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When you wake up on Kakashi-sensei's back, groggy and aching and bone-tired, the first words out of your mouth are, What about Sasuke, but Kakashi-sensei doesn't answer. He never answers.
The perverted hermit comes and visits you while you're in the hospital. He spouts lies about forgetting your comrades and keeping your eyes on the future, rather than the past. He calls you a fool, and you tell him you'd rather be a fool than abandon Sasuke, though not in so many words. But the unsaid declaration hangs heavy in the air, and when the hermit leaves, you can tell by the way his face hangs that he heard it.
You spend the next few days in that hospital bed. It's less because you feel you need the rest and more because you don't want to face the world. Kakashi-sensei comes and sits with you at lunchtimes, bringing you ramen from Ichiraku. You thank him with your forced smile, but you have a feeling he can see right through it.
When you finally leave the hospital, you find yourself spending most of your remaining days with Kakashi-sensei. You're not quite sure why— it's not like you and him were all that close before, but now it seems as though he's the only one you can stand to be with. Everyone else gives you compassion-filled glances and stares that scream sorry, we're sorry, but it just makes the ghost wound in your left shoulder hurt harder, and you have to turn away.
Kakashi-sensei doesn't look at you with pity. He looks at you with guilt.
You still can't figure out whether that's worse or not.
One day, Kakashi-sensei asks if you'd like to train together. You give him an enthusiastic yes, glad for the attention that was so long in coming, but when the two of you reach the training grounds, he only pulls out some shuriken and kunai and says that you're going to work on accuracy. You're not sure what it is exactly— maybe it's the false hope you'd built up that you'd learn Chidori and the final rejection is just too strong; maybe it's the realization that you might just be a replacement for Sasuke, though one that can never amount; maybe it's just the look in Kakashi-sensei's eyes that tells you he deserves it. But whatever the reason, the thin cord that's been holding you together for the past few days just snaps, and in the next instant you're beating your fists half-heartedly against Kakashi-sensei's chest screaming, Why, why.
He lets you.
After a long moment, you stop, burying your face in his chuunin vest and letting your tears and nose run down the fabric. He brings one hand up to rest on your back and the other cradles the back of your head softly until your eyes run dry.
Kakashi-sensei takes you to his house that night and lets you sleep in his bed while he smoothes back your hair. You mumble that you could share the futon with him, but he responds with some lecture on father figures and teacher-student dynamics that loses your attention.
When you peel his mask down and kiss him, he doesn't stop you, but he doesn't encourage you either. His lips are smooth and dry and so much like— but of course you don't want to think about that. When you pull away, he tugs the mask back up and doesn't say, Don't be like me. Don't, don't. He doesn't say it, but you hear it anyway.
When you wake up in Kakashi-sensei's bed, groggy and aching and bone-tired, the first thoughts in your head are, What about Sasuke, and you think that Kakashi-sensei must've heard because he looks at you with that one eye that sees only the past, and you see the glint of black hair and red eyes in the depths of that dark pupil.
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"Why do I keep getting done in by the same punch, and yet still continue to fight?"