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Kakashi always hated mirrors. He avoided them at all opportunities.
When he was small he recognised quickly in the way his father looked and reacted to him, that the soft features on his cheeks and the smile, both things he had inherited from his mother, were painful to Sakumo. His father was not an unkind person, he did love his son very much, but sometimes looking into his eyes meant looking back into the eyes of the woman he had loved so much more and lost and that meant painful memories coming back.
Kakashi therefore didn’t like looking at himself either. It seemed that he did not share the rare immune disease that his mother had had and it meant that he was free to go maskless if he wanted to, but his sensitive nose and general dislike of his face made him keep wearing it anyway. His father never questioned this and let the boy be.
Then his father took his own life and left Kakashi with nothing but a hole in his soul that seemed unable to be filled by anything. Now it was the hair on Kakashi’s head, long and wild and silver-grey just like his father’s had been, that forced his eyes away from any surface that reflected an image. A clear cut marker of his family allegiance, his father had been a famous shinobi after all.
He briefly considered cutting it, or even colouring it differently, but that would require a level of commitment he wasn’t up to making. Now that he had graduated the academy he was running normal missions and at only six years old also had a household to run. He was scraping by, he was doing what was expected of him and he turned away from anything that mirrored his face as fast as he possibly could.
With his teammates and teacher around Kakashi got slowly but steadily better at appreciating himself for who he was. He cautiously used mirrors again to brush his hair, an activity he had for years done only by free hand, but then Obito died and left him with the sharingan, the blessing and the course now put up frontal in his face. The first day back in his apartment after that disaster mission Kakashi took down each mirror in his apartment and while he did eventually buy one to highlight his chin for shaving, when he was a little older and needed it, he never brought them back.
The sharingan was his punishment, it was borrowed and not his, he didn’t want to have to look Obito in the eye everyday and know he had failed him. Had failed to protect RIn like he had promised, or Kushina or Minato-sensei. That Obito had counted on Kakashi to lead all of his loved ones to a brighter future and that Kakashi had been an absolute disappointment and failure. Suddenly his dad’s hair or his mom’s smile didn’t matter anymore, it was all about the damned eye, staring at him, judging him.
Another thing he usually hid, under gloves or long sleeves, was the mark he had gotten from a young age already. In the palm of his right hand. A round tattoo-like stamp, with three long lines leading from the centre to the side, sort of like a pinwheel. Sakumo had mentioned that it was Kakashi’s soulmate mark and that his counterpart would have the exact same marking on the palm of their left hand. Sakumo then showed off his now empty left hand palm and explained that his sign, which had been two distorted lines corresponding to his mother’s facial lines, had disappeared once she had passed.
Kakashi was excited as a kid to find out who he was destined to be with, but his father had suggested to him he should keep it under a glove, at least for the time that he was young. Maybe Sakumo was worried for Kakashi to get hurt, maybe Sakumo was worried that his son would love and lose too early and then be burned for his whole life. Well, he certainly wasn’t wrong about that last one. So Kakashi put the marking away.
For years he wasn’t even looking at it, too wrapped up in thinking that somewhere out there there was someone who would be forced to spend their life with him. How unlucky it must be to have the counterpart to his wheel, he would think. He continued hiding it, only once showing it to Tenzo on an ANBU mission they ran together. Tenzo took his own long gloves off and showed off his right palm, which looked like a thin blooming vine. “We don’t match then, huh?” Tenzo said and the hint of disappointment did not go unnoticed by Kakashi.
That was the time he decided to research the sign a little closer. Surely it meant something more than just a spin. Kakashi would go to the library between missions and look it up and while there was research done on soulmate signs, there was nothing about this particular one, nothing close to it even. All he learned was that nobody could really explain where they were coming from and how they disappeared and that once the soulmates met, touched, an instant strong connection was being formed between them. He gave up his search and got back to pitying the poor person who had the other half of his mark.
So nobody knew his soulmate mark apart from Tenzo and several nurses in Konoha’s hospital. They were the most knowledgeable workers in town and could have written long novels and exposes on who was soulmate level matched with whom if they wanted to, but they were cordial and kept it to themselves.
Maybe if someone else had known they had told Kakashi. Maybe if Tenzo had remembered he would have given him a heads up. Or maybe, if Kakashi didn’t hate mirrors as much as he did, he would have saved himself a lot of trouble. The mark on his hand, the pinwheel he had no explanation for, would have eventually been visible on his face, in the eye that he refused to look at.
But he did not.
He did not know what it stood for, until it stared him right into the face.
-
It is only after Obito pulls him into the Kamui dimension that Kakashi can clearly see the form of his- of their - mangekyou sharingan. That they have the same ability is something he had figured out even before the mask broke, before the earth shattering revelation that the boy he had idolised for half his life not only had been alive, but also plotting to end the world they both knew all this time.
Finally standing close face to face with Kakashi’s left eye staring at Obito’s right, the pinwheel flashing back at him, just like it had for years in the palm of his hand, is almost a deeper shock than the reveal of the face behind the mask had been. Kakashi can feel his breath coming in hard, something hammering loud and hard at the back of his head. This is real. This has always been real.
“You knew ” Kakashi presses out through his teeth, so much frustration and pent up anger inside of him. “You always knew.”
Obito shrugs his shoulders dismissively and rolls his eyes as if Kakashi is nothing but a tiny fly to him: “It wasn’t anything important.” Kakashi notices immediately that Obito doesn’t even pretend to not understand what he meant.
Clearly, this is his punishment. Kakashi knows that. The universe is playing a long winded terrible trick on him. Soulmate marks are something people couldn’t quite grasp, what makes them appear seems to be impossible to figure out. Why are certain people delegated as soulmates? Who decided that based on which understanding?
Maybe Kakashi deserves this, he thinks. All these years that he lived on when most of his loved ones had passed away were unjustified. His soulmate, the one who would love him above anyone else is none other than a man he has to kill, soon too. How could he have ever hoped for it to be different? When was the world ever kind to him in his 30 years of being on it.
“You aren’t remotely interested as to why it is me?” Kakashi asks and doesn’t quite know why. How can Obito be so unbothered by this? He must have known, all these years, if not then at least in recent months, and it seems to have made no influence on him at all. Kakashi grinds his teeth together.
A kunai flies by his ear and explodes with a tag to his right. Obito doesn’t seem to want to talk about this thing that is clearly between them. “None of that matters,” Obito repeats and a wide grin forms on his face. “I always knew I’d have to take you out personally to get my dreams fulfilled.”
The thoughts in Kakashi’s head don’t slow down, even when they launch towards each other to begin the fight. His mind circling back to the mark on his hand, the many times he has looked at it and wondered who the other person is that carries it, wondered if they’d have a future life together and how it would be. All this time it was Obito, who was alive somewhere in the world.
It also stings a little, more than Kakashi wants to admit, that Obito is so unbothered by it. Wouldn't soulmates be drawn to each other? Sakumo had told Kakashi that his mother found him in a dark alleyway alone one day and that she had said that it was like an invisible force pulled her there. Was Obito immune to that? But then again Kakashi didn’t seek him out either.
Lighting and fire dance and light up the grey blocks of the Kamui dimension as the former friends exchange blows back and forth. Despite it all, despite their times apart, they are evenly matched as if all their training has led them to this very moment fighting each other. It is a bitter fight for many reasons and the marks on their wrists only add up to that.
“If you had contacted me about being alive, maybe I could have helped you, maybe I was meant to help you”, Kakashi tries to strike up the conversation again, not all hope lost that this is salvagable somehow, but Obito strikes it down by landing a punch to Kakashi’s lower jaw and forcing him to rebalance himself on his back foot.
The Uchiha still seems to be in an excellent mood, as if he has always itched to fight Kakashi and maybe he has. “It is not my fault that you don’t even look at yourself in a mirror.” Obito’s laugh echoes off the walls and rings in Kakashi’s ears. “It is not your responsibility to fix what is broken in this world that means nothing.”
It is true of course, Kakashi is at fault here, for everything. Kakashi let Obito “die” before both of them even got their soulmarks, he couldn’t save Rin or Minato or his village or his students, or anybody and he didn't know that the mark was his own eye, because he had never looked at himself closely enough.
“I don’t understand why you try to stop me,” Obito says as he dodges Kakashi’s foot by just slightly moving his head. “This world has made you miserable and left you with nothing but emptiness. Why won’t you just live in the dream that I’m making for you.”
There is of course something enticing about Obito’s idea with the eternal genjutsu. It is not right, obviously, but who cares about that if there is the possibility of eternity in peace? Madara and him are wrong to think that the world could never stop pain and war if it wasn’t able to make any decisions, Kakashi believes in that deeply, but on the surface the idea seems like such a relief. With one swoop Kakashi would have all his sorrows wiped away.
Something else peaks his interest though. Kakashi stops himself and straightens his back out: “How do you know I am miserable?” He tries to sound as productive as possible. Technically, Obito hasn’t seen him in years and should from one look alone not be able to deduce Kakashi’s mental state. If he knows the truth, maybe he hasn’t been as absent as he claims he was.
“I have good eyes”, snaps Obito as a reply. “I can see it with both of them.” The aggressive way Obito reacts shows Kakashi everything he needs to know. In his head he tried to figure out how to cohere it out of Obito. “How did you know Kushina-sensei was going to be having a child?” Kakashi asks. “Did you have spies in Konoha?”
This makes Obito visibly squirm. Kakashi takes a step closer to him and Obito does not take a step back, he just stays frozen in place. “ I know how”, he explains. “I told you - your grave- back when it was happening. I told you the day and the time. I stood there and whispered it to the memorial stone, like I had whispered so many things before to it.”
The many times in which Kakashi reached Rin’s grave only to find the flowers he had left taken away or destroyed suddenly fall in place. Everything makes sense now. He takes another step forward. “You were watching me”, he concludes.
Obito does not deny it, can’t deny it. His face turns into a frown: “I wanted to see you suffer and you were so willing to offer up all the information that I needed to know.”
“How often did you come to see me?” Kakashi can’t say why his heart is so excited to hear this news. By all accounts he should not be. He should be disgusted and angry at the fact that he was the one to sell Kushina out to Obito and Madara, but somehow right now, staring into Obito’s eye that mirrors his so well, he isn’t.
Instead of replying, Obito launches forward, arms and knees like a barrage of bullets around Kakashi’s body. He dodges all of it, counters it and repeats himself as soon as his old friend is close enough: “It did affect you didn’t it? The mark. It pulled you to see me.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about”, Obito spins a kick that hits Kakashi in the chest, but he seems less convincing then he seemed a few minutes before. Kakashi can see the lie on his opponent's face, and can see the way his cheeks flush just lightly in embarrassment. It reminds him of the old version of Obito, back when they were children, when every touch of Rin’s hand could leave him scrambling for words.
Their kunai’s meet in a loud clunk and one of Kakashi’s gloves drops after a deep cut opens it up too much to stay on his hand. The hand with the soulmate mark is exposed and Obito’s eyes flicker to it, but then he rips himself away to continue the fight.
Obito grabs both of Kakashi's arms to wrangle him backwards in an attempt to overpower him for one moveor another, but it is actually Kakashi who gets the upper hand. He pushes Obito backward, making him stumble over his own feet and with eyes wide open, both men tumble down with each other.
Kakashi towers over his old friend now, both hands still holding the wrists down by the side of Obito's face, while his middle is hovering over his middle. It is closer than they have been since they trained with each other as children, the first time their faces are close as adults. Kakashi’s heart is beating hard against his ribcage.
He is suddenly overcome by an urge to see it , the mark on Obito's left hand. Kakashi’s right hand fingers snail themselves under Obito’s thick black gloves, causing the other man to wiggle and squirm under his weight. “Stop!” Obito screams. “Let me go!”
But Kakashi can barely hear him, he is too transfixed on the mark that slowly starts showing the more he removes the glove. It is right there, the exact mirror of his own, in the palm of Obito’s hand. Finally he gets the clothing item off and their hands are flat on top of each other, Kakashi’s fingers winding around Obito’s as if they are puzzle pieces fitting into each other.
His skin is burning from the direct touch and his insides are no different. He can feel Obito’s breath heavy on his face. The light red flush from before has long since deepend on his face. “Let - Let me go”, Obito demands one more time, but his voice is shaky and nervous.
Soulmate marks dont make sense, Kakashi believed that. No higher power could ever know how you are destined to be with. It should not be decided who you get to love and who not, not by the Sage, by god's or by destiny. But now that he looks into Obito’s face, their hands holding each other as if they are the only thing holding them off from falling off a cliff.
The pull comes in like gravity, their faces suddenly inching closer towards each other. Kakashi mechanically lets go of Obito's right hand so that he can lift it to tuck at the mask just far enough to expose the lips beneath it. It is all like a stage play, like a studied dance, like this outcome was alway meant to happen. Maybe it was.
For a moment, the war and the despair and the pain and the fight disappear and it’s just them kissing each other as if they are young lovers on a sunny day in some green field somewhere. Their hands curl into each other, while their free hands end up in each other's hair, just holding one another. It is magical and at the same time a little frightening how different it is to kiss Obito from anyone else Kakashi has kissed before.
Obito grabs him behind the neck and rolls both of them to the sides, so that their faces are now right next to one another. He seems to function mechanically too, pulling Kakashi’s body in closer to his as if any little space between them is too much space, as if he has been waiting to do that all his life.
Kakashi’s heart is pounding loud, his breath is going hard, he feels like he’s never taken a breath before until he took it through Obito’s mouth, that he never felt sweetness before until he tasted Obito’s tonge and that he never felt desire before the way he feels now. Soulmates, this is what being meant to be feels like.
By the time the war is back on Kakashi’s mind his skin is already prickling like Obito’s fingers tracing over it left little fires behind. They stare at each other for a moment, sharingan to sharingan, and just breathe in each other’s sphere. Then it is Obito who talks: “I did follow you around because I wanted to see you.” Kakashi can’t help but grin with vindication.
“What’s next?” Kakashi asks and means not only the war situation, but everything. What are they both going to do next with this? Love, marriage, retirement? It just doesn’t seem like something that was going to be for them.
Obito takes Kakashi’s hand and puts it on his chest. “Madara placed a seal on me to do his bidding. He did it a long time ago.” He pauses and then continues: “I planned on you to take it off me with your Lightning Blade.”
Ah, sure, Obito had after all seen Rin’s death. Kakashi’s stomach feels queasy at the idea of piercing another one of his friends, his beloved, with his chidori and he tries to take the hand away from Obito’s chest. The other man, however, holds it there.
“I want you to do it,” Obito insists. “I want you to take it off me, Kakashi.” He seems serious about it. “I can’t do anything if it is not removed from me.” Quikly he adds: “He implemented Hashirama cells into me when I was a child. I can’t die from that. I promise.”
Slowly, because he is still not completely convinced, Kakashi nods. “Close your eyes,” Obito says softly and Kakashi follows his demand. In the dark he can feel Obito’s nose against his, kisses on his cheeks and lips. Then a soft brush of Kakashi’s fingers. He knows what he has to do now. His second hand comes in to form the signs that he’s been weaving so many times before, lightning sizzles warm between his fingers.
Obito continues kissing his face as his hand wraps around Kakashi’s wrist to push it forward, one quick scoop through the centre of him and though Kakashi knows it won’t kill him, the sound of it makes him bite his tongue bleeding. He pulls his hand back and tries to ignore the blood dripping from it.
When he opens his eyes again, Obito’s mirror sharingan shines with a light. “I’m free now,” Obito states. “Whatever comes next we can do together.”
– –
They left Kamui together, reentered the fight together, side by side just like they had years before. It filled Kakashi with a hope he hadn’t felt in many years, a kind of optimism he had thought lost to time and whenever their sharingan eyes met Obito’s were full of light too, he seemed almost like the boy that was crushed by a rock 15 years ago.
Of course neither of them had believed that ending the war and defending Madara would come easy, especially now that Obito’s betrayal was obvious, but that it would take such a toll on them both came as quite a shock. Not only was Madara just another pin in someone else’s plan, but also their reunion, their soulmate match and connection was broken again as fast as it had been formed.
In desperation Kakashi had to watch his other half save him one more time from certain death, take the blunt of an attack that was meant for the both of them and then disappear in front of his eyes. He had lost the sharingan in his eye that matched Obito’s by that point and though he had gained a completely new, healed eye, he was now no longer matching Obito.
And then Obito was also completely leaving, his body disintegrating right before Kakashi’s eyes as if they were bubbles that were bursting when you tried to touch them. No room for questioning this time, no reunion in 15 years or so. It felt like part of Kakashi’s soul was ripped out with Obito and maybe it really was, since both of them had been bound to each other by destiny anyway.
Kakashi returned back from the war worn out and empty and while he was happy for the kids to be back together, the grief sat deep in his heart. He watched the soulmate mark disappear on his palm just like the sharingan in his eye had disappeared not too long before that. The lifelong connection to Obito had deepend and then been taken from him. Secretly he wished they had never met again at all.
One might think that the fact that Obito’s eye was no longer staring at him would help him learn to like his mirror image again, but one would be wrong. Kakashi now hated looking at himself even more than he had before, because the only opposite, the only mirrored image of himself he wanted to see was Obito’s face and that was something that was impossible.
So Kakashi continued avoiding mirrors as much as he could. He hated nothing more than looking into one.