Chapter Text
The first time the Prism marred Kakashi’s pale skin, he was four years old and he thought it was a bruise. It was dark blue and purple, cupping his cheek, running down his bicep and ribs to settle on his abdomen. If it weren’t for the way the colors undulated and swirled, migrating across his body in long swathes, Kakashi would have dismissed it as another complication of training.
That was the day his father gave him the mask. Kakashi’s soulmate had just been born, he said, and infants were touched in every conceivable way. Kakashi would be a rainbow of color for the next few years. It was a point of pride and vanity for civilians—a dangerous disruption of camouflage for a shinobi, as well as an advertisement of their greatest potential weakness. As the son of the White Fang, Kakashi was already a target for many.
There was gravity in Sakumo’s warning. Civilians didn’t realize the complications involved, he said. They were so pleased to be in the five percent of people with a soulmate that they didn’t think of things such as their soulmate being from another country, or even a missing-nin. They didn’t consider the dangers of having a friend press their name into their skin for their soulmate, and the world, to see. So Kakashi would have to take those steps himself. He would have to be wise and strong enough to protect both himself and his soulmate. Kakashi’s life wasn’t just his own.
Kakashi never asked his father if he had a soulmate, but he never saw any color in Sakumo’s pallor.
Of course, the Prism faded when one soulmate died.
Sometimes, when his father was gone on a mission and Kakashi had the house to himself, he liked to sit in front of the mirror and watch the Prism bloom. The marks were too-large, huge hands that painted his entire shoulder like an Akimichi gone giant, but that was just because of the difference in scale between Kakashi and his soulmate. His soulmate was tiny, brand new to the world; everything was large on their body, so it was large on Kakashi’s, too.
By the time he was six, Kakashi was already a soldier. He understood responsibility, and he took it with all the seriousness of a man thrice his age. He liked this one, though. It was more important than guarding random dignitaries or delivering a scroll. Kakashi was the only one who could perform this mission. He was the only one who could protect the tiny, fragile creature that would someday be his.
After all, Sakumo never said that Kakashi couldn’t go find his soulmate, when they were both old enough. Maybe twelve or so, Kakashi thought. He would just bring his soulmate back to Konoha, if they weren’t in the Land of Fire already. He knew it was possible for foreign shinobi to live in Konoha; there were several families in the village that came from Uzushio, like the Umino and Uzumaki. They would make another exception for Kakashi’s soulmate. People respected Kakashi’s father, and Sakumo always said Kakashi would surpass him. That meant that they would respect him, too.
When this war was over, Kakashi would find his soulmate. Until then, he would protect them as best he could.
It wasn’t a job for a chūnin; it was a job for Kakashi. So, it was fine if he watched the Prism sometimes—as long as he was the only one who could see.
Often, the Prism came in bright oranges that reminded Kakashi of zinnias. Sometimes, it was an emerald green like the forests of Konoha. He didn’t like the blues and purples as much, because they mixed in with his bruises and contusions, the signs of his weaknesses. They reminded Kakashi that the Prism, too, could be a weakness.
But it wouldn’t be one for Kakashi.
Sakumo was right; his soulmate was touched—a lot. If Kakashi noticed the Prism as soon as the kid was born, that would make his soulmate four when Kakashi was eight. And by eight, Kakashi understood death. He wielded it, and he watched it take his comrades. He was helpless to stop it.
Suddenly, having a weak, fragile person to protect didn’t seem so special. Suddenly, he imagined finding his soulmate and watching them die just like Jinu did. Suddenly, he didn’t want another person to protect.
Four years old was too old to be hugging people constantly, Kakashi thought, and having their parents brush their hair. (Or so he presumed from the Prism that sometimes appeared on the tips of his ears and the nape of his neck. And did that mean they had long hair? Was his soulmate a girl?) Four years old was too mature to be holding hands with someone. Too old for the vague shapes of lips on his cheeks and once, Kakashi saw when he took his hitai-ate off for a shower, on his forehead.
They couldn’t be a shinobi, Kakashi decided. By the time Kakashi was their age, he was learning to slice through tendons, not asking for a hug.
Or maybe they used a jutsu that required touch. Yeah, that sounded better. Four was too young to be a genjutsu specialist, even with a clan line, but they could be training, or using touch-based ninjutsu. That was easier for Kakashi to understand than the physical affection he saw evidenced on his own flesh. He tried to see the touches in that light, because he couldn’t imagine being paired with someone so weak. His mother had been a strong shinobi in her own right, and though Kakashi didn’t remember her, he had heard stories. Not from his father, but from others, like his jōnin-sensei.
Kakashi’s soulmate would be strong, too.
(But his mother still died, didn’t she?)
Kakashi wondered if his soulmate had ever seen the Prism. People didn’t touch Kakashi very often. Occasionally that weird kid, Might Guy, would tackle him, but there was so little of Kakashi’s bare skin exposed. Just his fingers, toes, eyes, and the little bits around his sleeves. Guy’s jumpsuit covered a lot of his skin, too, so Kakashi’s fingers rarely met flesh. But sometimes, they did.
Mostly, when he was killing someone.
Tracing the Prism with his own fingers wouldn’t do anything, Kakashi knew. It only worked if another human touched him. Maybe it was initially a way of ensuring fidelity, or perhaps a strange, wide-spread kekkei genkai, as soulmates were far more likely to occur in chakra-rich populations. Some of the older clans, like the Hyuuga and the Aburame, had soulmates twice as often as anyone else.
But his soulmate’s parents must have noticed by now, even if his soulmate was still too young to understand the flashes of color on their fingers. They would know that Kakashi was out there, somewhere.
And maybe, one day, Kakashi would see a message traced into his soulmate’s skin. As long as only Kakashi saw the name, it wouldn’t be putting them in danger. Someday, they would fight by Kakashi’s side.
When Kakashi’s father died, he stopped taking off his mask to watch the Prism; his parent’s features were reflected on his face more than any color.
When Obito died, he moved to a jōnin apartment and left every mirror behind; he didn’t deserve the comfort this his soulmate’s loved ones gave him.
When Rin died, he switched to long sleeves even in summer, covering every inch of himself as was practical and some besides; if his soulmate was nearby, he didn’t want to risk them seeing.
When Minato and Kushina died... he gave up hope.
After the Kyuubi attack, his soulmate wasn’t touched so much. The kisses on their cheeks stopped appearing, and it seemed like they started brushing their hair themselves, or else cut it short enough not to bother. Kakashi knew his soulmate wasn’t dead, though, because the Prism occasionally swirled around his fingertips. A few times, in the ANBU uniform that didn’t cover quite enough skin, Kakashi saw a hint of color on his bicep, curling around his ANBU tattoo and tinting it lavender.
At fourteen years old, Kakashi didn’t want a soulmate. He didn’t want to see the Prism. A soulmate was just another person for Kakashi to ruin, if they were even near Konoha to begin with. Another person to betray him if they weren’t.
Kakashi was a killer. He saw crimson all over, but it came with the stench of death.
It was Obito’s blood; Rin’s blood; An old man who was unwittingly being used to pass on Konoha’s secrets, who died for knowledge he never wanted; a young woman whose name Kakashi never learned, but he knew she was a mother, knew that she loved butterflies. He knew what her blood felt like, slicking the leather of his gloves.
If Kakashi weren’t in ANBU, if he wore the fingerless gloves of his jōnin uniform during combat, then his soulmate would have seen the Prism more often. They would have seen when Kakashi’s fingers closed around a neck to snap it in half, or when his hand pierced a genin’s ribcage for no crime other than serving their country, which unfortunately for them just wasn’t the Land of Fire.
Kakashi wasn’t designed to hug someone. He wasn’t made to brush someone’s hair, or kiss their cheek.
Rin could have done that.
Rin had never had a soulmate, and Kakashi wondered if it was some horrible mistake of fate, because surely Rin had deserved to have someone who matched her, heart and soul. Surely Obito had deserved it to be him. Surely, if Rin had seen the Prism on her skin matching Obito’s, she would have realized that Kakashi was the last person in the world she should have loved.
At fifteen, Kakashi was stripping his glove when he saw thin, deliberate marks appear on his fingers. The stripes of shimmering zinnia formed what looked strangely like kana, almost like the character for—
Kakashi slammed his fist into the brick wall of the ANBU complex. Rust-colored bricks and gray grout were crushed to dust under his knuckles, smothering his soulmate’s message.
He didn’t move until someone called for Hound.
Then he slid his gloves over the dust, reattached the braces, and sold his soul once more.
At sixteen, Kakashi had no idea why anyone would think of manufacturing green glitter, much less what someone would do with it. Apparently, others didn’t share the same reservations, because the waiting room outside the Hokage’s office was covered in the stuff. It littered every surface like debris from an explosion. The Hokage’s assistant was the only thing entirely untouched. She glared at a genin who was caked head-to-toe and sweeping, inefficiently due to the broom’s bristles being just as green as the floor.
“It really was an accident,” the boy told her, smearing sparkles on his nose as he scratched at a long scar that ran across it. Kakashi imagined his ponytail might be brown, under the emerald shimmer. “I don’t do that stuff anymore. I was just—”
Perhaps getting in through the window would be easier. Kakashi considered it for a moment, but a respect for procedure won out. He used a chakra-infused leap to reach the assistant’s desk, using the back of her chair as a landing pad to somersault over the rest of the room. His boots hit the floor on the very edge of the glittered-perimeter, inches in front of the door to the Hokage’s office.
There was no need to ask the assistant if he could enter. He could feel the Sandaime’s chakra and no one else’s. He reached for the doorknob with one gloved hand.
“Hey!” the kid barked, loud enough to startle Kakashi, though he didn’t show it. “You’re just gonna ignore me?”
Pausing, Kakashi looked over his right shoulder.
The kid stared into the eyeholes of his ANBU mask, fists clenched around the broom handle and cheeks flushed a splotchy red. The green stood out worse by contrast. Tilting his head slowly, Kakashi tried to place the brat. He was vaguely familiar, but not particularly memorable. It wasn’t until Kakashi factored in the room around them that he figured it out.
This was the kid he’d heard referred to as 'the Sandaime’s pet orphan’. He hung around the Tower and sometimes caused a ruckus, though not as much lately. Kakashi, as Hound, had met him once when in the company of the kid's jōnin-sensei, an ex-ANBU named Watanashi. They hadn’t spoken, and Iruka hadn't make an impression.
The boy was an attention-seeker. Maybe he wanted to talk to an ANBU, maybe he hated Hound, maybe he thought his prank deserved recognition or reprimand. It didn’t really matter. Kakashi was tired and needed to make a report.
He answered the kid’s question with silence. The door shut heavily behind him.
When Kakashi was dismissed, he decided to take the window after all.
His jōnin apartment came with a tiny mirror above the bathroom sink. He would have covered it up, broken it, something, but with puberty came the need to shave. No one could care about the five days of stubble his mask covered, but too much growth made the fabric cling strangely to his chin. He kept his eyes lowered as much as he could and powered through.
He shaved his chin, his upper lip, sideburns and the fine hairs that prickled at the curve to his throat. The shaving cream was white and opaque, coating silver follicles fully. Kakashi dragged the straight razor down his cheek, hearing the familiar slide of metal against skin, the scrape of hair being cut at the pore. It irritated his ears and set his teeth on edge, counting down the seconds until the work would be done.
One long stroke grazed away the shaving cream, revealing a splash of vivid green: a handprint.
His fingers jerked, the sharp blade cutting into his jaw. Crimson poured over the mark.
The colors reminded Kakashi of holly sprigs... and green glitter on a red flush.
The slice stung, the cream tinging pink with seeping fluid, but Kakashi couldn’t break his gaze away from the viridian hue that ran down his cheek and blossomed across his lips.
Holly was poisonous. Glitter probably was, too.
He waited, counted heartbeats. After twelve rapid clicks his lips were still green and the handprint had slipped from his cheek to his throat, spreading down to his collarbone.
Kakashi was eighteen, which meant his soulmate was fourteen—and apparently having their first kiss.
Or maybe it wasn’t their first. With his mask, Kakashi may have never known if not for inopportune timing. Perhaps this was his soulmate’s hundredth time. Maybe they intimately knew every mouth in Konoha, other than Kakashi’s—if they were in Konoha at all; probably not.
Kakashi wadded a triangular bandage against his cheek to stem the bleeding. He felt too warm, his lips tingling although they had never been touched.
Never.
His soulmate’s had.
A scab began to form, and he turned the shower to cold. Getting in, he sunk to the tiles, clothed back to the icy spray, and closed his eye so he couldn’t see the Prism as it danced across his body.
He didn’t want to know what his soulmate was doing, if it was going to go any further than a kiss. A sledgehammer was taking out frustration on his ribs, and there was an aching pit in his stomach where he must have swallowed a pound of lead.
It wasn’t like Kakashi expected his soulmate to wait for him. There was nothing to wait for; Kakashi was never going to find them, deliberately covered his skin even while sleeping so that he wouldn’t see any attempts at making contact. He gave up the idea of a real soulmate years ago. He knew he did. He'd promised himself he did.
But it hurt. Kakashi burned, and he didn’t know why.
When he was nineteen, he learned that his soulmate was a shinobi. He was changing in the ANBU locker room, pulling his shirt over his head to replace it with a long-sleeved equivalent, when Tenzō asked in surprise:
“Is that a countdown?”
Kakashi’s spine straightened, and he whipped around to follow Tenzō’s line of sight. Surprisingly, it wasn’t an exploding tag, or a bomb, or anything of the sort. He was staring at Kakashi—at Kakashi’s left arm, specifically. Lowering his gaze, Kakashi twisted until he could clearly see his bicep.
The Prism was jumbled, a muddled blotch of new colors on top of older ones, additional layers being added every second. But they were clearly shinobi hand signs, pressed into his soulmate’s skin.
Konoha signs.
His soulmate wasn’t just a shinobi; they were a Konoha shinobi, on a mission.
Kakashi slammed his locker shut with enough force to make Tenzō jump.
Later that night, Kakashi sat cross-legged on his bed and watched as the Prism swirled around his abdomen. It wasn’t hand signs anymore, just chaotic, iron-colored splashes around a colorless central stripe, about three inches long.
A wound.
His soulmate was injured, and being healed.
Then the colors bled away.
Kakashi didn’t sleep that night, even after the Prism had been gone for hours. He didn’t sleep until just after daybreak, when a splash of yellow marked the soft underbelly of his forearm, directly over a thin blue line that, on Kakashi, was a vein. Someone fiddling with an IV, perhaps.
His soulmate wasn’t dead, just stabilized.
The sun was high in the sky when Kakashi crashed into a nightmare, filled with the Prism and rust and his hand punched through the chest of a colored miasma, some thing that managed to be everyone and no one at once.
At the age of twenty-two, Kakashi was discharged from ANBU, and he really didn’t know what the fuck to do with himself. The Sandaime wanted him to be a jōnin-sensei, but Kakashi thought that he was the last person in the world who should be teaching children. They were small, delicate, and there was no longer a war going on that pushed them out the door the second they could throw a shuriken without impaling themselves.
Still. Kakashi followed orders.
These children were from the baby boom just after the Third Shinobi War, which meant many of them were offspring of prominent clans. In the class Kakashi currently spied on, there was a branch-family Hyuuga, a Yuhi, an Inuzuka, and one of the orange-haired Yamanakas. He was supposed to be getting the Inuzuka, the Hyuuga, and one civilian-born kid with some talent for genjutsu.
Kakashi would rather go on nothing but solo A- and S-rank missions for the rest of his life than look after these brats, he decided glumly. He had been hiding in a tree on the Academy grounds for the last two hours, occasionally glancing over the much more intriguing pages of Icha Icha Paradise to observe the class. He wasn’t impressed with what he saw.
The students were misbehaved timebombs. Now that they’d graduated, they seemed to think genin orientation was a breeze. They spoke over the teacher or tossed papers at each other, even gum in at least one case. The sensei had long since given up trying to reign them in. Perhaps she disliked children as much as Kakashi did.
Kakashi was about to slink out of his tree, thinking longingly of the leftover soup in his freezer, when the ground shook with a booming voice.
“Naruto!”
A bright orange blur barreled into the classroom and tried to dive out the window—’tried’ being the operative word. He was caught with his ass hanging on the inside when a familiar-looking chūnin grabbed the back of his jacket.
It quickly became apparent that the chūnin was the owner of the killing intent Kakashi could feel emanating from the room. Every other child went silent, watching the scene with wide eyes.
“What do you think you’re doing, you brat?” The man shouted, tanned features flushing a red so brilliant it could almost be from the Prism. The ruddy hue accentuated a deep scar that ran across the bridge of his nose and over both cheeks. Kakashi imagined it would scrunch up at the center when he smiled.
“Who the hell are you?” Naruto flailed his arms and legs wildly, but the chūnin held him in the air with surprising strength. “Let go of me, you jerk!”
It seemed Naruto took after Kushina rather than Minato.
“That’s Umino Iruka-sensei to you.” The chūnin growled, a tendon in his jaw flexing as he ground his teeth. “And I’ll let you go after you’ve apologized and cleaned up the mess you made in the teacher’s lounge!”
“Like I’ll ever do that! And it’s not a mess, it’s a work of art!” The whiskers on Naruto’s cheeks stretched as he gave a gap-toothed grin. “I bet you wouldn’t have thought of using umeboshi for that huge mole on the old man’s face!”
That reminded Kakashi why Iruka was familiar. It had been a lot of years since he met a brat covered in green glitter, and Iruka had certainly grown up.
Very nicely.
Two giggles and a snort erupted from the most rambunctious idiots in the class. Both sounds were aborted the instant Iruka’s head whipped around, eyes narrowed and nostrils flaring like a charging bull. The two girls clapped hands to their mouths and the Inuzuka’s face went white, the tattoos on his cheeks standing out like tomatoes.
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear any of that.” Iruka’s lips pulled taut into what might have been a smile—one that promised a horrible, painful death filled with thumbscrews and lemon juice and probably many more inventive forms of torture that Kakashi would be impressed by. He was honestly a bit impressed already. The guy was radiating a ridiculous amount of killing intent, but he hadn’t harmed a hair on Naruto’s head. “And I’m sure Sayuri-sensei is going to tell me later what wonderful, professional genin you’ve all turned out to be.”
Shame descended on a few small faces, and even Kakashi had the instinct to sit up straighter and put away his porn.
He didn’t, of course. But he thought about it.
Iruka turned around and dragged Naruto into the hallway by his collar. The door shut behind him with an ominous click.
The students were noticeably well-mannered for the next ten minutes that Kakashi watched. Then he was chased off the grounds by an overly-enthusiastic jumpsuit with leg warmers. Thoughts of Iruka chased him, too.
Umino Iruka made a lasting impression this time. When Kakashi saw him accepting scrolls in the mission room several weeks later, he looked down at his own messy kana, at the blood and mud on his uniform from a ten-day trek in the woods, and made a point to choose a different line.
It seemed they had taken directly opposite paths over the years: while Kakashi learned to reject the shinobi code he once held dear, Iruka was teaching others to uphold it. There had to be some of that rebellious youth left, but it was buried beneath sixty-four layers of hardass.
Maybe Kakashi would antagonize the man some time, when he wasn’t halfway to collapsing. He could turn in a bad report, maybe one with paw prints or sketches, just to see Iruka’s cute face flush around his scar.
It could be interesting.