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His father lay there on the ground, so as did he. Curling himself in under his fathers cooling arms as death took the last of even his warmth with it. He could feel the body growing stiffer, the arm he had dragged over his own waist starting to lock down around him, no longer the gentle embrace of the man he adored.
He would remember that feeling just as vividly, the slow way he dripped out of his own humanity, and his body became only that. Just a body; just something to deal with.
Horror stories of pets eating their dead owners rose to the front of Kakashi's young mind, and a part of him, the part that knew he was more dog then boy, wondered if that would happen to him too.
He had no one to turn to, no one to tell or ask for help. What was he to do, other than go to school in the morning, come home, slowly starve and live until it all broke down.
And so he did.
Early the next day he fought his way out of the vice grip he had let his fathers arms become around him, and went to school. His ever hollow eyes betrayed nothing of his grief, only spoke of a sadness he seemed to bear already, growing a little heavier.
Who could he tell? And why would he tell them?
That evening he went home, took some money, brought himself groceries and cooked despite the corpse lying in the middle of his floor. He cleaned around it, and then he cleaned it as well, wiping the death from his fathers sinking cheeks as well as he could.
That night he went into the yard and started digging, for he didn't know what else to do.
Another day passed, and then another, and the burden grew heavier on his chest as he lay to sleep and as he fought in his classes in the academy and as he made the trudging walks to the stores and as he moved each shovelful of earth. But who could bear it for him? He learnt how to sit with it, as well as he could, letting it get too close, cloud his mind.
The hole in the yard was deeper then he was tall and the neighbours worried for him as they watched him in the evenings, chipping away at what could no longer be a garden bed.
His fathers corpse started to stink, but he couldn't stomach the idea of covering it yet, so he let the stench of death and rot flood through his home.
Another day dared to pass before there was a soft knock on the door, scared yet familiar. He slid it open as if the wood could rust and dragged against itself with the weight of his fathers shame, and his own. He hadn’t dealt with it in time.
He didn't even know who it was he greeted before they were pulling him into their arms, lifting his tiny body, weight dropping off him faster then it should, and squeezing them hard against him, backing away from the house as if they should shelter him from seeing what lay in the walkway.
They were crying, whoever they were, and he couldn't understand why, but he suddenly wanted to as well. Was this what he was supposed to do? Was death to be shared like this?
He heard the door close, and something was being said, but it was too late for him as he collapsed into their arms, loud wet sobs filling the quiet country street he called home. A hand in his hair led him into their chest where he failed to muffle his childish screams. He called out for his father, to the things he should have been able to do, for the body he couldn't deal with.
Grief finally found its home in him, settling into the child and filling him to the brim.
It took him a long time to calm down in the arms of a man he finally realised was his fathers friend. A man he knew, Minato, he thought his name was, was there holding him closely, as someone who looked too much like his father, with his thick white hair and broad shoulders, walked around to the back of his house.
It would be a great many years before he realised that was Jiraiya, but as a child, he screamed, reaching for him, telling him not to go back there. Not to see the grave he had failed to dig, not to see his final failures as a son, or even as a dog, unable to bury the bones behind the house.
He clawed his way out of Minato's arms, and sprinted for the man who he thought was his father, not noticing the clothes he wore or the way he walked, just grabbing onto the back of his legs and holding him, pleading with him, begging him for some form of forgiveness that he would spend the rest of his life trying to earn.
The older man picked him up, asked him what he wanted, and tried his best to absolve him. He helped him bury his father, helped him lay the decaying body into the earth, watched as Kakashi took his final look, shared his final embrace, gave his final kiss. Then he buried him in an unmarked grave, as all beasts deserve, for that's what the white fang was and who he deserved to be respected as.
In the end, he had lost his humanity, and it felt wrong to deny him who he had become, to hide that from the others. His name was carved into a stone with everyone else's in the graveyards but he was never there, nor did his body ever see that hallowed land.
As he grew older, Kakashi left the family home, through his own desire and through the pushings and pullings of others, until the house fell into disrepair for a short lifetime. Resting as a temple he visited only when the misery became too heavy and he needed to go sniff out the old bones just to remember they were there.
It was a tragic site, but it was his own home, filled with his own ghosts, and he tended to them as one must.