Disclaimer: Don't own Naruto!
A/N: This is a KakaSaku AU set in WWII! It'll be relatively short. It was inspired by the song "A Good Night" by Jon Legend & BloodPop.
Listen.
I had no intentions of loving her, much less falling into love with her.
But then I looked into her eyes—green like glittering sea glass on those beaches you'd see on glossy post-cards—and I thought, Oh hell.
Because I knew.
My heart fluttered like a hummingbird as she held my stare, her own rosebud lips curling into a shy smile even as she lifted a small hand to wave, and I knew.
It happened like this.
It was the summer of 1944, a few days before we were supposed to set off on Operation Overlord, and the U.S.O. was gracious enough to host a small dance for all the infantry Marines and soldiers who'd be departing on that fateful mission.
"What heroic men," they'd whisper.
"Poor bastards," is what we heard.
But it was quite alright. We had whiskey and scotch; and there was good music and pretty women to spend the night with. I want to say that wooing one of those dainty ladies into my bed and never speaking to her again was not my intention—but that would make me a liar and I've prided myself in being an honest man.
As a boy, my father had told me that the only thing a man had to his name was the way it would be remembered. If you were dishonest, you'd be known for the rest of your days as a fraud. If you were lacking the capacity for loyalty, then those who carried your name would lack it as well.
I've held those words close all my life; and when he died in the first war I was proud that I carried the name of a man who gave his life so that another may live. He was a true hero. I wanted to follow in his footsteps for there was no greater honor.
I was the only one of my line left and, up until then, I had no intention of continuing it. I was already thirty-five years old and unwed with no desire to change my status as a bachelor. I had already been to France, had participated in the Guadalcanal Campaign and had seen the worst the world had to offer.
I had lost men I loved like brothers in the trenches, had met foreign women who desperately offered their bodies in exchange for a piece of chocolate or week old moldy bread. I've seen children burned and left to rot in the mud of country roads, and I've seen men succumb to the depravity of it all and take their own morbid trophies.
In the same breath, I should tell you that I am no saint. War changes a person—makes you do things you never thought yourself capable of.
You see, when you're holed up in the mud, back against another man for warmth and breathing shallowly because you don't want the enemy to hear you, it's different.
That same man shares his rations with you, cleans your weapon and sharpens your bayonet for you while you're asleep. He teaches you the meaning of brotherhood when he hauls you to your bloody feet by the straps of your pack when marches across the terrain become too much, shares his dismal supply of water with you and gives you his lucky gas mask.
Even though you're stronger than him, a better marksman than he is, he is the one who teaches you to survive out there in fields heavy with the weight of the dead.
So, when you see that man—not you when it should have been, because he had been laughing and joking about pie when he playfully shoved you away— blown to bits by an enemy mine, it's different.
The things around you would not change, but they would be just…different.
I never wanted to bring anyone into my different.
But I was captivated by the red stain of her lips and I no longer wanted different. I wanted home.
Listen.
Chapter Notes:
"that man" is..well, can you guess?
"My different." Kakashi is talking about PTSD.
My favorite quote from this chapter is:
But I was captivated by the red stain of her lips and I no longer wanted different. I wanted home.
Thanks for reading!