15/09/2009
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise stated, Sakura is 18+.
Rating: T
01. Thoughts of a Dying Man
He is a pitiful sight to behold, a man, or the remains of a man, spread-eagled on a barren patch of dirt amid a smattering of fallen comrades. His mangled clothing reveals gaping wounds from head to toe, his left eye is a black hollow where the Sharingan once rested, and Hatake Kakashi would be completely and utterly unrecognisable if it weren't for the lifeless silver mat atop his bare face.
He has tempted fate for far too long, this he knows. A ninja's life is a Shogi board and no matter how competent the players, lances evade, horses are lost, dragons are cornered, and kings are captured. It is inevitable; it is the life he has chosen. He knows this, he knows it, yet the timing couldn't be worse, and the numbness which has claimed his body isn't quite enough to mask the rising ache in his nose, his throat, his chest.
He was only beginning to be happy again.
He wants, needs to say her name one final time to prove their affair was, and because maybe – just maybe – she will hear the longing in his voice from two countries away, but his voice fails him. It is an unfathomable cruelty that he will leave the world without those precious syllables on his lips, and so a lifetime of bottled grief and bitter regret spills over and pushes past the thickened walls of his heart, seeping through arteries, squeezing into every last capillary, swelling into tears he's forgotten he could shed.
Kakashi whispers an exhale and, just like that, the edges of his eyes still tightened with sorrow, Konoha's greatest ninja is no more. Then the light pattering of the year's first rain, and it is as if the blood and tears never were.