Anonymous

How do you see Sasuke's and Kakashi's relationship?

This response ended up being just over 5000 words long so I had to put it under a cut. Thank you so much for sending this question in, it’s a topic that I’m fascinated by but have a lot of scattered thoughts about. I usually have a theme that I’m trying to go around when I write these, but this time I didn’t, so I went in chronological order and offered my thoughts on as many aspects of the relationship as I could think of. The beginning is quite ramble-y but as my thoughts developed they became more structured. This probably isn’t what you or anyone wanted when you sent the ask in, but I got excited. This hasn’t been proofread so please forgive any spelling or grammatical errors I know I’ll find later. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Tl;dr: Kakashi goes from being the biggest source of Sasuke’s feelings of safety, support, and security to being one of the biggest sources of Sasuke’s insecurity, feelings of being misunderstood, and mistrust of others.

Okay so



I think for the beginning bit of part one their relationship was kinda a fluctuating wave between respect and disrespect, and I think Kakashi viewed Sasuke with a combination of pity and caution.

At the beginning of the series Sasuke is ready to respect Kakashi basically until Kakashi falls for Naruto’s dumb eraser prank, and then Sasuke immediately starts questioning him– “is he really a jonin?” After this Kakashi straight up tells all of Team Seven that he hates them– yeah, great first impression to make on a bunch of kids that you’re probably going to be stuck training.

Then again, we have to account for the fact that Kakashi probably DOESN’T think he’s going to be stuck training them– he’s failed every single team that came his way before, why would this one be any different? (maybe because this team has the last surviving Uchiha and the jinchuuriki of the Village on it and actually if you wanna take this conspiracy further the fact that Kakashi gives them another chance even though they failed is QUITE INTERESTING but I digress). Regardless, Kakashi then asks all of them to introduce themselves and is shown to be a bit wary when Sasuke states what his goals are, claiming he predicted as much with regards to the revenge thing. Kakashi doesn’t tell Team Seven anything about himself because he has no idea how to work with teenagers.

When we first get to the bell test Sasuke starts taking Kakashi seriously when he tells them they’ll need to come at him with killer intent, can’t decide whether he respects a dude who fights while reading a book and then by the end of it gets very angry with Kakashi for failing them and saying they’ll have to go back to the Academy for lack of teamwork, to which Kakashi responds by calling him a punk

By the way if any of you actually think Kakashi was a good teacher to Sasuke you’re sorely mistaken Kakashi is a terrible teacher fire him

Sasuke, humiliated at this point, finally grudgingly listens to Kakashi (because it seems like everyone thinks the way to earn his respect is to humiliate him) and later is relieved when Kakashi passes their team because of Sasuke’s actions (i.e. feeding Naruto). We never really get a look at what Sasuke thinks of that because the teamwork was honestly all him and people never give the kid enough credit but knowing him he probably just looked at it and saw “I should work with Sakura and Naruto because it’s effective with this teacher” instead of “I did a good thing.”

In the Land of Wave arc Kakashi protects the team– he never really claims this to be an act of kindness, just says that he will always protect his comrades and honestly

People talk about this scene and how important it is that Kakashi took care of them but at this stage taking care of them is LITERALLY HIS JOB. The mission escalated beyond their scope of ability– they were supposed to be on a C-rank and it turned into an A-rank– OF COURSE HE PROTECTED THEM. He wouldn’t just be a shitty human being but he’d literally not be doing his job anymore if he didn’t. (He was supposed to bring Seven home when he found this out but let Tazuna guilt trip him into staying which is pretty messed up because it puts the genin kids in danger and also goes against Kakashi’s principles lol because you don’t protect your comrades by endangering them and also you break the rules so not only is Kakashi worse than scum by his own standards he’s basically the scummiest scum)

Anyway, personal gripes aside. There’s a moment where Sasuke’s literally about to commit suicide because he doesn’t think there’s any other way out of the situation and Kakashi reassures him that he’s going to protect him– I think this is an essential moment in Kakashi and Sasuke’s relationship because Sasuke is so used to having no one there for him, so used to being completely alone with nobody in the world caring about him to a point where he literally thinks that in the face of danger if he can’t think of a solution then he’s as good as dead that when Kakashi tells Sasuke he’ll protect him it’s honestly earth-shattering. Someone is looking out for him– someone capable, an actual adult figure in a caretaking position is ensuring that he won’t be harmed. That means a lot. It might mean the world to him. I think it was an important moment for Kakashi too because he understood exactly what Sasuke was thinking– understood that he had to tell Sasuke he’s going to be there for him because he knows that Sasuke expects that he won’t be. He knows how alone he is, he saw Sasuke’s face when Sasuke realized that there’s somebody actually there. The Land of Wave arc functioned to establish a lot of what Team Seven’s relationships would be like as well as start showing us the Horrors of the Ninja World. Another thing we get is the introduction to Kakashi’s Sharingan, the functions of which Sasuke himself ends up explaining to Naruto, and that adds a shakiness to his relationship with Kakashi but also a very weird connection. Only Uchiha are supposed to have it. Kakashi is not an Uchiha. How did Kakashi get it? But I think those questions are calmed down a bit after it’s shown that Kakashi intends to protect Sasuke.

There’s a bunch of random stuff that happens but I won’t get into all of it, I wanna cut instead to the Chuunin Exams. I think at this point Kakashi and Sasuke’s relationship is slowly beginning to strengthen. By letting Team Seven join, Kakashi shows to Sasuke that he’s taking Sasuke’s life as a ninja seriously, something that to him would look like a good thing. After Sasuke has Orochimaru’s curse mark put on him, this is where the ball really starts rolling. Kakashi only finds out about it once Sasuke has finished his match in the preliminary stage of the Chuunin Exams, and as soon as that happens Kakashi takes him behind to have the curse mark sealed. This is the first time they’re alone but not the last for this arc. Sasuke is very vulnerable at this point and Kakashi begins to focus his attention on him. Sasuke starts to feel safe around Kakashi, something that started back in the Land of Wave. It hurts him a lot when the actual sealing is done, but he does his best to heed Kakashi’s words and not give in to the power that the curse mark offers him. After this, Kakashi starts to train Sasuke privately.

I’ve talked about this many times before but I want to go over just how messed up Kakashi’s training methods are.

First, he has Sasuke literally break out of the hospital to meet Kakashi for training. No like last time we saw him before he broke out he looked like this

Is that the face of someone who should be leaving before a doctor says he can? And Kakashi saw him in this state because he protects Sasuke from Kabuto and look at his reaction to Sasuke “I broke out of the hospital to train” Uchiha

SO YOU’RE FINALLY HERE

WHY DIDN’T YOU BREAK OUT SOONER SASUKE

DON’T YOU KNOW THAT THE BEST TRAINING IS THE KIND YOU DO WHILE YOUR BODY IS GOING THROUGH HELL

Well it’s probably because this is the stupid Leaf Village and they think behavior like this is heroic

When Sasuke found Kakashi in this scene he’s literally attempting to climb a mountain with one hand and nearly falls and dies this is the kind of thing that’s considered admirable in the Good Ol’ Leaf Village—fuck.

The scenes where Kakashi trains Sasuke are short, but there’s a part where he’s clearly tired and coughing from the effort exerted and all Kakashi has to say is “Do it again.” There’s no encouragement to take breaks—nothing, in fact, we’re expected to believe that the reason Sasuke is late to his match is because he and Kakashi were still training (My quip with that scene is that Kakashi tells everyone they weren’t late for no reason before explaining chidori but like, Sasuke can only do chidori twice a day so they wouldn’t be practicing it the day of the match, and that excuse is stupid anyway because all the other teachers had their students fully ready by the time the matches actually arrived so even if they were late because of training that just shows Kakashi has poor work ethic and can’t keep a deadline which isn’t surprising but wow what a liar)

The fact that Kakashi works Sasuke so hard is, in my opinion, extremely important for why he later ends up leaving Konoha, but I’ll talk about that in a bit

In these scenes, Kakashi compares Sasuke to himself by saying that they’re alike in ability, but I think to Kakashi it probably went deeper than that. Teaching Sasuke the technique he invented—and because of Sasuke’s Sharingan he’s the only person who Kakashi could teach it to—is a personal thing. When Kakashi looks at Sasuke he sees a little version of himself and wants to share his things with him, but that’s not necessarily a good thing and leads to a lot of the problems in their relationship.

I’m going to stop talking about the Chuunin Exams now and move on.

In the scene where Itachi returns to Konoha, before all the havoc starts, there’s a scene where Sasuke looks specifically for Kakashi and tells Kakashi he’s early for training. Once again they were going to train one on one, and the fact that Sasuke comments on it like it’s strange tells us that Sasuke always comes on time even though he expects Kakashi to be late because he’s a cutie they still train together regularly and Sasuke has become comfortable enough in the situation to even mention things like this (around Land of Waves arc it was Sakura and Naruto that got on Kakashi’s case and Sasuke remained silent and occasionally thought something deriding to himself)

Later on, Sasuke is sitting alone thinking to himself about how inferior he feels to Naruto and wonders how he can get the kind of power Naruto has (at this point Sasuke doesn’t know Naruto has the Kyuubi) and goes looking for Kakashi to train with

In fact, he goes straight to Kakashi’s house and into his room

Sasuke’s been here before and this is something he’s familiar with and comfortable doing, clearly. His immediate solution to his insecurities is to specifically seek Kakashi out

LOOK AT HIM HE JUST WALKS IN LIKE IT’S NOTHING

and then the concern that immediately writes itself across his face when he sees Kakashi in the bed

He turns to all the other Jonin and demands to know why Kakashi is sleeping I’m sorry I’m just narrating right now but honestly Sasuke feels so comfortable with Kakashi by now and seeing him in this state throws him off so badly

And then everything goes to hell when he finds out that Itachi did this to Kakashi and that Itachi is back in the Village and going after Naruto—let’s keep in mind that this is after Sasuke’s “I never want to see those I hold dear die again” and that’s TWO people he holds dear at this point being threatened—

I’m getting off topic sorry I just yeah

Anyway after this part Sasuke’s in a coma for a while and at this point his self-esteem has completely plummeted and when he wakes up we get the rooftop encounter with Naruto which Kakashi ends up stopping

This is the first time that we see any kind of friction between Kakashi and Sasuke since he called Sasuke a punk. After the fight, we get this lovely one-sided conversation

Kakashi accuses Sasuke of having a superiority complex, tells Sasuke that he’s misunderstood the purpose of the technique Kakashi shared with him and calls Sasuke immature. He questions he origins of the behavior, which denies that these kinds of actions might fit in with who Sasuke is as a person and basically tells Sasuke the way he’s behaving doesn’t line up with the person Kakashi sees him as being… and considering that this actually is the type of person Sasuke is right now, that’s hurtful. Look at the glare he gets, seriously. Kakashi knows that the only possible explanation for this is that Sasuke met Itachi again, but instead of approaching him with concern or even a gentle reprehension before positing himself as someone that Sasuke can talk to about his worries or trying to work with Sasuke to understand why he’s acting like this, he insults him repeatedly. This puts a huge, huge, huge divide between Kakashi and Sasuke, especially because Sasuke had become so COMFORTABLE with Kakashi that it starts to feel like a person who was his ally has turned against him.

But the final straw doesn’t happen until later, in the famous tie-your-student-to-a-tree-and-lecture-him scene. Sasuke is trying to cool off, sitting in a tree thinking to himself, and we get this

Everything that he’s worked on so far feels like a waste of time, all those long, hard hours of work with Kakashi on a regular basis as we know from the fact that he was still training with Kakashi after the Chuunin Exams feel like they were worth nothing. He thinks about Naruto and all the progress that he was able to make, and this is when he begins to doubt Kakashi even if not directly. This is where Kakashi decides to intervene—this is his chance to be there for Sasuke and to offer him some help

And he starts by tying Sasuke up, literally restricting his motions so that Sasuke can’t make any choices about whether he wants to listen to Kakashi or not. When Sasuke demands an explanation, Kakashi explains that if he didn’t restrict him that Sasuke would run away, reinforcing what he said earlier about Sasuke’s immaturity. He doesn’t think Sasuke has the capacity to sit and listen to criticism, he thinks Sasuke has the impulse control of an animal and needs to be forcibly kept in place. From the very beginning, the interaction is hostile. Then Kakashi begins his speech with “Sasuke… quit seeking revenge.”

He makes it extremely clear that he does not support Sasuke in his goal—his one, singular goal, the goal that Sasuke told Kakashi he is after in life the very first time that they met, the one that Kakashi knows he is doing all of this for—all the training, all the meetings with Kakashi were for the express purpose of working toward his revenge. Kakashi goes on to say that he’s seen how other people that take this path end up going “bad” because after getting revenge they weren’t satisfied, which basically groups Sasuke with a bunch of faceless people that Kakashi frames as antagonistic. He then attempts to get through to Sasuke by talking about the pain Sasuke will suffer, but by this point it’s too late. Sasuke attempts to counter him, not wanting to be grouped with the likes of those and says “What if I were to kill everyone you loved most?” in an attempt to make Kakashi empathize with him, because at this point he feels severely misunderstood

To which Kakashi responds that no such people exist, and Sasuke reacts with anger—maybe because he thought of himself as being someone important to Kakashi, maybe because he think Kakashi is trying to approximate his situation falsely—but then Kakashi says it’s because they’ve already been killed. At this point Sasuke is actually listening and clearly feels terrible

And then he tells Sasuke that while they aren’t lucky they aren’t the worst off because they’ve found companions, which makes Sasuke feel more terrible

I kinda feel like people underestimate what the effects of this really are. He’s basically telling Sasuke that the way he’s felt is wrong, that he should be grateful to have friends like Naruto and Sakura instead of being upset, even though his upset is perfectly reasonable. He goes on to guilt Sasuke even more about using the chidori against Naruto, and then tells Sasuke to think about whether or not he can follow the path that Kakashi has outlined. Not whether or not he wants to, but whether or not he is capable of doing so. He doesn’t offer Sasuke support or comfort, but rather an ultimatum. Can you move on, or not?

Immediately after, the Sound Four attack Sasuke, and Sasuke isn’t able to beat them. Because he’s in such a tight spot, he breaks the seal that Kakashi put on his curse mark, and then they beat him even then and reveal their own curse marks are more advanced than Sasuke’s. By breaking the seal on the curse mark, Sasuke has already broken part of his promise to Kakashi. He realizes that he can’t follow the path that Kakashi has laid out for him—he’s broken Kakashi’s ultimatum. Later, at the Valley of the End, he will tell Naruto that he thought he might be able to stay in the Leaf, but that he realized that he can’t live a life like that. The key word is can’t.

So Sasuke leaves, and once he does, Kakashi feels that he’s failed. He gave it his best shot—offering Sasuke training and attempting to lecture and guilt him out of revenge, but it didn’t work. He feels bad because he promised Sakura it’d be all right, Naruto got hurt in the process, and he let Sasuke fall through the cracks—he let Sasuke become one of those people who gets on the revenge path and can’t get off it. And because he sees Sasuke as himself when he was younger, it feels like he just let someone who he could’ve saved—someone who could’ve learned to live with it like he did—turn into what Kakashi thinks he might’ve had Obito not got involved. He doesn’t see Sasuke as a person who values teamwork, he sees Sasuke as a utilitarian who will throw bonds aside in pursuit of his goals the way Kakashi would.

The problem with this is that that’s really not Sasuke’s nature. As I already said, Sasuke was the one who brought teamwork to Seven. Sasuke is willing to cooperate with people and has shown himself to be protective even at his own expense like when he sacrifices himself to save Naruto in the Land of Wave. Kakashi has been seeing himself in Sasuke… but Sasuke was never what Kakashi feared him to be in the first place. By treating Sasuke like he was, he ended up boxing him onto a path that fit in with Kakashi’s understanding of reality. If you want revenge you’ll leave. If you don’t want revenge you’ll stay. There was never any middle ground, no option where Sasuke could stay and still get his revenge. It was always move on, and never let’s work through this.

This is already so long but if you’ve read this far that’s actually amazing and I don’t wanna leave it hanging so let’s get into Part Two now, going straight into the Kage Summit arc.

At this point, Kakashi and Sasuke have not interacted at all. All Kakashi knows is that Itachi died, and Sasuke still didn’t return. At this point he’s probably feeling ready to give up on him when Obito comes and tells Kakashi and Naruto the truth about Itachi and Sasuke’s goals. Let me say that again for emphasis—Kakashi knows the truth about Itachi, and about Sasuke’s goals.

It is with that background knowledge that Kakashi meets Sasuke for the first time since he tied Sasuke to that tree and told him to give up on revenge. Sasuke attempts to kill Sakura after she attempts to kill Sasuke first, and then Kakashi gets in the way to protect her. He tells Sasuke that he blames himself for Team Seven’s suffering because he is the leader, and apologizes for having been a “terrible sensei”. Sasuke gives us this face:

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but he looks kind of sad and curious and like he’s genuinely listening to what Kakashi is saying.

And then Kakashi has to fuck it up.

He turns sternly to Sasuke, tells him that he hates having to repeat himself, Sasuke now looks like this:

No longer sad, this face is all about business. Kakashi’s next sentence is “Stop your obsession with revenge.”

The key word here is obsession. Kakashi, who knows the truth about what happened to the Uchiha clan, treats Sasuke as though his desire for vengeance at this point is nothing but a foolish fixation. Sasuke doesn’t know that Kakashi knows, and honestly, in my opinion, Kakashi’s lucky for it. It doesn’t surprise me at all that Sasuke’s reacts like this:



I think it’s a little kinder than he needed to be, honestly. After expressing his pain, expressing his desire for his family to come back to life before he can stop his “obsession” with vengeance—and let’s keep in mind that if Kakashi didn’t know the truth it might be fair that he thinks Sasuke is extreme, but he does know—Kakashi warns Sasuke that he doesn’t want to kill him. At this point Sasuke has had enough, tells Kakashi that he can’t be killed so easily and demands that Kakashi stop speaking to him as if he’s still Sasuke’s sensei. Because Sasuke used to care what Kakashi said. He used to trust Kakashi, but not anymore. The safe person that Sasuke used to think Kakashi was isn’t who Kakashi turned out to be—instead, Kakashi is a person who sees Sasuke as childish with an unjustified obsession with vengeance and bloodlust and doesn’t care at all about Sasuke’s worries or his goals. Kakashi is someone who silently considers what might be happening in Sasuke’s mind and never vocalizes it or offers Sasuke anything. In fact, his response to all of this is that Madara has corrupted Sasuke—Kakashi doesn’t think of Sasuke as a person with agency who is capable of thought and making his own choices. Like many others in this series, he thinks that Sasuke just follows whatever path is laid out for him, and like so many others in this series, he’s mostly just upset that Sasuke didn’t follow the path that HE prescribed—the one where Sasuke has perfect control over all his impulses and stays in the Leaf Village and lets Naruto and Sakura magically heal all of his pain—and blames corruption because he doesn’t want to acknowledge that maybe Sasuke would choose this path of his own accord. He wants to think that any sane, good person would’ve chosen what Kakashi chose.

At this point, Kakashi decides that Sasuke is hopeless, and needs to be killed. Sasuke by now is completely repulsed by Kakashi and brings up Kakashi’s Sharingan, and the fact that he awakened the Mangekyo and that his Mangekyo saved his life, telling Kakashi he should be grateful to the Uchiha. All Sasuke sees when he looks to the Leaf Village is people who get to live in peace at the expense of his clan’s spilled blood and Itachi and Sasuke’s own suffering, and because he doesn’t know the source of Kakashi’s Sharingan, he thinks Kakashi is the absolute pinnacle of that. A person who literally relies on the techniques of the Uchiha for his trademark style of fighting—people call him Sharingan Kakashi because he relies on it so heavily—and for his life, because he used the Sharingan to save him in different scenarios. Whatever meaningful bond that they used to have is now completely in tatters. Sasuke no longer has any sympathy or respect for Kakashi, and Kakashi has no understanding of Sasuke at all.

It makes Sasuke’s treatment of Kakashi in the war arc very understandable. Kakashi disgusts him, and the fact that he isn’t even adding anything to help that Sasuke can see makes him seem worse than disgusting but even useless. Kakashi doesn’t care about Sasuke anymore, so Sasuke doesn’t care about him. Kakashi really is like Sakura, in that he doesn’t get Sasuke at all and only sees what he wants to see when he looks at Sasuke—the difference being that Kakashi only sees negative qualities that he hates about his younger self where Sakura has a different image of Sasuke. Sasuke and Kakashi’s conversation in this arc are kept to a minimum, neither saying more than what is necessary to each other, basically up until Sakura confesses her love to Sasuke once more. (We also get a lovely panel of Kakashi finally admitting that he likes Team Seven after they kill Kaguya, because, ya know, they were never worth much to him before until they killed a literal alien goddess?? Okay Kakashi).

After Sasuke stabs her in the genjutsu, Kakashi speaks up to defend Sakura. He tells Sasuke that Sakura really loves him, and Sasuke replies that he doesn’t love Sakura or see any reason why Sakura would love him. Kakashi counters this by saying that love doesn’t need a reason—in other words, Sakura doesn’t need a reason to love you, and you don’t need a reason to love her. He goes on to talk about how Sakura cries about Sasuke all the time out of love for him while Sasuke stands there looking thoroughly irritated out of his mind because once again, Kakashi has failed to heed anything that Sasuke actually says, and repeats that this is a thing of the past. In other words, the life Kakashi is describing isn’t the one that Sasuke wants anymore.

The last time in the series that we see them interact with one another is in 699. Sasuke is about to go on his Redemption Journey and he, Sakura, and Kakashi are standing outside the gates of the Leaf Village. Kakashi informs Sasuke that under normal circumstances he’d be imprisoned for life, but that because of his actions in the war he’s been pardoned—and then goes on to remind Sasuke that it’s all really thanks to Naruto and Kakashi’s own word as sixth Hokage that this is possible. In other words, he’s reminding Sasuke that he has to be grateful, just as he always wanted Sasuke to be, to his amazing friends that do all these wonderful favours for him like force him to do stuff against his will and make sure that’s he’s not imprisoned forever for crimes that would probably be understandable to the public if Naruto and Kakashi, the two people who actually know, would reveal the truth about the Uchiha clan. And then, what really takes the cake, is his comment “Take it easy and don’t go crazy again.”

I feel like that basically summarizes Kakashi’s attitude toward Sasuke ever since Sasuke first used that chidori against Naruto. It started with obsession with Sasuke’s superiority complex, then obsession with revenge, and now all of Sasuke’s actions can be chalked down to craziness. Kakashi’s language use is so gross and offensive, especially when you take into account that Sasuke suffered serious trauma and is legitimately a mentally ill person, and that so much of his anger was actually justified, but Kakashi dismisses all of it and dismisses mentally ill people by treating them as inherently violent and dangerous. Earlier in the series, when Sasuke declares he wants vengeance against the Leaf, there’s a part where he tells Obito that he doesn’t care if people see him as nothing but an immature child overly fixated on revenge, and I think that comment was a direct reference to Kakashi, because Kakashi was so important to Sasuke and he failed Sasuke so hard. He had no understanding whatsoever of Sasuke and was completely insensitive about mental illness and that never changed over the years even as Sasuke’s life was changing constantly.

At 5000+ words I think I’m finally going to stop here. I guess you could say that overall, Kakashi and Sasuke’s relationship just makes me really sad. Kakashi disappointed Sasuke and in many ways I feel let down by him too. He went from being the ultimate source of security for Sasuke—in the beginning, literally saving Sasuke from himself by offering him protection and support, and then training him which helped Sasuke get on the path to achieve his goals (and this was so personal to Sasuke, he used that chidori as a signature for the rest of his life just like Kakashi used the Sharingan as a signature, they each had something of each other that they utilized in their different ways)—to a big source of Sasuke’s insecurity and mistrust of other people, because that support was conditional, he placed expectations on Sasuke that weren’t fair, projected his own issues onto Sasuke when they really aren’t the same, and lectured Sasuke at every corner instead of asking how Sasuke felt about anything or offering him any support. He overworked Sasuke when he trained him which contributed to Sasuke feeling like he couldn’t get help in the Leaf—if Sasuke couldn’t be close to Naruto in power after working his ass off then what’s the point—and belittled Sasuke and his dreams and concerns. Kakashi did exactly what he said he did—he was a terrible sensei. And that… that really sucks.