Summary: KakaIru. Takes place after Kakashi drags Naruto back from trying to retrieve Sasuke, while Naruto’s in the hospital.
Kakashi’s worried about Iruka. The copy-nin’s just walked into the hospital room and he’s already contemplating walking back out. However, it’s already be decided that Iruka can’t be left alone for a while, unless the village wants another repeat of the last time, and it’s Kakashi’s turn to keep watch. He slouches on a chair and looks at Iruka over the top of his book. The chuunin teacher’s hands are shaking, like they were that one time, and there’s a pile of paper cranes on the table next to Naruto’s bed. His eyes are vacant, like they sometimes are after missions, and he seems to haven’t noticed he’s bitten clean through his lip. Yes, Kakashi’s certainly worried.
He knows shinobi are far from infallible, knows that they all have their problems, and right now, he’s worried that Iruka’s problems going to soon manifest themselves as a nervous breakdown. A breakdown’s not something new to Kakashi, and certainly not to Iruka. In a hidden village, all the shinobi have skeletons in their closets, everyone has those bad days, those bad days that come every year, on the same day, when they just want to be left alone, when they just want to close their eyes and sleep. And, of course, everyone has a nervous breakdown now and again, even Kakashi. Yes, even the copy-nin, the infamously lazy ninja, the man so lazy that Shikamaru worships him as his idol, has a nervous breakdown now and again. It comes with the territory, after all. So, of course, it stands to reason that Iruka would have nervous breakdowns as well, and probably more than anyone else in the village. Iruka performs missions, even if they’re fewer and easier than Kakashi’s, or any of the jounins, but he also teaches the children, files reports for the other shinobi, and tries to keep track of the growing number of orphans in the village.
Kakashi remembers the last breakdown of Iruka’s he was present for. He’d been wandering through the hospital, after having an arm bandaged up from a mission gone awry, and felt the teacher’s unstable chakra long before he saw him. There’d been some kind of accident or another in the classroom, which was to be expected, what with children under the age of ten and sharpened weapons, all together in the same room. The boy the chuunin was holding was screaming, a kunai piercing his hand, and Iruka seemed to have his hands full, trying to carry the boy, calm him down, and keep him from hurting himself more in the process. With something others would call a morbid interest, and he chalked up as professional curiosity, Kakashi followed in that lazy pace of his, catching up to the chuunin and flocking nurses when they got to a hospital room. A quarter of an hour later the boy was lying in a hospital bed, hand wrapped and sedated half past redemption, and Iruka was leaning against the wall out in the hall, hands shaking, eyes eerily blank. When a nurse touched his shoulder worriedly he fell, eyes finally snapping out of the disconcerting stare at nothing to look faintly surprised at the fact he was now sitting on the ground, limbs akimbo, leaning against the wall. Kakashi watched with an interest which was no longer professional or morbid, but concerned, as the teacher’s hands shook where they lay on the ground, palms up, fingers twitching like butterfly wings, giving the impression of butterflies pinned to a piece of cardboard. The copy-nin swallowed, tried to rid his mind of the image of Iruka’s hands pinned to the floor by kunais, and knelt in front of the teacher. When he reached out, touching one of the twitching hands, Iruka tensed, then disappeared in a poof of chakra and smoke, leaving Kakashi to blink, shrug, and try to go through the rest of the day ignoring the worry in the back of his mind.
The fallout after that breakdown of Iruka’s had been immense, worse than Kakashi had been expecting, both physical and mental. The chuunin was just that, a chuunin, but even if he didn’t have the reserves of chakra a jounin had, never would, he also didn’t have the control a jounin had, and there were few things in life that were more worrisome than a shinobi with out of control chakra. There were craters here and there, dotting the training grounds, and there was a noticeable depletion of trees and walls throughout the village. Naruto had found the teacher collapsed on his bed, bloody and bruised, chakra nearly nonexistent, and had run for Tsunade.
While Iruka was recovering, however grudgingly, in the hospital, Tsunade and Kakashi had somehow convinced Naruto that his old teacher had been on a mission. Less than a week later and Iruka was home again, wielding a few new scars and a pair of mended hands, none of which had been inflicted upon him by anyone else. Feeling guilty, Iruka shambled over to the Godaime’s office and tried to resign from his position of teacher, apologizing for his lack of attention in the classroom, failure to teach any of the children anything relevant, failure to stay caught up in the missions room, failure to perform more missions, and failure to make it possible for humans to swim like fish and fly like birds. After he convinced the Hokage that he’d failed as a teacher, as a shinobi, and as a human being, and that the best thing would be for him to die, but that he’d probably even fail at that, since heavens knows it’s happened to him before, and keep on living, the Godaime tried to convince Iruka that he wasn’t a complete failure, and rather than take the chance at failing at dying, he might as well keep on living, and hell, he was a better teacher when he wasn’t even a teacher yet than Kakashi would ever be. Hurt at the last comment, Kakashi resentfully gave his agreement, and a few days later Iruka was back in the chuunin uniform, sleeves rolled down to cover his wrists, and back in the classroom.
It was after that last breakdown that it had been decided by the other teachers and the Hokage that, damnit, Iruka wouldn’t have another breakdown, even if it cost them their lives. As far as Kakashi knows, they’ve failed a few times already, but both times Kakashi was out on a mission, so he feels somewhat cleared of guilt. This time, though, he’s here in the village, so here Kakashi is, sitting in this stuffy hospital room, ready to pounce at the smallest sign that Iruka’s going to snap, because like hell will he fail at this mission.
When Kakashi pulls his attention back to the hospital room he watches as Iruka drops yet another paper crane onto the pile that’s now spilling off the table onto the floor. The teacher reaches for a piece of paper but the pile’s gone, converted into birds, and when he pulls his hands back into his lap, trying desperately to hide the shaking, Kakashi feels a pang of distress. The copy-nin searches his pockets desperately and comes up empty. Feeling as though he’s killing a family member, cutting them apart limb from limb, he tears out a page from Icha Icha Paradise. He silently hands the page to Iruka and soon, far too soon, what was once the sexual fantasies of any sane man is now a paper crane. Kakashi wants to cry. Iruka’s hands are still shaking. The process starts over again. Find his least favorite page, tear it out, and watch the grisly transformation. Kakashi’s sure this can constitute as torture or, at the very least, mental abuse.
A few hours of hell later and the book is completely gone. The infamous copy-nin is gazing mournfully at the slipcover of his infamous book, and peeking pained looks at the new pile, on the ground, of paper cranes. When Iruka’s hands begin to shake again Kakashi wonders the possibility of just slitting his wrists with the pink slipcover. All ruminations of this sort are stopped when Iruka finally speaks.
“Kakashi,” Iruka says, or tries to say. His voice breaks on the second syllable and the “shi” is never actually said, just implied, and the chuunin clenches and spreads out his shaking hands several times, as though from the shame of not even being able to speak properly. Kakashi looks up at Iruka’s face for the first time since he first sat down in the hospital room hours before, and he instantly wishes he hadn’t. Iruka’s face is tired and old, worn on the edges, and his eyes are no longer dead. Instead, they’re very aware, and very pained, and very desperate. At this point, Kakashi doubts that there won’t be a breakdown, unless he can distract the teacher. At the thought, an unbidden smile comes behind his mask, making his eye curve up.
“Ah, Iruka-sensei,” he sings out, voice dripping with innocence. Iruka gives him a fearful look, hands no longer shaking, if only due to the complete terror he holds for Kakashi at the moment. “I was thinking,” the copy-nin continues, purity drenching each and every word, “that I have more paper at my apartment.”
Iruka, and this can be blamed on his instability at the moment, is looking slightly interested. The poor dear doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into. “Ah?”
“Mmm,” Kakashi hums, assuring him. As soon as the chuunin smiles, however hesitantly the action is, and however broken the actual action becomes, Kakashi’s eye curves up even more. With a gleeful cry he pounces, grabs a shocked Iruka about the waist, and with a puff of chakra and smoke, uproots him and deposits him in his apartment. Or rather, in his bedroom.
Ah, the things Kakashi does for his country.
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