Phobia
.::.
She was wrong.
.::.
The moment she flinched and moved back from her injured sensei sitting on the hospital bed with his forehead protector gone, leaving his scarred red eye exposed for her to see, she never looked at Hatake Kakashi in the same manner she had used to ever again.
It was all his fault.
It was all Sasuke's fault.
Dreams of Uchiha Sasuke still haunted her sixteen-year-old mind. Before she would close her eyes and sink her stressed body on the soft matress, she would pray to whichever deity listening to her to set her mind at peace. However it seemed that no god would listen to her pleas. Every goddamned morning was living hell as she would bolt up, sweating and panting, and have a quick awful replay of her vivid nightmares.
Fantasies of her former teammate were long crushed, and were replaced by stinging poison creeping in her very own system. She would curse her sharp memory as she would remember those inflamed crimson eyes burning with hate as he looked at her.
Sasuke...kun?
She would cry out in grief, to have lost a love she once knew, but it seemed that the spring of tears inside her had already dried up with not even a small drop to spare. So she eventually moved on, convincing herself that he would never come back as the boy she loved all those years ago, and tried hard (really, really hard) to forget Sasuke and those frightening eyes...
...Until she came face-to-face with his brother Uchiha Itachi. Although she had not become a victim at his mercy, just by looking at those same bright eyes made her nearly fall at the edge of insanity. She could hear her heart scream with erratic beats as Uchiha Itachi, unbeknownstly, opened up old and scarred wounds. Falling under his genjutsu wasn't the cause; it was her own unstable heart that made her cope up so poorly and fall in a depth of depression.
And so she trained and trained, after hearing about the older Uchiha's tragic death, to keep herself busy and to completely forget those eyes. She barely kept in touch with her peers as she let time heal her damaged heart, because she couldn't heal it herself despite being a medic.
Two years had passed and the nightmares slowly retreated on the dark recesses of her mind. She continued on with her training to be the one of the best medic nins and practiced her profession enthusiastically in the hospital. But fate was playing with her and eventually shoved her sensei, whom she hadn't seen in years, in the hospital for her to treat.
After taking shaky steps backwards, she realized in her clattered and tormented mind that she wanted her sensei to disappear infront of her more than anything in the world at that time. It was cruel to even think of that, but her battered heart couldn't take the sight of the hue that made her nearly mad to the core. She excused herself in a raspy voice and coerced herself to smile at the confused Jounin before turning around on her heels and made a run for it.
Stay away.
And that was the start of her defense mechanism.
She inwardly scolded herself for still being that same pathetic love-sick girl whom she thought she had grown out of. Time had made all the parts of her body mature, except for her broken heart. It took years to repair the damage but it took mere seconds to undo the tight stitches of her wounds.
Stay away from me.
She couldn't bring herself to look at Kakashi even with his forhead protector on, because underneath that metal band was the remembrance of the hurt and suffering she experienced with another. With that, she chose to distance herself from her sensei and even avoided being brought to his ward whenever he was in the hospital. Each greeting would be short and clipped as opposed to the long bickering and teasing they always had. She would always force her lips up before abrubtly saying goodbye to him with various reasons. Great, now she was the one giving pathetic excuses.
It was unfair, she knew. But she assured herself that she wouldn't get hurt again...until her heart clenched whenever her viridian eyes 'accidentally' met his visible gray one, looking so perplexed and somewhat begging for answers on her unusual behaviour. She could see Kakashi was hurt, but he showed sincere concern in his masked face.
Go away.
And as if he heard her silent command, he sadly sighed and walked away to the other direction.
A couple of days after, she heard that Kakashi returned from another classified mission that nearly cut out the remaining oxygen he had in himself. He was unwillingly brought to the hospital (because he always hated staying in that building that made him totally, totally helpless). She had an urge to lead the operation but the thought of seeing his scarred face could simply break her into million pieces. And so she called out Shizune to heal him because she was 'not feeling well'. After telling the black-haired medic that she would be fine, she locked herself in her office and her hands covered her troubled face.
An hour later, she got tired and decided to head home early. Word had circulated that Kakashi's operation was succesful. That was enough for her to know, she thought. As she was about to head for the door, a lean figure appeared infront of her, blocking her way as he leaned against the opening that served as her exit, looking so physically terrible.
Kakashi-sensei?
Clean white hospital gown replaced his jounin attire and consequently left his face without his mask and forehead protector.
She could have been stunned at finally having a glimpse at her sensei's mysterious mask-covered face, but she was frightened at the sight of his left eye as bright as blood. Her heart began to yell crazily to run but her mind was so scattered that it failed to instruct her limbs to move.
Kakashi stepped inside and closed the door with difficulty, leaving the frantic screams of the nurses on his odd disappearace muffled. She felt herself shake with fear as she watched him moving towards her, each painful step echoing in the hollow room.
Funny, she thought, how he stayed silent as he walked when he could tease the sight of her looking as if she'd seen a ghost. As he got closer, the image of Kakashi's rather handsome and sad face before her slightly surprised her.
She felt the cold chill of the wall having contact with her back. Her lips trembled and her muscles tensed as he lightly held her shoulder, towering over her and closing in their distance. She didn't look up even though she was tempted to choke up her tears.
"I'm... I'm sorry," he finally said.
She knew he shouldn't apologize. It was all her fault, and he was taking all the blame.
A hand found its way to her chin and tilted it up. And there it was- the eye that she thought that would end her life, boring into her very being, warm as the blood coursing through her veins and mesmerizing as the moon. He gazed at her like no other, not like Sasuke, not like Itachi. He looked at her with so much admiration despite the hurt hidden in its crimson depths.
Fear had retreated to the shadows as she choked out her her first words to him since then. "Kakashi...sensei." Her own jade eyes released her tears like a cascading waterfall, staining her porcelain face.
He made her feel safe even looking at the cursed eye. He made her cry; but that's all right, it meant that she was cleansed of all those hurt. With every call of his name, he held on to her closer. She apologized over and over again through his soaked hospital gown, letting go of all the thoughts she had when she avoided him: she wasn't afraid of Kakashi but she was frightened for him that she would break his heart like Sasuke had broken hers. She worried that Sasuke may have passed on to her the curse of destroying bonds. She worried that she can't love anymore with her tattered heart that wasted her love on someone who despised her.
Thump. Thump.
And as if Kakashi's heart heard all those silent confessions, he murmured reassuring and soothing words with so much confidence, saying as if he really meant all of them. She listened to his whispers. She listened to his steady heartbeat, that promised that it'll beat for the both of them.
Her sobs finally toned down. And now she was the one who looked at him first. He tried to speak but she held up a finger before brushing her lips onto his. Because she only needed his eyes to know what he's thinking.
I love you.
I love you too.
.::.
Because he was never one of them.
.::.