This is a remix of lazulisong's story "Haiku" - see notes at the AO3 version of this story (which is also much, much better formatted - why the hell does ffn make formatting so impossible? It's ridiculous), link at my profile, same name there as here.
Kakashi watches his team circle each other, hunting through the tall grass by the lake. He isn't bothering to watch them with anything but his physical eyes; beyond the physical, the shove and clash between them even when they're not fighting is keen enough to make him wince, almost like their auras are magnets and the lot of them are turned around all wrong. That thought strikes his fancy, idle as he is now, and he presses it into verse.
the opposition
of your hearts and minds, held close
sparks become war flares
Sakura has snuck up close to Naruto's foot now, spread out as he is belly-down on the grass, loud to Kakashi's ears but Naruto is all too clearly oblivious. Kakashi narrows his eyes. That girl...
crisp winds blow the ice
to melt, taste of sharp green on
the tongue of the earth
...barely touches Naruto's knee before he spins and kicks apparently on reflex, sending Sakura flying with a great splash into the lake. Kakashi blinks and settles himself back into the tree, having tensed forward ever so slightly in anticipation of going to chew Naruto out for being so foolish. Not so foolish and oblivious after all, then. Perhaps.
eye-scorching gold, heart
openclosed hunterhunted
sunlight and harvest
No, Kakashi thinks, mildly irked. Even for something going no further than his own mind, that couldn't do. Maybe...
daring to approach
always anticipating
empathy's failure
...He gives up on Naruto. (And decides not to think about how that's possibly the story of Naruto's life so far.)
Sakura is wringing out her clothes on the shore, looking cold and distinctly pathetic, and Kakashi doesn't bother to stop the corner of his mouth from twitching up, amused. She'll learn practicality or she won't. They'll all learn and survive; or they won't. It isn't ultimately under his control and while he'll mourn if they die under his command, he's beyond delusions at this point.
the construction of
our lives within each other
futile, eternal
He could throw all of himself into holding their hands through every last scrap of teaching on the planet, and it wouldn't ensure their survival; letting them rely on him too much would rather ensure their early deaths, he thinks. It's a difficult balance he has to keep, between benevolent neglect and feeding them sufficient information to progress.
set on a journey
you remain blind yet to how
our paths intertwine
Sasuke has been sitting back in the trees, watching the other two stumble around each other. Now, with Sakura sidetracked by her wet clothes and Naruto completely distracted by watching her, Sasuke is leaning forward, about to move on them. The blank coolness of his face as he looks upon his teammates is the sort of thing that keeps Kakashi up late some nights, not so much from worry as from making plan after plan to attempt to get through to him and inevitably scrapping them all. Sasuke shows enough emotion, even if it is mainly in the form of bright white impatience and storm-cloud temper, that Kakashi is not completely convinced that he won't turn out all right after all. But the cold that boy puts out, sometimes, is enough that Kakashi still has a few other contingency plans that won't let themselves be scrapped.
Sometimes he wonders what contingency plans Sasuke has.
cold blue night, waiting,
frosted breath; harsh in your throat
the seeds of lightning
There is a loud crack, as of a branch breaking underfoot, and the tableau before him becomes a whirl of bright gold-blue-green. Naruto is punching blindly and Sasuke trips him, Sakura rolls to avoid being taken down as well, and as they tussle together on the bank of the lake, Kakashi sighs. It is almost time to call them to a stop for the day, and although sometimes the time flies by (possibly helped a little by how he tends to lop a few hours off in the morning), this is certainly the kind of day on which ending training is more like relieving all four of them of their collective misery.
pups rolling in mud
called to heel, they whimper but
won't obey. bad dog!
He snickers to himself, and rising to go dismiss them, finds four traps set in his likely paths forward. Maa... His eyebrows shoot up. The pups seem to be developing some bite. He hadn't noticed the traps being set. Then again, he hadn't really been paying attention. His eyes narrow as he watches the continued fight on the bank, which is now so torn up that it's more like a swamp; it strikes him that possibly it's a little unprecedented for Sasuke and Sakura to roll around for such an extended period in that muck. In fact, usually, he loses bets to himself on which of them will be the quicker in launching themself out of whatever dirt the team might find themselves in. So it seems like, just possibly...
Where are you? he sings out in his head, stretching his senses over the field. Early on in their training, the constant grating of his team against each other had led him to largely tune out the non-visual side of things; now he considers regretting that, just for a moment. There are pockets of gold-blue-green all over the training grounds.
surrounding the walls
from within, unexpected
the siege is begun
He creates two clones and they begin to search. Ambush after ambush follows, all easily thwarted, but this funny feeling starts to grow in him as he evades concerted attacks and skips over traps set using Sakura's attention to detail, Sasuke's calculation, Naruto's creativity. It feels almost like happiness.
the work of a team
united; like a haiku
a poem in three lines
Between the three of him, Kakashi rounds up the team in short order, gathering them on the not so ruined side of the lake. But even if they didn't prevail in the end, having pulled one over together on their sensei for even a minute clearly feels like a victory to them. Naruto is laughing so hard tears are pouring down his whiskered cheeks, and Sasuke's smirk is growing so close to being a real smile that it is almost possible to watch the joy progressively overwrite his cool. Sakura is grinning, triumphant, in complete accord with her comrades. And they are finally comrades in fact, the melding of the team that he's been working toward in so many roundabout ways having at last been achieved.
family grown not
born: each carries the stamp of
the others within
the presence that surrounds him
is bright gold and blue and green
"Not bad today," he says lightly. They beam up at him and, shushing his practicality, Kakashi lets himself feel like a part of their whole, just for one moment.