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There were days when Sakumo could not bear to look at his son. He was not yet five years old, but already he took so strikingly after his mother. He had the same shape to his chin and the exact same nose, he’d even inherited the mole, though his wasn’t in quite the same place. It wasn’t fair to see a dead woman in the place of his living child, but there were days, most days sometimes, he couldn’t help it. It was worse because Kakashi knew, his clever, clever son, of course he noticed that some days his father couldn’t look him in the face, that the very sight of him filled Sakumo with a grief he could not help. Kakashi did not know why. He probably wondered why he always made his father sad. But how could Sakumo explain? He never claimed to be a good father, only one who tried his best. But his best could never hope to be enough.
It was on one of the bad days, and Sakumo was staring lostly at a photo of his wife, smiling and alive. He was pulled out of his wandering through pain and memory by a small voice that said, “Who’s that, Tou-san?”
Sakumo wanted to brush his question aside, hide her away in a box, and try to forget until he couldn’t anymore. But that wasn’t fair to Kakashi.
“This is your Kaa-san,” he said.
Kakashi’s eyes widened. He reached out to the picture and brushed it reverently, his face screwed up in solemn concentration as though to memorize his mother’s face.
“Oh,” he said, in a tone of realization, as though a hundred pieces were slotting into place, “She looks like me.”
After that, Kakashi wore his mask at home almost constantly. Sakumo wondered what terrible thing he could have done to deserve such an intelligent son, and hated himself for how the mask made it easier to face him.