It's easy enough to find where the Shukaku manifested. Even in an area renowned for its dangerous, oversized creatures, the Shukaku makes an impression on the landscape.
He wars with himself, wondering if he summons his pack if they'll actually listen to him. Pakkun often has ideas about what is good for Kakashi that conflict with Kakashi's own, and confronting one of the Sannin when he can't use any jutsu isn't the smartest thing Kakashi's ever done.
Or maybe they resent him for ignoring them, and won't want to answer.
He spends far too long debating this, and almost jumps out of his skin when there's a rustle in the bushes.
It's Team Gai.
"Yosh!" Lee exclaims, eyeing the destruction with great enthusiasm.
Kakashi can't actually go on a mission with him, not after forgetting him and abandoning him to Obito's clutches. He can't bear it. He can't.
Neji strikes his chakra points from behind, one-two-three, and Lee sags to the forest floor, unconscious.
Tenten gets as far as a shocked "Neji—" before she joins her teammate.
"I tried to lose them back by one of the patrols, but they wouldn't have it," Neji says, grimacing. "Do you know any genjutsu?"
"I know over a thousand jutsu," Kakashi jokes weakly, beyond grateful that Neji responded to Gaara's signal as well. The concealment genjutsu, with a tag that will let any Konoha ANBU see right through it, actually doesn't have any traumatic memories associated with it and Kakashi manages without incident.
Kakashi stares at the leafy canopy above him. What does it say about him that his service in ANBU is some of the least traumatizing times of his life?
Neji gently lays his two teammates among the roots of one of the great trees, then turns away without further hesitation. "What's going on? Obviously it must be something big."
"Sasuke has decided to leave early," Kakashi says.
"That little shit," Neji says.
"Which way did they go?"
Neji eyes him. Kakashi is one of the best trackers in Konoha. But he doesn't say anything, just activates his Byakugan. "That way."
They run.
This time it's Orochimaru himself they're up against, instead of Minions #1-4, and there's no guarantee they aren't also around somewhere. Kakashi was only present for the very end of this mission the last time around, and doesn't remember anything except that no one died and Sasuke left. And he's not one hundred percent certain about the first part.
"Can you see them?" Kakashi asks.
"Barely. Sasuke is already inside that same coffin as last time. Orochimaru is carrying it."
Coffin? It probably doesn't matter. "Something surprises you about that?"
"I suppose Orochimaru never struck me as the sort who carried things himself, not when he could make someone else do it for him."
"I didn't know him well," Kakashi says.
They run in silence for a time.
"He's outpacing us," Neji says.
"Not much we can do about that," Kakashi says. "If we burn ourselves out trying to catch him, he'll just kill us."
"He's just going to kill us anyway," Neji says. "Why are we going after him? It's not like Sasuke wants, or deserves, a rescue."
"I promised Naruto," Kakashi reminds him.
Neji rolls his eyes. "I'm not Gaara, you'll have to do better than that."
"And right now, Sasuke is weak. If we leave him under Orochimaru's control, he will be that much harder to destroy later."
Neji nods, accepting that. "And if we do catch them, we could make his death look like an accident."
"There's also that."
Nothing interesting happens for a while, and then they see someone running—more of a fast walk, really—along the ground.
It's Gaara.
In wordless agreement, they drop out of the trees.
Gaara looks awful.
"Are you… alright?" Neji asks, touching his shoulder.
Gaara flinches away.
"Full transformation… takes a lot out of me," he rasps. "And I'm… not as strong as I remember."
Kakashi is struck once again by how terribly small and young Gaara is now, so different from the Kazekage he will one day be.
"I'll carry you," Neji says.
Gaara doesn't protest, which is frightening all on its own, and they're soon on their way again. The three of them together, trying to ensure that the world has a future.
Kakashi reminds himself that this is why they're here in the first place.
"I think I killed people," Gaara whispers into Neji's hair. "How many candidates did Konoha have in the exam?"
They actually catch up with Orochimaru.
Or, rather, Orochimaru decides that he's curious what brought this group together, or he wants to mess with their heads, or whatever passes for logic in that head of his.
He's lounging on a tree branch, not even attempting to guard the coffin. Kakashi would call it overconfidence, but it's probably justified in this instance. They will have to be very clever to outwit this Sannin.
The coffin is also smoking slightly. Kakashi's not sure if that's meant to happen, but he can't exactly ask in front of Orochimaru.
"Give Sasuke back," Kakashi says.
"I didn't take him," Orochimaru says. "Except in the literal sense. He chose to leave."
"Doesn't matter," Neji says. "He's still a Konoha ninja."
"By that definition, so am I."
Gaara climbs off Neji's back to stand on his own two feet. "Sasuke does not understand the consequences of his actions," he says. "Konoha is the right place for him."
"You are much more interesting than I first imagined," Orochimaru says. "It's a pity that Jinchuuriki are unsuitable as vessels."
"Don't even think about it," Neji says, stepping between the two.
Orochimaru's tongue flicks out, tasting the air. "Very interesting indeed."
Kakashi slices through the branch Orochimaru is standing on, but the Sannin leaps easily to another branch, snatching up the barrel with a prehensile tongue.
Ew.
"You, however, are the same troublesome brat you've always been," Orochimaru says, with narrowed eyes.
"If you want to take Sasuke, you'll have to go through me," Kakashi says.
"Us," Neji says.
Gaara attempts to encase the coffin in sand.
Orochimaru rolls his eyes. "This is all very tedious, but I suppose if you insist."
He summons an enormous snake.
Gaara throws a sand barrier up around all of them, and the snake spits curses and sand as its first strike is deflected. A ribbon of sand spirals out and up, and Neji runs along it without hesitation, the next part of the path forming under his feet as he goes.
Only Kakashi is close enough to see the strain in Gaara's eyes.
"Can you do this?" he asks.
"I don't see that there's any choice," Gaara says.
Well, that's not exactly reassuring.
Orochimaru ignores Neji, diving into the ground.
Kakashi leaps for the coffin, but it disappears after Orochimaru before he can reach it.
Traveling through the earth with a solid object that one is only tenuously in contact with? Kakashi wants to know how he managed that jutsu.
"What's the plan?" Neji asks.
"Same as always," Kakashi says, scanning the forest for any sign of Orochimaru. Whatever this jutsu, he will eventually have to come up or else Sasuke will suffocate. Probably. "We spent a year trying to keep Naruto out of enemy hands. We only need to protect Sasuke for one day."
Neji blinks. "Can we use the same strategy?"
Kakashi curses himself for being ten kinds of fool. "I didn't think to leave a marker in the village," he says. It was so obvious. They could have had Sasuke back already!
"Surely there must be some left over," Neji says. "You said that the marks never fade."
"It doesn't really work that way," Kakashi says. "They'll still be there, unless the surface they were scribed on has been damaged or destroyed, but you have to know where you're going. Going to Mt. Myoboku was... a lot riskier than I let on at the time."
"But it worked," Neji says practically. "And it looks like we'll have to risk it again. Would you like me to seal your tenkutsu now or later?"
"Now," Kakashi says. "We may not have the opportunity later."
"It may disrupt your ability to use jutsu," Neji warns, even as he moves to obey.
"It doesn't matter," Kakashi says.
"It's really not good for your chakra network to be repeatedly disrupted it like this," Neji says conversationally, even while his hands move in swift, precise strikes. "But none of us are likely to live long enough for that to be an issue."
"The power of positive thinking," Kakashi says dryly, shaking out his arm after Neji is finished. It feels like so much deadweight.
"It's done," Neji says unnecessarily. "I'll tell Gaara the plan; you start setting up."
Kakashi nods at the space he'd just been standing in, then begins carving Hiraishin seals into the nearest tree. Polite of Orochimaru to give them all this time to prepare. With all the practice he's had, it's the work of mere minutes. They have next to no chance of sneaking up on Orochimaru, so they'll have to try to outrun him. Or in this case, out-teleport him.
Nevermind that sensei himself had never actually succeeded in picking up an object while using this technique. They'll just have to figure it out.
"This is a good idea," Gaara says, joining him.
"What happened to the snake?" Kakashi asks.
"It is dead," Gaara says flatly.
A reluctant smile tugs at the corner of Kakashi's mouth. He can't remember the last time he smiled.
He's missed Gaara.
"Come," Gaara says, already moving to join Neji up in the trees.
This time they go on the offensive.
Gaara sends a veritable tsunami of sand through the forest and, more importantly, through the ground, forcing Orochimaru out into the open. Kakashi and Neji follow in its wake, taking advantage of the cover it provides.
Orochimaru dodges most of the sand, deflects the rest with his sword, and catches Kakashi's wrist in an almost delicate grip. Then he snaps it.
The flickering light of Chidori dies, and Kakashi finds himself face-to-face with the Sannin.
"There's something different about you," Orochimaru says.
Kakashi tries to break free, but for all his delicate appearance Orochimaru is inhumanly strong. So he stops fighting pointlessly, and waits for his moment.
"Where's that magnificent eye of yours?" Orochimaru asks, his own slit-pupiled eyes flickering up to Kakashi's hitai-ate. "All used up?"
Kakashi can't help flinching away a little.
"Well, now." His eerie, yellow eyes almost seem to glow; Kakashi had never noticed that before. "You know you were my inspiration? I saw what a wonderful power you had found, and I did consider taking a Sharingan for myself. But I also saw what trouble it gave you, and I knew I had to take the whole Uchiha."
"Found it!" Neji cries. "It's right in the center of that clearing, about three feet down!"
Kakashi grabs hold of two small hands, one callused and one as smooth as a child's, and jumps straight down. He holds them as close to himself as possible, because he doesn't know that jutsu of Orochimaru's (yet), and they have to go under the ground. He's not actually sure his own earth jutsu will be up to carrying two extra people with him. Though he's about to find out.
Of course, he forgot who he was dealing with. Gaara compresses the earth around them, making a narrow tunnel that appears almost as fast as gravity can pull them down, and Kakashi's earth-tunneling jutsu goes untested.
"Thanks," Kakashi says.
Gaara nods. He's sweating, which Kakashi doesn't think he's ever seen before.
They finally reach the necessary depth and—assuming Kakashi's calculations are correct—they are exactly in line with both the barrel and his Hiraishin marker.
"We're here," Neji says, peering through the earth.
Kakashi is starting to feel positively extraneous. "Grab my elbow," he tells Neji, who is on his left side.
"Are you losing feeling in your arm?" Neji asks. "Let me check your chakra network."
"Later," Kakashi says.
There's a tremor in the ground, like Orochimaru, a snake, or very possibly both are on their way toward them, but they'll never catch them in time. They channel their chakra into the Hiraishin.
People say the Hiraishin happens in an instant, that there is no interval where you are between your starting point and your destination. In Kakashi's extensive personal experience, observation aided by a stolen Sharingan, that isn't quite true. It's fast, certainly. Nearly instantaneous.
Nearly.
They appear on the opposite side of the clearing in a flash.
The coffin, now emitting an alarming amount of purple smoke, is on the tree branch next to them.
Orochimaru starts clapping slowly. "Most impressive."
"Are you alright?" Gaara asks.
Kakashi tries to say something, because if Gaara notices that something is wrong with him, he is being embarrassingly transparent.
"Oh hell," Neji says. "Did you know that was going to happen?"
Kakashi manages to mostly cover his whimper with a weak laugh. "Obviously not."
He follows Neji's gaze, forcing himself to look, and selfishly thankful that he can't see nearly as much as Neji can. Where his arm had passed through the coffin, it has been fused with the wood. The block on his chakra network keeps him from completely feeling it, for which he is eternally grateful. What he can feel is bad enough.
At least this totally validates his theory about the Hiraishin.
"So are we going?" Gaara asks.
Right. They're supposed to be taking Sasuke back to the village, not standing around and gawking like idiots.
Kakashi thinks he might be going into shock.
And then, because Sasuke is the most contrary person ever to exist, he chooses that exact moment to forcefully exit the barrel.
Gaara and Neji both jump back and shield themselves the instant the barrel starts to explode, and to Gaara's credit he makes some effort to shield Kakashi as well. Seeing as the barrel is attached to Kakashi's body, this is only somewhat successful.
At least he doesn't seem to have absorbed any of Sasuke's body. That's a little more like Orochimaru than Kakashi is strictly comfortable with.
His left arm is a bloody, partly wooden mess, and Kakashi resolutely decides to just pretend it doesn't exist.
"Can you wrap my wrist?" he asks.
Neji re-wraps the bandages around Kakashi's right wrist, giving him enough support to use it, and by the time he's done he feels a little less like he's about to throw up.
By this time, Sasuke is on his feet, the curse mark crawling across his body, eyes strangely colored and filled with madness.
He throws himself at Gaara, most likely because Gaara just happened to be closest, and the two are soon weaving through the trees, blasting each other with raw power.
Orochimaru smirks and casually leans against a tree trunk. Then disappears into it.
Has he mastered the mokuton?
Before Kakashi can give this frightening possibility the attention it deserves, the ground beneath his tree explodes and a huge snake emerges.
"That's Manda," Kakashi says, jumping back quickly. "The boss snake."
"So we have to deal with this snake first," Neji says calmly, leaping through the trees beside Kakashi as the massive snake makes a good effort at leveling the forest.
"Manda isn't the sort of being one ignores," Kakashi allows.
He almost runs into Neji's back when the boy stops suddenly, then screams as bandages wrap around the ruins of his left arm. There's a moment, when the limb is pulled tightly against his side, where he almost faints, but he manages to stay upright.
Held in place against his body instead of flopping uselessly, it's marginally less agonizing. And certainly less likely to catch on things. He thinks, if he strains, he can even manage to make handsigns.
"Thanks," he says.
"It's Lee's technique," Neji says with a shrug.
The problem with fighting Manda, besides him being over a hundred feet of coiled death topped with poisonous fangs, is his sheer size. Sure, you can hit him, but what good does it do? It's like kicking a mountain.
Neji jumps onto his back, dodging the thrashing coils, and leaving smoking footprints everywhere he goes. Kakashi isn't quite sure what he's doing, but he trusts Neji to think of something.
As for himself, Kakashi fires up his Chidori again, managing not to fall to pieces and be completely useless for a change, and runs along the snake's massive side and tears out a huge chunk. He unexpectedly runs out of snake, and only a quick grab by Neji saves him from an embarrassing fall.
"Are you fighting with your eyes closed?" Neji asks.
"Yes."
"…why?"
"So I know that nothing I see is real."
Neji must decide not to ask, because he just goes back to whatever he was doing. Kakashi continues tearing bits out of the snake, on the theory that enough small wounds can collectively prove significant, but makes more of an effort to pay attention. Except to Rin's accusing face, which he fiercely pretends not to notice.
His progress is interrupted by a high-pitched, rage-filled scream.
Gaara.
Opening his eye, Kakashi races to investigate.
It's obvious what must have happened. Sasuke, unfortunately, isn't an idiot, and he took basic chakra element classes at the Academy like everyone else. Chidori is just as effective against Gaara in this timeline as the last.
Neji and Kakashi jump down, sling one of Gaara's arms over their shoulders, and retreat to the trees, where they immediately give Gaara some space.
Gaara leans over, clutching his bleeding shoulder in one hand and viciously yanking at his hair with the other. He's muttering to himself, and the sand curled around his gourd looks entirely too much like Shukaku's tail for Kakashi's peace of mind.
"You can do this," Neji says, resting a hand on a shoulder that's not nearly as scrawny as it was a few seconds ago.
Manda's tail crashes through a tree only a few feet away.
"I'll go… fight them," Kakashi says.
Neji scoffs. "Don't be ridiculous. Gaara can fight the snake. It won't matter if he loses control."
"I won't," Gaara says, through gritted teeth. "I am strong enough."
Flaming shuriken take off a few inches of Kakashi's hair, effectively ending the argument.
Sasuke is waiting for him at the base of the tree. "Nice look, sensei."
Kakashi snuffs out the last few embers, and he absolutely could not care less about whether his hair is a mess. "Let's do this."
There's a clarity that comes with fighting Sasuke, a rightness to it. He doesn't have to pretend to like or trust him, and he knows with absolute certainty that he's going to break his last promise to Naruto so he can keep his larger promise. In order for the world to get its happy ending, Sasuke has to die.
This is the moment that Tsunade-hime would say it's time to put all your chips in.
Kakashi pushes up his hitai-ate, and the stolen Sharingan spins into the Mangekyou.
Sasuke freezes, the curse seal actually receding slightly in his shock.
There's no fear or regret or anger, no overwhelming memories of Obito, no crippling visions of Rin. It might just be the blood loss talking, but Kakashi doesn't think he's ever felt so in-tune with this foreign power as he does now. Like Obito approves of his saving the world.
Maybe he'll bring up this moment later when he's trying to convince Obito to let him save the world.
Sasuke has got a hold of himself, or at least fully embraced the power of the curse seal once more, and he has an almost childishly pointed look on his face as he fires up a Chidori, like he's daring Kakashi to comment.
He doesn't, unless firing up a Chidori of his own counts.
They run at each other, and collide with a burst of electricity that levels the few remaining trees for twenty feet in every direction.
Sasuke's hand is scorched. He can copy the technique, but he doesn't really understand it, and he doesn't have Kakashi's affinity for lightning. It's Obito's borrowed power that gives Kakashi the speed to use this technique in battle, but it's his blood that lets him safely hold lightning in his hands.
They exchange a flurry of blows, first unarmed, then with kunai. Sasuke whips out that over-sized shuriken he's so fond of, not to throw, but to give him extra leverage against Kakashi's superior size and strength.
It won't be enough.
Most people claim that Kakashi doesn't have any signature jutsu. It's in the name: Sharingan no Kakashi, the Man Who Mastered a Thousand Jutsu. Those slightly more informed name Chidori, or his summoning technique. But if anyone ever asked Kakashi (they don't), it's that he lies. He never throws one punch when he can feint first, he never attacks head-on when he can come in from the side, and he never fights as himself when he can use a Shadow Clone.
Now, against Sasuke's Sharingan, all of his usual tricks are useless. But he'd have to be blind and far less of an experienced veteran than he is not to see the way Sasuke is carefully looking away from his Mangekyou, making sure that he doesn't make eye contact.
Because, of course, he doesn't understand where the real danger comes from.
So while Kakashi fights with feet, fist, and weapons with half his attention (Sasuke is arguably the most skilled genin in his age group, but he's still a genin), he prepares his Kamui.
"You're not taking me seriously," Sasuke says, breaking off his attack.
Well, if he wants to talk, that frees up even more of Kakashi's attention to prepare his technique. He's never actually used it in this body before, and the chakra pathways are not yet established. He still needs another minute.
"Why do you always do that!?" Sasuke shouts, spitting in rage.
"Really, you're going to put this on me?" Kakashi asks. His voice comes out a little distant, given his preoccupation, but given how much that seems to be annoying Sasuke it's fine. "When you've been caught red-handed deserting the village with one of its most notorious missing-nin?"
Sasuke is taken aback for a moment—apparently he didn't expect them to realize he'd left voluntarily just yet—but he rallies quickly. "What choice did I have?"
"That you even have to ask that question proves that you didn't listen to a damn thing I taught you," Kakashi says. "You could have chosen your village, your comrades, the people who care about you! How many of them have already died for you? How many more will?"
"No one cares about me!" Sasuke screams.
"Of course they do!" Kakashi finds himself shouting back.
"I won't let them!"
"You can't control how people feel about you!"
There are little flames dancing at the tips of Sasuke's fingers, so intense are his feelings. "You don't understand, you don't want to understand! Everyone I love, everyone who loves me, they die! I destroy everything I touch! If he thinks for one second that I'm moving on, that I'm learning to care about someone else, he'll find them and kill them! Why can't anyone else see that!?"
Kakashi's concentration slips, and he loses his grip on his technique. He is so completely shocked by this turn in the fight that he can't do anything but stand there with his mouth open like a damn cow.
"I have no life, no comrades, nothing, not so long as that man exists in this world! But now I'm on a team, and no matter what I do or say Sakura and Naruto—" his voice actually fucking cracks "—they care! And they're so utterly incapable of hiding their emotions and such unbelievably pathetic ninja he'll kill them in a second, can't you see!?"
Kakashi feels paralyzed. Now he remembers what he'd been thinking the first time around, before years of fighting Sasuke clouded his perceptions. That Sasuke was a desperate, damaged kid, and maybe he didn't do a good job helping him the first time around, but at least he tried. And now he's trying to kill him? What the actual fuck is he doing?
"No one will believe me," Sasuke is saying. "No one will help me. So I have to be the one to stop him. But before I can do that, I have to be stronger! And maybe once the world is safe from that man, maybe I won't get to live in it, but at least… at least those stupid, stubborn idiots will! I'll do whatever it takes! Anything!"
"Sasuke—" Kakashi croaks.
Sasuke stops ranting, and a cruel smile crosses his face. It's one hundred percent Orochimaru, nothing of how Sasuke really is or feels, easy to see if one bothers to open their eyes.
Maybe it's not too late. "Sasuke—"
"No! Fuck you! You hate me, and I hate you, too! How dare you use that eye against me!? Me, an Uchiha! You're nothing but a pathetic copy!"
Sasuke snarls, fires up another Chidori. This one is bigger, brighter, an entirely unnecessary display of flashiness that is all Sasuke, enough that the curse mark starts to recede as Sasuke's own personality reasserts itself. He runs straight at Kakashi.
Kakashi doesn't know what to do. Everything he's done so far has been wrong. If he fights back, he'll only make Sasuke angrier, prolong this painful confrontation. If he drags him back to Konoha, he won't be trusted, he'll just run again. And if he kills him, now, he'll never be able to live with himself.
So he does nothing.
There is a certain poetic justice to him being killed by the Chidori, after all.
Sasuke is too angry to realize that Kakashi doesn't intend to fight back, or maybe he's too young, so he's less than a foot away before Kakashi sees the shock dawning in his eyes.
He doesn't close his own, doesn't give himself the luxury of hiding from the consequences of his choices.
The Chidori burns through his shirt, sends little shocks down his arm, scorches his chest.
And stops.
Kakashi blinks. What?
Sasuke is staring blankly back at him.
What?
And then, slowly, Sasuke collapses to the ground.
Kakashi goes to catch him, bites back a scream as he tries to reach out with his right arm, then follows Sasuke to the ground, reaching with his left instead, and turns Sasuke over.
He isn't breathing.
Kakashi fires a shot of electricity directly into Sasuke's chest. His body jerks, but his heart doesn't restart.
He tries again.
Nothing.
Again.
If he keeps this up, he's going to blow through his entire chakra reserve.
And just like that, the realization dawns. Sasuke didn't know, or didn't care, that an S-level technique like the Chidori can critically drain your chakra. Kakashi should have realized the significance of the curse mark receding. It wasn't emotional; Sasuke had already used up all his own chakra and was drawing on the last of Orochimaru's.
Even if he could get Sasuke's heart started, Kakashi doesn't have the kind of specialized equipment here to support a body so completely drained of resources.
He's dead.
Sasuke's dead.
He might have sat there all day, just staring numbly at Sasuke's body, but a massive shockwave of malevolent chakra forces him automatically to his feet, his training taking over.
The Shukaku is loose. Again.
The others must be in trouble. He can't give up yet.
He takes the time to move Sasuke's body into the shelter of one of the still-standing trees, for what little protection that can provide.
"Oh, dear," Orochimaru says. He comes right up next to Kakashi, reaches out and touches Sasuke's cheek. "He didn't survive the transformation after all."
If Kakashi felt conflicted about killing Sasuke, he has no such feelings about Orochimaru. In its usual contrary fashion, his chakra slips away every time he reaches for it. He wonders, if he just turned around and punched Orochimaru, it would be such a shock he'd forget to block it.
Orochimaru shrugs. "Oh, well."
Kakashi's no match for him in his current condition (or any condition, really), can't summon the will to move for some pointless last stand, and Orochimaru doesn't seem inclined to attack, so the seconds stretch on awkwardly as they both stand there side-by-side, looking at Sasuke's corpse.
A half dozen ancient trees meet their end as an enormous tanuki and an equally enormous snake roll by, locked in mortal combat.
"I suppose I will have to revisit my plans for the brother," Orochimaru says.
"Ha," Kakashi says.
Then Orochimaru just leaves, and eventually Kakashi shakes himself out of his stupor. Two teammates still alive. Two teammates who still need him.
He's not sure what, if anything, he can contribute to the battle of monsters raging through the forest.
Which is fortunate, because he goes barely ten yards before he stumbles over Neji.
He's been run through with a sword. The hows and whys of it hardly matter.
Kakashi drops to his knees beside the body. There's such a hole in his chest that Kakashi can see the bloody grass through it. His hand flutters uselessly, not sure where to even begin healing such a wound.
Not that it would make a difference, of course. Neji probably died almost instantly. Maybe not even Sakura could have saved him.
Kakashi shifts slightly, smearing more blood over his uniform.
Well, if it's already bloody, anyway…
He strips off his shirt, ripping the sleeve so he doesn't have to deal with his useless right arm, folds it into a square the way Sakura taught him, and puts pressure on the wound.
He's still sitting there when Gaara crawls into the small clearing. There's exhaustion in every line of his body, but also a grim determination.
It's almost dark now, but Kakashi doesn't think it's just the light casting such dark shadows across Gaara's face.
The Jinchuuriki has to stop and rest twice before he reaches the tree stump nearest Kakashi. He painstakingly props himself up in a sitting position, and makes a clumsy grab for Neji's closest hand.
Kakashi reaches over and joins their hands.
"Orochimaru killed him," Gaara says.
"Sasuke died," Kakashi says, then immediately regrets it. "Sorry. I'm not… it's not fair to equate the two events, I know how much Neji means to you, to us…"
"I understand," Gaara says, interrupting him. "Sasuke was lost in the darkness, and he died there. It's a terrible thing."
They sit and watch the shadows grow.
"When I died—" Gaara says, then pauses.
Kakashi startles. The chakra block has worn off, and his entire left side is a solid block of pain, but he suspects that he'd prefer to dwell on that than whatever Gaara has to say.
"When I died, the people of Suna had just started to accept me," Gaara says. "There were no other choices for Kazekage, so the elder council had to appoint me. They believed that I was a dangerous weapon that had to be contained, and most hoped that I would fail quickly and rid the world of my existence. The openness of their hostility eased, over the years, and there were some people who wouldn't run as soon as they saw me, but... Well. My brother and sister made an effort to include me in their lives, at least, not that I knew how to reciprocate. And of course, there was always Naruto. So when I died, I knew I wasn't totally alone."
He pauses again.
"But it wasn't until I came to life again that I knew how much things had changed. Two villages came to save me, a crowd cheered as they welcomed me home, Chiyo-baa-sama died so I could live. I wanted to be someone loved by others, and now I was."
"You're a great Kazekage," Kakashi says, totally inadequately.
"That Sasuke should have to die, feeling as I did before I came to Konoha… I would not wish that fate on anyone."
"What are we going to do now?" Kakashi asks, because he thinks that might actually be a tiny bit less difficult to think about than their current conversation.
Gaara refuses to get on board with the topic change. "I wanted others to love me, because I assumed that I would just love anyone who went to the trouble of caring for me. But I've never experienced this… loss. Most of my people survived the war, safe in hiding, and there's no way of knowing Temari and Kankurou's fate. The closest is when I learned that my mother hated me, but even then, I never knew her, I only lost the idea of her love."
"Itachi… Itachi is going to go apeshit. We have to tell him, get him to understand. Or possibly relocate the village," Kakashi says, equally determined to avoid talking through whatever emotional epiphany Gaara is having.
"Neji did not die in darkness," Gaara says. "He was not alone. I saw him fall, I caught him. I told him I loved him before he died."
Okay, Kakashi can't interrupt that. Even he's not that selfish.
"There is nothing worse, I can see now," Gaara says. "Then to die unloved. So it is fortunate, in a way, that Neji died first."
"Huh?"
"Well," Gaara says, "he doesn't love me. He told me that he had no love left, after what happened in Konoha. I don't blame him. He was always honest with me."
Scratch that, literally anything is better than talking about this. "Perhaps at this point it would be best to leave our respective villages and hunt down the Akatsuki," Kakashi says, even though he's far from certain that he could even stand up right now.
"I think I can understand now why Naruto did not want this mission," Gaara says. "And I can understand Sasuke a little bit. Before, I couldn't imagine rejecting any offer of acceptance. His refusal to accept Naruto or Sakura was incomprehensible to me. But now I see. I love Neji, and because of that, I am now in unbearable pain. I do not want to live in a world without him."
Kakashi has no idea what Gaara is going to do at this point. Maybe he'll kill himself, or maybe he'll go mad and destroy the world. If it's the latter, well… Kakashi is the closest, so at least he'll be the first to go.
There's something crawling over Gaara's skin, and for a horrible moment Kakashi thinks it might be a curse seal, but no, it's so much worse.
It's the time travel seal.
"There's one copy we didn't destroy," Gaara says calmly.
"No," Kakashi says.
"I am only sorry you have to bear this burden alone."
"No!"
Gaara presses Neji's cool hand against his cheek. "We will meet again. I love you."
Kakashi remembers, with an almost physical jolt, what Gaara's idea of a meaningful death is. "Well, you know… I… I love you."
Gaara smiles, his own smile, now that the Shukaku is exhausted and quiescent. "You do not. You are like Neji; you cannot love anyone. But I appreciate that you want to."
And Kakashi dies.