A/N: Can you believe there's only ONE other KakashixKabuto story?

(set during Orochimaru's attack on Konoha)

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If Ignorance is Bliss, Knowledge is Pain

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Tag. I'm it.

There is a barely perceivable sound as a lithe body lands behind him, waiting.

But he doesn't turn to look, because he knows who it is. He always knows.

He's too smart for his own good.

And after all, surprises are a spy's worst nightmare.

Either way, it's safer like this. There's only the satisfaction of knowing he's right, and the more satisfying thought of knowing someone else is wrong.

It isn't even arrogance that gives him confidence in his speculations, it's just the truth. It's his job to be right, to know everything, as much as it is his manner to be mildly infuriating.

He knew he would come.

He always knows.

But he knows just as much.

They both know that.

"Kabuto."

He doesn't move, isn't concerned that he was caught so early. It is just a game after all. If he thought as life as a game, he could smile at every new horror the gods threw at him. And he does.

He's smiling now.

He doesn't bother turn around and face him. He knows what he'll find, the man eying him with an apathetic look of disapproval.

They'll be foolish and fair and try to talk first.

They both know it won't work.

"Do you want to fight me?" He asks pleasantly, pushing up the glasses that weren't sliding down. It's a show of confidence, an act of bravado. They both know that, but he does it anyway. It's a tradition, and it seems to fit the atmosphere of fake words and empty acts.

"Kabuto." He's serious. Deathly so.

"Yes, Kakashi-san?" He turns now, he can't help himself. The same thing that makes the sarcasm roll off his tongue forces him to. He wants to see the masked face glare at him through the single eye and the wild silver hair glow in the light of the full moon, if it's for the last time.

"You know why I'm here."

"I do? I'm afraid I'm not as smart as you." He's played this game before.

"I'm supposed to convince you to remain loyal to Konoha."

"Huh. Or…?" Kill him of course. They both know that.

They both know it, so he doesn't answer. He just watches him silently, as if he knows what he's going to say. Which he probably does.

"You'd kill me?" He smiles at him, the darkness casting shadows across his glasses.

He would. They both know that.

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He was waiting for him, among the reek of blood and the masked bodies that lay long past their last breaths.

He knew he would come.

And he knew he had to talk to him. He didn't even know why, but something was making him. It was the same thing that told him to follow Orochimaru years ago.

It was instinct.

He heard the footsteps before the silhouette appeared through the hospital door. When it swung open, the masked shinobi entered and glanced at him without a flicker of surprise.

He'd been expected.

"Yo."

The tone was casual, but they both knew the situation wasn't. The black eye flicked first toward the steady rise and fall of Sasuke's chest behind him, then to the silent bodies littering the floor. Cautiously, his hand pulled up the hitai-ate to reveal the famed sharingan.

"I didn't do anything to him, Kakashi-san. As for the others…they insisted on no visitors and I just had to convince them to let me in." He smirked, impressed at Kakashi's calm demeanor.

"What do you want with Sasuke? I may have to capture and interrogate you depending on your answer." The voice had lost its light quality, but he found the gruffness far more appealing.

Unsure of what his own purpose had been, he shrugged noncommittally, eying the older man's tense form. He was attracted to him, he knew that, even if he tried to deny it. And perhaps Kakashi knew it too.

"Me? The lowly lackey? Nothing. I don't care about the kid."

"Are you connected to Orochimaru?" Stupid question, he thought.

"So many questions. Curiosity killed the cat, or in this case the dog."

"Are all kids these days such pricks?"

"I'm not sure that kind of language is acceptable in a teacher. Besides, I could cut the precious boy's throat right now." He smiled, repeating a practiced gesture as he brought his finger to his glasses.

He wouldn't, he couldn't, and they both knew that.

It seemed this was all that would come of the meeting he had felt fate had arranged, a few petty threats. He had been hoping for something more, something important.

"Do you want to fight me?" Kakashi's voice was soft, hiding his emotions as well as his mask.

"Not really." Kabuto smiled, tilting his head so that the light reflected on his glasses, hiding his eyes. Like that matters. He tensed, expecting the attack he knew would come.

He was wrong.

After years of training, he completely and utterly failed to predict his opponent's next move.

"Me neither." His opponent pulled down his headband and regarded him through a half closed eye.

"What?" Kabuto failed to hide his confusion as Kakashi pulled out his infamous orange book and began to read, dissolving the tension between them. He leaned back against the white wall with a sigh that spoke of weary muscles and tired bones.

He was either stupid, extremely wily, or actually genuine.

And for some reason, a voice was telling him he was the latter.

"So…why were you waiting for me, Yakushi Kabuto?"

He said nothing. He didn't understand the question, neverless the answer.

Kakashi was a jounin of the Leaf. Kabuto was Orochimaru's right hand.

Fate had placed them on opposite sides.

They were supposed to kill each other.

But in this hospital ward, thick with the smell of death among the corpses on the floor, and Sasuke's steady breath keeping the rhythm of their hearts, the sides had somehow disappeared and they became more than two pawns in the game.

He'd been wrong.

The foundations of his confidence shaken, Kabuto thought this over, judging the weight of his reply and the possible consequences of the truth and a lie.

He chose the truth for once, not sure why or how he could. Honesty got people like him killed.

"I guess I found something about you interesting. I'm not…entirely sure." He lips moved slowly, making his words sound clumsy even to his own ears. So this was how it felt to be honest.

His entire life had been spent learning how to deceive. It was like a snake in the body of rabbit, unnatural. It seemed to go against his very nature.

"Hmm…" He didn't look up from his book, which made Kabuto feel like the idiot he was.

"I just felt like, I had to talk to you. Like you were going to…change something for me." He hated not knowing what to say.

"Even though I'm your enemy?"

"That's pointless. Our lives, our ideals, they don't even matter in the big picture. We're all going to end up dead anyway. So how do spend our lives? Killing each other. It's shit."

"What isn't?" Kakashi eyed him appraisingly, the book forgotten.

"Huh?"

"This conversation, whatever we might feel now. It's all shit. Do you think, next time we meet, that this is going to be able to stop us from killing each other? Of course not. Shinobi don't have emotions. All we can do is remember this as one of us ends up dead."

Kabuto knew it was the truth. He was too smart to believe otherwise.

Yet all he could do was shrug.

"Do you deny it?" Kabuto knew why he was asking, the vein in his throat pulsing against his delicate neck. Kakashi wanted to be proved wrong. But they both knew he was right.

"I'm the kind of person that lets the world take me where it wants to." He explained, knowing he was avoiding the answer.

"Me too. It seems we have a bit in common, the two of us. It's too bad we're on opposite sides, we might have been…," he paused as Kabuto watched him out of the corner of his eyes, "friends?"

Kabuto answered with silence as he turned away and brought his finger up to the bridge his glasses, dissolving the peaceful feeling of the room in a single action.

"Life's not that fair."

Annoyed by the hurt he shouldn't have felt, and voices that whispered he had hoped for something more, he jumped through the window behind him without another word.

Kakashi, now alone, stared at the shattered glass over his book, wondering what had just passed between them.

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Through a storm of weapons, chakra, and blood, Kakashi wonders if the young man confronting him is remembering the incident in Sasuke's hospital room.

Looking closely, he knows he is.

He can tell from the smile gracing his dangerous lips, even as Kakashi lunges with white chakra crackling in his hand.

He can tell from the way his eyes never leave his as the force of the blow shatters his glasses, breaking them into shards that fall like tears between them.

He can tell from the expression of amusement that shows through the hair now hanging free around his face, even as his blood stains Kakashi's hand.

And kneeling over his fallen body, the smile surviving as the life slips away, he wonders if the boy knew what could have been between them, if things had been different.

With a memory of a slender finger against glasses he didn't need, and the smile that seemed so devious it was genuine, he knows that Kabuto had known.

In another world, one left untouched by the scars of war, there could have been love.

There would have been love.

And the instant before his life ends, Kabuto closes his eyes with his last thought echoing among the voices in his head.

We both know that.