#OP if I could I would pay you millions to draw my death note self insert in similar outfits

[ohayohimawari]

Kakashi Asks-Answer

Q: (From @cyabae) Do you think that Kakashi had a gut feeling that Obito was still alive? It seemed to me that he couldn’t get over Obito’s “death” whilst he was able to process his grief over the loss of his other loved ones.

A: This is such a fantastic question. Thank you for presenting me with an opportunity to climb into this ninja’s quirky brain to pave over what I think is one of the biggest holes in canon!

Throughout Naruto’s story-before and after the time skip-Kishimoto doesn’t allow the fans of the series, or Kakashi, to forget Obito. Every time we see my favorite ninja dork at his regular hangout (the memorial stone), it’s like Kishi is telling us, ‘Hey! Pay attention to this!’ Canon provides more questions than answers to this, so I’m going to rely upon my knowledge and interpretation of Kakashi’s character, as well as my imagination to resolve it starting below the cut.

First of all, Kakashi is no idiot.

He knows that he’s talking to dead people that can’t answer him when he visits their graves. He understands that death is final, permanent, having learned that lesson the hard way at a young age. The way he processes grief differs with each loss, however.

We know that Kakashi made it a point to distance himself from his father’s legacy after Sakumo’s death. In the series, I can think of only one instance in which we see Kakashi visiting his father’s grave, and it seems to be out of obligation. Further, when that angry little Kaka-brat is standing at his father’s grave in the rain, he places a flower on Sakumo’s marker while saying he won’t grow up to be like him. Ouch.

When it comes to Sakumo’s death, I think Kakashi spends a lot of time avoiding it. First, because he’s angry, later because he feels guilty (see also: Kakashi’s Legendary Self-Loathing). As long as I’m drawing from my imagination to answer this, I like to think that Kakashi comes to Sakumo’s grave more often after they made peace over a campfire during their brief visit in the afterlife.

It isn’t long after Sakumo’s death that Kakashi loses the closest thing he has to a father figure when his sensei Minato dies. This is another grave that I can’t recall (off the top of my head) Kakashi visiting. I think there are more than a couple of reasons why this is. Because he was a Hokage, Minato’s grave is already well-tended, or perhaps his remains are inaccessible (unless you’re Orochimaru). Another reason is because Kakashi has something better than a grave marker to turn to: the Yondaime’s bust carved into the mountainside that dominates Konoha’s skyline. When Kakashi wonders what kind of guidance his late sensei would offer, he looks up at his likeness. Side note: is it just me, or does that seem to give him a sense of calm? That’s a big headcanon of mine.

There’s something else that Minato left behind, or I should say someone, and that would be the main hero of the whole series. I definitely think that, although Minato’s death is an ending to a part of Kakashi’s life, it opens the door for this knucklehead to reckon with the future during his grieving process. But I have another Kakashi Ask waiting in my inbox about baby Naruto so I’ll wait to go into this when I answer that question.

This brings me to what canon presents as the most traumatic experience Kakashi has had with loss. There are countless flashbacks to the death of Rin Nohara at Kakashi’s hand before we’re given the full explanation for it. I can think of only two times that we see Kakashi visiting Rin’s grave: when he’s tending to it during a break from guarding a pregnant Kushina, and again when Tenzō is spying on Kakashi in the ANBU Black Ops arc. Although we don’t see him visiting Rin often, it’s implied that he does go regularly to her grave. He washes her marker, brings fresh flowers to adorn it, and tells her of the happenings in the Hidden Leaf.

Personally, I think Kakashi goes to Rin’s grave out of a sense of duty and keeps his visits brief out of guilt and pain (just an opinion; please don’t @ me). He can’t escape the physical moment of Rin’s death. It haunts him, frequently. He relives it more than any other experience he’s had in his fictional, angst-filled life. It seems to me that he thinks of his visits to Rin as the least he can do, after his involvement in her death. It’s all that he can do to continue to keep his promise to Obito to look after her. I’m not saying that he doesn’t have fuzzy friendship feelings for Rin, but I can’t imagine those are feelings that he’s able to maintain easily after the circumstances surrounding her death. Truly, I wonder if those visits are out of wanting to atone for his part in her death or to appease the angry spirit that Rin appears as in Kakashi’s nightmares. Probably a little of both.

The grave that is Kakashi’s home away from home is the memorial stone. Out of all the names that are etched on it, there’s only one that keeps him coming back to it. Obito Uchiha.

The million-ryo question is, out of all of the deaths that Kakashi has experienced, why is Obito’s grave the one that he turns to and returns to? Canon doesn’t portray them as the best of friends while they were schoolmates and later, teammates, so…?

This was the first peer that Kakashi lost, and that had to have rocked his little ninja world. Obito sacrificed himself for Kakashi’s sake and that too must’ve been a great big wtf moment for my precious murder baby. Also, there’s the sheer suddenness of the unfortunate boulder incident in Kakashi’s literal blind spot. I mean, wow, those reasons alone could show why Obito’s death would be next to impossible for kid!Kakashi to process.

But kid!Kakashi becomes adult!Kakashi and he’s still hovering by the memorial stone every time he gets a chance. I know that I’ve presented this dork as a creature of habit, but in this case, there’s something more to it. Two somethings, specifically.

First (to be blunt): there’s no body.

Obito Uchiha is presumed dead and for a ninja who has firsthand experience with proven death, that blows the door wide open to the possibility of Kakashi’s teammate surviving that rude boulder.

During the Land Waves arc, we see Team Seven’s leader waking up unconvinced that Zabuza is really dead. This knucklehead has more brains than chakra, and he doesn’t leave things to chance.

So, to Kakashi, presumed dead is way more alive than dead.

This is why he doesn’t just relate the news of the village to Obito like he does when he visits other graves. He asks questions and unloads his conscience there because, in his mind, he might be communicating with someone that could answer him.

But wait! There’s more. The second something is (drumroll): the sharingan.

Sharingan literally means “copy wheel eye,” and it is described as an “eye that reflects the heart.”

Kishimoto seems to enjoy beating his characters with a trauma stick, so canon gives us many (so many) accounts of how tragedy affects the sharingan’s development. However, if it reflects the heart, there are plenty of positive emotions that could affect it that simply weren’t explored in the series.

Another thing that isn’t fully explained in canon is how Kakashi and Obito’s sharingan eyes are connected. We only know that they are connected because the mangekyō awoke at the same time in each of them (this is very important btw), and because of their shared tsukuyomi/ninja dumpster. This is great imagination and fan content fodder because the possibilities of their shared sharingan are near endless.

What follows is my headcanon.

Rather than having a gut feeling that Obito is still alive, I think Kakashi allows for the possibility that his teammate survived. That becomes a probability after he learns more about the sharingan from his subordinate, Itachi and student, Sasuke.

It would be years after Obito’s presumed death that Kakashi would learn that the mangekyō is awakened by witnessing the death of the person that the sharingan-bearer is closest to. As much as I adore Rin’s character, she is not the person that Kakashi feels closest to when he witnesses her death. I believe that Kakashi is closer to Gai, or even Minato when Rin dies.

As Kakashi learns more about the sharingan, the bigger his hunch becomes that Obito survived. I’m sure he’d question how the mangekyō could’ve awoken in the first place if the person that gave it to him was dead.

This borrowed eye is surgically attached to Kakashi’s optic nerve and not his heart. So, if the sharingan is still developing, the heart it was connected to must still be beating.

More speculation, but perhaps Obito can use all of the jutsus that Kakashi has copied. Maybe snippets of Obito’s emotions are processed as information in Kakashi’s brain. It would make sense to me in Narutoverse.

So why didn’t Kakashi tell anyone that he had reason to think that Obito might still be alive?

The experiences that would lead him to think that are subjective. Kakashi is tight-lipped even when someone wants to know his hobbies. I don’t think he’d tell anyone that a mistake was made with one of the etched names on the memorial stone until he had hard proof.

However it played out, or whatever your headcanons about these two may be, the moment they faced each other from opposite sides of the battlefield was heartbreaking.

I think that when Kakashi finally saw him again, he was less surprised that Obito was alive and more surprised that he had become an enemy. *Sob*

XOXO

P.S. I actually touched upon this headcanon in a drabble that I wrote for my latest Tumblr milestone:

The Impossible 

Summary: “No one is more surprised than Kakashi when he returns from apparent death. He confides his extraordinary experience and the new mystery that has come of it at his next visit to Konoha's memorial stone.”

Pairings: Gen, none

Rated: T, no warnings apply

#kakashi asks #ohayohimawari answer #Kakashi #Kakashi Hatake #Obito #obito uchiha #cya asks #my headcanons #Character Study