"Walking on water is simple, something which comes as naturally as breathing to most experienced shinobi."
Genin were problematic, nameless fodder in times of war, and among the highest in fatality rates in the field, and Kakashi hated the idea of handling them to any degree. Genin required a strong and sensible leader to grow, required the ability to carry others without the power or will to carry themselves—it was those simple things that made Jounin sensei such an illustrious, respected position, and Kakashi never wanted any part of it.
Yet there he stood, twenty years of death and destruction at his back, with a team of young (perhaps impaired) minds that sought his mind, his skill and experience for what it meant to be a competent shinobi. If only they knew what everyone had been whispering for years, if only they knew how they were being cheated—
The Copy Ninja possessed none of these qualities.
"Now, focus your chakra and force it to the bottoms of your feet." He instructed, lazily cradling his chin in the palm of his hand as he watched her—Haruno Sakura, watched her as she wound herself tight in her misguided determination to better herself in the eyes of her team. She stood bowed, her hands welded onto one another as though she sought to dig the power from her body by force. "Okay," she answered, clearing a mess of dampened pink tresses from her eyes as he turned to face her sensei with fresh smoldering intensity, "I think I'm ready."
Only she wasn't. Not really.
He nodded and pulled his arms from his chest, distantly wondering whether Naruto and Sasuke had managed to reach the top of their respective trees—or whether they'd managed to kill one another in the process. Either scenario was highly plausible.
The sound of lapping waves and seagulls soon filled the static air with the muddled sounds of life and the smell of salt, licking the drenched shorelines with sand and idly discarded shells as they washed in with the morning tide. Sakura followed her sensei close behind, her determination all the more evident as she beat him in his slow gait to the shoreline where she waited with her patience barely contained. He couldn't think of how she looked then, how the light and smell accented the tailing hem of her dress as she stood waiting against the shoreline.
Instead he swallowed the cold, unpleasant lump in his throat and stepped onto the water's surface with the very same trained precision that was expected of him, barely stirring the water's surface. "Chakra balance is important," Kakashi continued his demonstration, turning slowly to take his crutch in hand as he waited for the young kunoichi to follow.
"Take it slow, Sakura."
Sakura's eyes glittered faintly in the early morning gloom, seemingly waxed wide and attentive as she followed Kakashi, testing the rippling surface with slow, almost newborn steps. She showed a line of progress as she walked; apprehension that led into longer, bolder steps. However, it didn't take her long to reach his side, and it didn't take long for Sakura to make her first few blunders.
Splash
And a rift of stale air thick with ozone wafted back against Kakashi's mask, hooked the Jounin's attention as he watched her fall. Shock, muted pink and wide eyes bled into brown as Kakashi reached for her—
"..We learn to live in the world we're given, Kakashi."
Kakashi watched, and the water engulfed sakura in a deafening splash that brought him back, near screaming and kicking, to the day he pulled her (white hot and freshly dead) from his arm. There were no goodbyes for him to say, there was no lingering love for the waking world to be had. His vision grayed at the edges, the skin on his right arm burned with the memory of bone dimpling his sticky, summer worn skin.
He stood watching, frozen in place, reaching into nothing as sakura emerged splashing to the water's surface. How long he was frozen, caught in his nightmares, he truly couldn't say.
It was a long walk back to the shore.
Neither said anything, but Kakashi could feel Sakura's gaze on him, and he loathed how those eyes peeled back his skin, and how her curious stare slowly denigrated into pity.