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Iruka twitched as Hatake Kakashi handed in yet another report that he blatantly did not write. He scanned it briefly, Genma’s handwriting this time, Iruka was still amazed at Hatake’s ability to foist off unwanted paperwork on his subordinates. Iruka didn’t think he’d ever seen a report the man actually filled out himself.
He probably shouldn’t take it personally. After all Hatake had a list of bad habits as long as his arm from skipping out on restaurant bills, to reading porn in public. It was just that this habit affected Iruka personally. Hatake handed in his paperwork days, weeks, and on one memorable occasion months late, and Iruka could only presume it was because it took him time to convince other people to do it for him. It was making Iruka’s job harder, and considering his other job involved arming hordes of small children with sharp pointy objects, it would be nice if his mission room work at least could go smoothly.
He glared at Hatake, who didn’t even have the good grace to look ashamed of himself. Then he looked back down at the report, and twitched again. The bastard hadn’t even bothered to read it through. Iruka could tell because clearly Genma had thought adding in lines of obscene poetry at random intervals would be hilarious. (The prankster in Iruka had to admire the execution. Subtle, but effective.) It was the last straw. Iruka lost his temper.
“If you’re going to blatantly pass off your subordinate’s work as your own, you could at least read through it before you hand it in.” Iruka wasn’t shouting, the mission room might be empty aside from the two of them at this time of night, but other people worked in the Hokage tower, and he didn’t want to make a scene. He wasn’t shouting but his voice was tense with tightly contained anger. Hatake’s eye widened a little.
“Maa don’t you think you’re overreacting a little.”
“How am I meant to react when someone hands me a report full of obscene poetry?”
“Really, are you sure?”
“Yes I’m sure.” Iruka turned the paper and pointed sharply at the offending passages. “Look at this. I think it’s pretty clear don’t you.” Hatake shifted awkwardly.
“Well I suppose…”
“Suppose nothing. This is the final straw Hatake. We are going to sit here, and you are for once going to fill in your own report, and neither of us is leaving until you do.” Iruka grabbed a spare report sheet out of his desk drawer and slammed it down in front of Hatake, who was starting to look increasingly nervous.
“Are you sure this is really necessary. I’m sure we both have lots of better things to be doing. How about I bring it by tomorrow morning?” Iruka was implacable.
“No we are doing this now.” Hatake stared helplessly at the page.
“It’s not going to bite you. Come on, the sooner you start the sooner you’ll finish.” Hatake just looked at him pleadingly. Iruka sighed. “Just get it over with.” Hatake looked down and away.
“I can’t.” It was the smallest voice Iruka had ever heard the man use.
“What?”
“I can’t write the report.”
“What do you mean you can’t write the report? It’s not that difficult.” But even as he spoke the pieces started to come together in Iruka’s mind. He knew that look in Hatake’s eye, shame, and frustration, and desperation. He’d seen it in the eyes of plenty of his students over the years. He’d just never seen it on an adult before.
“I don’t know the words.” And Kakashi was looking anywhere but at Iruka, embarrassed the same way Naruto had been when Iruka had figured out why he wasn’t handing his homework in. Exactly the same way, and by all that was holy how had no-one figured out sooner that the copy nin was illiterate?
“You can’t read.” Iruka said. It wasn’t a question. Kakashi bristled.
“I can read.”
“But not well enough to write your own reports.” Kakashi slumped a little before admitting.
“No. Not well enough to write my own reports.” Iruka had to take a moment to absorb that revelation. Kakashi, and somehow somewhere in that conversation Iruka had started thinking of him as Kakashi, rather than Hatake, maybe because you can’t know something that personal about someone without feeling a little closer to them, Kakashi had been an active ninja for years, how could something like this have gone under the radar for so long.
“How…” Kakashi seemed to know what he was trying to ask.
“You know I graduated early?” Iruka nodded. Everyone knew that. “To be exact, I graduated when I was five, on the basis of my physical skills. I never did get any reading lessons after that.”
“But surely your Jounin sensei…”
“There was a war on. Sensei was more concerned with making sure I could use my weapons properly, than teaching me to fill in reports.” And god Iruka could see it. A village at war and a sensei desperate to give his student all the tools he would need to survive it, and things that slipped between the cracks. Things that must have seemed unimportant at the time, with death around every corner, but…
“Words are weapons too you know Kakashi.” Iruka said softly. “They matter. Even if you’re right, and there really was no time, he should have taught you after. Everyone has a right to learn to read.”
“In his defence, there was a lot of other stuff going on at the time, and by that point he might have assumed I’d learned somewhere else.” Iruka let his silence speak for itself.
“It just… it got harder and harder you know. The longer I left it the harder it got to ask for help, and after a while people just assumed, and I let them because I was ashamed. Because the great Hatake Kakashi can barely read, and I couldn’t bring myself to admit it.”
“How did no-one notice you weren’t writing reports? It must have come up fairly early in your shinobi career.” Iruka was careful to keep his voice neutral. This was obviously a sensitive subject for Kakashi.
“Well when I was younger Minato sensei wrote all our mission reports, and then when I got assigned to a team, my teammate Rin used to write them for all of us because she had the best handwriting, and no one in their right mind would have trusted Obito to get his own reports in on time. After they died I was in Anbu for a long time, and Anbu give their reports verbally, so the literacy thing never came up.”
“And when you left Anbu, you decided to foist all your paperwork off on anyone who didn’t move fast enough and play it off as being laziness.” Iruka said with a certain dry amusement. He had to admit Kakashi had been very convincing.
“Yep, pretty much.” Kakashi looked relieved at the change of tone so Iruka took the opportunity to ask something that had been bothering him.
“I do have one question though. Why the pornographic novels?”
“Honestly. It’s because if people think you’re reading porn, they don’t ask questions about what you’re reading. And if they do you can usually scare them off by pretending to quote something about heaving bosoms.” Kakashi smiled under his mask, and Iruka found himself wondering how he’d missed Kakashi’s sly sense of humour.
“I could teach you, you know.” Kakashi looked at him slightly confused. “If you wanted to that is. I could teach you to read and write.” Iruka laughed a little, “After all, I am a teacher. It’s practically my job.” Kakashi’s face was carefully blank, but the slight hitch in his breath told Iruka how much he wanted what the other was offering. He could barely even admit it to himself but he wanted, and Iruka found it more than a little heartbreaking that Kakashi had been denied such a simple basic thing.
“Yes.” Kakashi said, in something half a breath away from a whisper. “I want to learn.”
…
Kakashi’s head was spinning as he left the mission room. Heknowsheknowsheknows, was the thought running through his head. Fuck. No-one knew, fifteen years of service, and none of his teammates, comrades, superiors had ever realized, and then some random, mission room, desk chuunin just managed to figure it out, all by himself. Kakashi wasn’t sure how to deal with that. He wasn’t sure how to deal with it so he did what he always did when the world stopped making sense. He went to the memorial stone to talk to Sensei.
He stood there in front of the stone and considered what to say. Where to begin. The habit of silence caught at his tongue, even now, with the secret known. He didn’t know how to say it.
At least the chunin, Umino Iruka, he thought his name was, at least he had been nice about it. Kakashi had nightmares about how people would react when they worked it out. Would it be pity, laughter, disgust? Would any of them respect him if they knew he couldn’t even read?
Iruka still respected him. He could tell. The man had been sympathetic, but he hadn’t seemed to think any less of Kakashi because of it. Just curiosity, and more than a little anger at how such a situation could arise. He’d known when to stop pushing as well, he’d known when to defuse the situation with humour before Kakashi could fall apart with the sheer embarrassment of it. He was probably a good teacher, good with people.
“I think I made a friend today sensei.” He said, still trying to find the thread of what he wanted to say.
“His name’s Iruka. At least I’m pretty sure that’s his name. Couldn’t exactly read his name badge, but that’s what the other chunin called him.” Kakashi fell silent for a moment.
“He’s nice. I think you’d like him. He’s got a temper, but when he sees someone in trouble he tries to help.” Kakashi smiled softly before continuing, with a kind of disbelieving wonder that belonged to someone much younger than his twenty years.
“He said he’d teach me to read.” After that he was quiet for a long time.
“Did you know Sensei? Did you know I couldn’t read properly? I never was quite sure. I was only five when you got me, you must have known I couldn’t read then. Did you think someone else taught me? Did it just not occur to you? Or did you think it wasn’t important, that it could wait?” He waited for a moment, he wasn’t entirely sure why, waited for a response he knew wouldn’t come.
“I think I understand why you might have thought that. But I’m not sure you were right. I think maybe you took it for granted a bit. You weren’t wrong, we were at war, there was no time, and I needed to learn to fight. But I think maybe we should have made time. Reading matters. Not just for writing reports and stuff. Iruka says that words are weapons, and he’s right. There’s a power in reading that most people don’t realise because they don’t know what it’s like not to have it.” He sighed.
“But then again maybe you didn’t know. I never said anything, maybe you thought I learned on my own.” He gave a humourless laugh. “I guess it’s too late now to be asking these questions, but I thought you’d want to know. Iruka said he’d teach me to read, so I guess things worked out, just a little. I’m going to learn this.” Kakashi traced the names on the stone with his fingertips before leaving as silently as he came.
…