i. becoming
Kakashi thinks that he does not understand the meaning of death when Hyuuga Neji tells him that Haruno Sakura has gone MIA. He only feels numb.
Rather, he didn't feel much other than a dull, throbbing pain as he punches the Hyuuga Prodigy in the jaw. He feels the way his acquaintances, friends, rival startle into action at his abrupt attack, but he can see nothing more than the red, dull and crass, pain flame across his gray eyes.
The bastard had left Sakura to die.
The anger thaws. He watches the – surviving, his mind seethes traitorously – Hyuuga stumble to his feet, but he doesn't lift his head. His shame is too thick in the air, and the people around them shuffle uneasily at the tension.
Then he moves his hands into his pockets, and lifts out a battered, silver headband.
And Kakashi feels his heart – or what is left of it – break again.
The second time Kakashi punches Hyuuga Neji, the ANBU captain does not stand up. He wouldn't be able to in a long time.
ii. mocking
The next time he is out of his house, he is recovering from a hangover.
His head throbs.
Remorse, he thinks bitterly, is of little value. It does not give any relief, but yet it takes out so much, and leaves so little. His heart is broken, but it is still bleeding. Typical of death to evade him at such times, Kakashi decides. He failed to die when Obito died. He failed to die when Rin died. It would only be fair if he does not die when one of his students die. They want to save him for the pain of the loss.
A fair trade, the Copy Ninja sadly thinks, for all the lives that he has taken without remorse. For all the lives that he had carelessly strewn to a side in the name of rules, regulations, law. A fair trade, he thought, to take away all the ones that he loved.
A fair trade.
iii. dimple shaped tear
Kakashi remembers his other two students when he sees them one week later, lying in the training fields and dirt-covered head to toe.
Naruto lies with his bare back to the grassy slope, and his eyes are shielded from the glare of the sun with his big hand. Bear paws, Sakura used to call them.
Sasuke is motionless, as he usually is, propped up against the bark of an oak. Only that he is more still, and Kakashi hardly has to recall the effects of psychological trauma before he identifies the look on Sasuke's face.
He thinks that he himself must be a splitting image of the avenger.
They don't see him at first, but when they do they barely turn to face him. Sasuke watches blankly as he approaches, and Kakashi understands his need to savor his pain in solitude.
He respects it, because he would have wanted the same.
He sees Naruto lift his hand sluggishly from his face and towards the sun. The rays creep through the junctions between his open fingers and crisscross on his forehead, face, cheeks. The sunlight distorts the laugh lines and morphs them, line by line, into lines of ambiguity.
Kakashi recognizes the expression. The Uchiha wears it. He believes that he himself wears it too.
The pain, Kakashi thinks; Naruto is shaking, and his suppressed whimpers turn into frame wracking sobs. He hand blocks his eyes, but the tears leave a trail from cheek to ear, wetting the earth with his agony.
Sasuke does not stir, but tears trail slowly, but surely, from his onyx eyes to his chin. His eyes are no longer bottomless, but brimming, and overflowing, with self-blame.
Kakashi does not find it within him to feel the shame of seeing a man cry, and the tears that escape his own eyes – eyes that have seen war, agony, death – leave little room for remorse.
Team seven mourns.
They mourn for the misgivings of this cruel world. They mourn for the ruthlessness of a cheated fate. They mourn for the family that taken so much, but never too much, out of every one of them, and they mock their own weakness at how easy it was to break them apart.
iv. spring
It is almost three months later when Kakashi sees Naruto at Ichimaru with the Hyuuga heiress. He sees him offer a tentative smile to the woman, and her face blossoms into one of grateful relief.
Things heal, Kakashi thinks, with time.
v. try
"Get out of my fucking sight!" Sasuke roars as Naruto seethes in front of the furious Uchiha. Sometimes Naruto is just too thickheaded to back down from a fight.
"Why the fuck should I?" Naruto roars back, and his cerulean eyes are navy in his anger, "Who are you to say that we shouldn't go on a four man S-class? Who made you in fucking charge?"
Kakashi sees Sasuke try to withhold his words, but they seem to burst from his mouth without his consent and he snarls, "since Sakura died. We promised," his voice breaks, "to bring her along. I will not… break it."
Naruto sees his pained expression, and his façade recedes, dissolves, dissolves, dissolves until his is no longer a human version of the irate kyuubi, but rather a trembling bundle of frayed emotions.
"I know," he whispers, his voice thickening, "Trust me. I do."
vi. multitude
A year. This is how long it takes them to slowly move on, baby step by baby step, to move out of the shadow of Sakura's death. This is how long it takes for them to store away her memories – her clothing, her equipment, her pictures – into the corners of the Uchiha compound that they had shared when they were still a complete team, a family of four.
It is their first four man mission in a full year, and still Kakashi feels lethargic at the motion of moving any other part of him other than his feet. The mood is dull when they make their exit from the Konoha gates, and this time the fourth man on their team is Shikamaru, who is too lazy to confront the melancholic atmosphere.
They are silent in their journey to the Wave country, and when they make camp they go over their obligations (the Akatsuki) and their destination once more, just in case.
They all know the scrolls front and back, but they knew Sakura would have insisted. Shikamaru marvels at this, but doesn't comment.
The next day they continue on their journey, and as they are about to settle camp for the day, prospects lift as they come across two dark-clad figures, and the red clouds on their cloaks are just too easy to recognize. The pressure of the mission has both Naruto and Sasuke looking direly for some fighting, but surprisingly Sasuke finds himself only remotely happy at this turn of events.
There are some things, Sasuke realizes then - and even he is surprised by the weight and truth in his thoughts – that are more worth it.
The fight is short, but the ANBU team finds themselves cutting the better end of the deal as they depart with only minor injuries, while the Akatsuki cut a quick retreat with one man clutching his gapping side, courtesy of Kakashi's chidori.
The fighting is refreshing, and Team seven, along with Shikamaru, finds it much easier to breath as they speed along the trees, towards the blinking lights of a town shrouded with the approaching twilight.
vii. lost
Team seven sleeps soundly for the first time in months after Sakura's departure, though they did not know if it were for the serenity that weaves itself in the streets of the town or some unknown emotion that leaves them so deeply at rest.
At six in the morning Kakashi wakes, more of habit than of will, to the purplish blue predawn. It is still dark about, but Kakashi finds himself rising from his spread on the inn room floor, though he does not know what impulse leads him to do so. Instead, he slips on his sandals and in his yukata, disappears from the window and leaves the other three soundly sleeping through the early hours of day.
The town is silent, peaceful. There are only sounds of cats mewling and a few barks here and there as Kakashi makes his way across the small town and into the rural areas covered only in grass with dirt packed roads and tall green trees. The merchants are barely up, and the market is still mostly quiet while the people of this village slumber. Kakashi feels the weight that is pressing on his chest lift a little at the tranquility of the place, and he feels, for a moment in time, happy once more in this place that he does not know.
viii. and found
Kakashi is hardly paying attention to where he is going until he hears laughter nearby, behind a high wall. His senses tingle at the feeling of chakra pulsing from the other side, and he is instantly wary, taking special notice to mask his own chakra as he scales the wall and silently makes his way to the top. He looks into what seems to be a garden, and what he sees takes his breath away.
ix. soaring
Sakura is there. She looks completely fine, like she used to be, Kakashi's mind supplies him, but he is too shocked, too filled with emotion, happiness, that he does not register that thought until later. And he is happy.
Happy. The emotion is so alien in him that he takes a few moments to identify the warmth that accompanies happiness. Tears escape his eyes unbidden but he finds that he does not care. He only cares that she is alive.
And she is happy as well, his mind replies again as her laugh, like a bell chime, rebounds back to his ears. He snaps out of his elated thoughts and sees for the first time the man sitting across from her. And too his alarm, the man is none other than the target of their elimination.
Uchiha Itachi.
Kakashi hardly refrains himself from racing over and throwing himself between the S-class killer and his innocent student, and his momentary happiness is swiftly forgotten in the face of such a twist of fate.
It would be characteristic of them, Kakashi thinks desperately as he calculates the time that is needed for him to appear at Sakura's side without the Uchiha's knowing, to take away what team seven needs the most the moment it comes within their grasp.
He hears her soft laughter again, and this time, more aware of his surroundings, he looks closely at their interaction. What he sees shocks him for the second time of the day.
Sakura is smiling, her hands on his abdomen, as her flaring green chakra softly envelopes the wound the Kakashi's chidori inflicted. Kakashi watches the skin knit back together and looks, entranced, at the way Itachi's hands dance across Sakura's arms, waist, and face.
Kakashi's mind tumults as he faintly considers Sakura a traitor to her own village.
His attention is drawn back to the pair as Sakura finishes her job, the green glow receding from her hands. She smiles and starts to stand up, but Itachi's arms snake up and capture her around the waist, tugging her down to his chest. Kakashi then proceeds to watch in quiet amazement as Sakura smiles, wrapping her arms around his waist and kissing him on the cheek.
Happiness, Kakashi thinks again. He contemplates her expression, her beautiful veridian eyes, and he sees the warmth, the touch of contentment as she looks at the missing nin.
"If this is what it takes." Kakashi jumps at the voice to his left, and he turns around to see Sasuke, clad in his white yukata, sitting on the ledge of the wall beside him. One knee is up to his chest and the other swings freely down the side of the wall. He is watching the Sakura huddle into his brother, but Kakashi sees only relief in his onyx eyes, and he is surprised. Sasuke looks at him and scowls halfheartedly, then turns back to watch as his brother playfully annoys the mildly irate pink haired kunoichi, "if this is what it takes," he whispers again, and Kakashi is surprised, but not really, to find himself agree.
"Yeah, I'll take this," a voice to his right says, and Kakashi doesn't have to turn to feel Naruto at his back, watching his sister with tender and gratified eyes. He is smiling, after so long, and Kakashi finds that he misses the cheer on the blonde's face, the sparkle in his cerulean eyes. Naruto grins and pulls his finger across his mouth, like a zipper, "it's her little secret, Kakashi-sensei. We'll let her keep it. As long as she's alive." The last part is a whisper, and Kakashi understands the relief, happiness, gratitude all rolled into one at the pit of his stomach, because he thinks that it is wonderful that she is not dead.
And as he looks at couple, endorsed in their little world, he lets the smile creep onto his lips.
Yes, he thinks, this is enough.
x. and to this day, thou has never known happiness.