why?” she asks, although at this point, she doesn’t care about the answer. they came back to her, after all. nothing matters more than that. it’s in their actions that she sees their truth.
“it had to be this way. so i could be in the throne room when the time came, without being suspect.” they wheeze out a breath, coughing. “so i could stop them from hurting you.”
“you shouldn’t have done that.” her breath hitches, and she’s almost sobbing. “you stupid, stubborn demigod. i didn’t need to be saved, i just needed you to be with me.”
“i know that. but there wasn’t any point for me, if you weren’t alive, too.”
“and what about me?” she whispers, holding them closer to her, as much as she can without hurting them more. “what point is there for me if you die now? you’re... everything”
“you’ve still got josh,” they say. their hand comes to rest over one of hers. “my mother has his address.”
her heart beats louder at that, but its not enough to distract her from the now.
“alex, please. don’t leave me.”
“i’m sorry.”
she knows they would stay if they could. they promised her that they would never leave. but this time she doesn’t see it as a broken promise.
“i am, too. i’m so, so sorry... i love you”
its the first time she’s said the words to them. it’s the last time, too,
they smile with whats left of their strength.
“i love you, too.”
and then their eyes flutter close
(for a happier ending than this----- ignore the ‘its the last time, too’ part, and think of mc’s aura- hera’s power- finally awakening in her, but not the goddess herself. her aura is capable of healing others, and she pours it into alex, to the point that they’re no logner in danger of dying, and mc becomes the first and only demigod of hera)
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