#by the time i'm done with naruto i'll have giffed everything in the anbu arc and i'm not sorry

[panharmonium]

this sequence doesn’t need any embellishment, but i still think about it constantly.  

i’m thinking about yamato, who, for the first time here, uses his jutsu for his own interests, against the people who trained him to use it only for theirs.

thinking about the fact that kakashi’s arms are still cut up and bleeding from wounds yamato gave him, and yet here he is, breaking law after law, risking his entire life to save someone who two hours ago was trying his best to assassinate him.

thinking about the fact that kakashi comes to the foundation against the hokage’s orders, that he breaks into this facility knowing full well that it amounts to treason, that he deliberately orders yugao away before he does anything illegal, not just so she can get help, but so she can’t be implicated in the choice he’s made.  

thinking about the fact that self-preservation and concern about potential future consequences are things that don’t even register in kakashi’s mind, not when there’s an immediate ethical choice to be made.  in the future, he might be arrested for what he’s about to do.  he might be executed, even.  but all the nebulous, potential future consequences in the world can’t affect his decision, because right now, if he lets danzo do something to yamato, he’s done something wrong.

[it’s like what he says many years later in the manga: to know what is right and choose to ignore it is the act of a coward.]

thinking about how badly danzo wants kakashi dead.  kakashi is the kid he couldn’t ensnare, the one he tried to exploit by preying on the pain of minato’s death but whose spirit was ultimately too strong to be made into another of danzo’s lapdogs.  kakashi foiled all of danzo’s plans three years ago and now he’s foiling all of them again; he can’t be intimidated, he can’t be broken or brought to heel, even lost and hurting and alone as he is - at the most critical moments, he still always does what’s right, not what he’s told.  nothing danzo does can change that.  there’s something guiding kakashi that danzo can’t touch, some kind of moral magnetic north inside him that can’t be cowed by any of danzo’s usual machinations.  kakashi will not be led.  that look he gives danzo when the smoke clears - it’s all fight.  that’s somebody who’s prepared to die for a principle, and danzo doesn’t know what to do with people like that.  he has no power over them.

[thinking, incidentally, about the fact that danzo must have hated kakashi’s father, and that he must hate kakashi even more, because kakashi is the version of sakumo who refuses to recant and who repeatedly decides not to die, despite how badly he wishes he could or thinks he should.]

thinking about kakashi, outnumbered and crouched there with yamato knocked to the ground behind him, preparing to fight his way through every single person who shows up to stop them from reaching the exit, including danzo himself.

thinking about how kakashi is doing all this for someone he barely knows, who tried to kill him, who thought that death was a well-deserved punishment and who fully expected to be forsaken, forgotten, and abandoned to his fate.

thinking about what that must feel like for yamato, who never in a thousand years believed that anyone would come for him.