Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

Rise

Chapter 17

"Kakashi."

The older man glances up at Sasuke in surprise from his desk, having obviously expected Sasuke to leave the Hokage office right after his mission briefing. Sure enough, however, the Uchiha continues to stand before him, rooted in the spot.

"Yes, Sasuke?" Kakashi leans forward, curious.

It takes Sasuke a few moments to answer. He nearly lacks the energy to. He's not quite too sure why he spoke in the first place, nor what he expects from having done so.

Yet his body moves on its own, and before he knows it his mouth opens and he rasps, "How did you learn to live with yourself?"

The Rokudaime tilts his head to the side. His black eyes are calculating, and Sasuke can almost see the puzzle pieces shuffling around in his head as he tries to add context to the vague question. Sasuke can barely understand it himself.

Slowly Kakashi rises from his seat and comes to stand before Sasuke. He folds his arms across his chest and leans forward ever so slightly, eyes flickering back and forth as he searches those of his former student's.

"What?" Sasuke snaps, unused to such scrutiny.

Kakashi's gaze softens at whatever he finds from his search. He leans back and moves around Sasuke to head toward the door. Sasuke watches, confused, as he pauses with a hand on the doorknob.

The older man simply gestures for him to follow. "Let's go on a little walk, shall we?"

Night begins to fall around them. The full moon is a mere translucent circle in the sky, nearly invisible against the washes of orange and pink and yellow left behind from the sinking sun.

They've just made their way through the crowded streets and have started heading toward the outskirts of the village when Kakashi asks, after almost fifteen minutes of silence between them, "This is about Sakura, isn't it?"

Sasuke whips his head to the side and stares at Kakashi's profile, but his old sensei is looking straight ahead, hands shoved into his pockets and seemingly unfazed by Sasuke's reaction.

Sasuke turns back and gazes at the dirt road before him with hooded eyes.

His silence is apparently enough of an answer because the silver-haired man continues, "I have many talents, but unfortunately mind-reading isn't one of them. Sakura may or may not have mentioned that she was worried about you after we had a meeting a few days ago."

"And what did she tell you?" Sasuke asks quietly.

"Nothing too detailed," Kakashi replies, nonchalant. "I think she respects your privacy enough to not go around telling the entire village about your personal issues. She simply said it looked like you were having a hard time, and that she wishes you would talk to her about it instead of trying to push her away."

Sasuke's chest tightens as he recalls the defeated sound of her voice when he did just that a week ago.

Suddenly Kakashi makes a sharp right into an alleyway and Sasuke follows, growing suspicious. The alleyway opens up to the beginning of a path that Sasuke hasn't visited in quite some time but that will always remained burned into his memory.

"Where are you taking me, Kakashi?" he questions sharply.

The Hokage simply turns to his former student, eyes curved in a smile. "To visit an old friend."

The sun's disappeared completely below the horizon by the time they come to stand before the grave of Nohara Rin.

Sasuke's heard of his former sensei's dark and incredibly melancholy past. It's one of the main reasons he now understands why he felt so compelled to speak in the Hokage tower earlier—because of course he's able to see a reflection of his own past in Hatake Kakashi.

But for Kakashi to bring him here, to what is without a doubt one of his most sacred and personal places—

"Sasuke," Kakashi says, "I'd like you to meet Rin. Nohara Rin. She was my teammate when I was a genin"—his voice grows fond—"and also one of my closest friends."

Knowing the incredible significance of Kakashi bringing him here—after all, he knows better than anyone what it's like to lose precious people, to only be able to visit them in a cemetery—and out of respect for Kakashi's late teammate, Sasuke bows deeply and remains there.

He only rises from his bow when Kakashi speaks again nearly a minute later. "It wasn't hard to put two and two together, once I heard from Sakura and once I saw you for myself. You've been thinking about that day in the Land of Iron, haven't you?"

"I…" Sasuke gazes at Rin's headstone, and he realizes then how close he came to being in the same position as his former sensei: the girl who loved him six feet underground by his hand, whether intending to or not. He's sure Kakashi can see the anguish in his eyes. "Yes."

"The question you asked me before: about how I learned to live with myself. Knowing you, I don't think it's something you said on a whim. What brought this about?"

Sasuke swallows. It's difficult for him to put his thoughts into words, but Kakashi's patient as ever. Finally he answers, "These last few weeks have been…difficult, for me." An egregious understatement. "It's hard for me to forgive myself for the things I've done. For how much I've hurt others." He pauses, then continues quietly, "Especially when it comes to Sakura. I thought you of all people would be able to understand, Kakashi."

Rin's grave sits before them, a glaring indication of the meaning behind his words.

Kakashi hums thoughtfully. "Is this you asking for help, then?"

Sasuke instinctively bristles at the question but forces himself to swallow his pride. "If you want to call it that."

Another thoughtful hum. "In that case, I'm honored. Honored," he says again, gently this time, "and extremely proud."

"What do you mean?"

"This conversation is one I've been wanting to have with you for a very long time now," Kakashi replies. "But you are like me in more ways than one, and I knew that pushing it too soon would do more bad than good." He chuckles. "You're stubborn, although you may not like to admit it. I knew I would need to wait until you came to me on your own, and you've taken that first step. For that I am incredibly proud of you. I know how hard it can be."

Kakashi's words ring with sincerity. Sasuke never thought he would take such a statement to heart, but now he accepts it, treasures it.

"Now tell me, Sasuke: why did Sakura look like she wanted to cry when I saw her last?"

Another knife twists in his chest at the words. "It's just as you said. I was cruel to her when she was only trying to help, and I pushed her away."

"You'll have to do better than that," Kakashi presses. "What were you pushing her away from? And why?"

He's fighting against every one of his instincts as he slowly answers, "Forgiving myself for the past...it's something I've never learned how to do. I've especially never been able to fully forgive myself for what happened that day." He draws in a shaky breath. "Recently I had a nightmare. I've always had them, every since my…ever since my family died. But never one like this. I dreamt that I killed her." He opens his eyes and stares down at his hand, palm facing upward. He thinks of the sheer terror he felt as he stood in front of Sakura a week ago and believed he saw her blood on his hands, believed that for a second his nightmare became reality. "She bled out right in front of me and there was nothing I could do to stop it. It felt so real."

"Let us be glad it wasn't real. Regardless, I know that must have been frightening for you to experience. Guilt is a wicked, ruthless thing, and it often thrives on feeding us nightmares of the things we regret most." Kakashi pauses. "Did Sakura being late from her mission have anything to do with this?"

Sasuke guesses he shouldn't be surprised at Kakashi's ability to read him so easily, but for the life of him he can't hide his shock. "That was part of it. I was...unstable, to put it lightly. I'd convinced myself something had happened to her."

"That notion was terrifying, wasn't it?"

Another egregious understatement. Sasuke can only nod in response.

"Now for my second question: why? For what reason did you turn her away when she only wanted to help you? And so harshly at that?"

The questioning now feels akin to an interrogation. He knows that's not Kakashi's intention, and he knows it's only meant to help him, but it irks him anyway. Between clenched teeth he replies, realizing how foolish he sounds with each word that comes out of his mouth, "Because I was afraid of hurting her again. She wouldn't back down any other way."

"Well," Kakashi says, a note of amusement in his tone, "we'll get to the contradiction of all these statements later." He rocks back on his feet. "You asked me earlier how I learned to live with myself, and I'll do my best to answer as honestly as I can."

Kakashi grows silent for a moment and stares with hooded eyes at Rin's grave, somber and contemplative.

"I can count on one hand the number of people I've spoken to about Rin's death in detail," he says, "and the number of people I've spoken to about how her death affected me is even lower. To this day it isn't something that's easy for me to do, so bear with me, Sasuke."

Sasuke nods once more, all traces of irritation vanishing instantly.

"At first," Kakashi begins, "even the mere thought of what had happened was enough to send me spiraling for days. I never wanted to sleep because I thought I'd rather have insomnia than face my nightmares. The nightmares—" Kakashi looks down at his hand. Sasuke watches as he flexes it, curling it into a fist before rolling it out once more. "They were horrific, to say the least. It's morbid to say I can relate to yours on a near perfect level. Time and time again I found myself waking up in the middle of the night and rushing to the bathroom, trying to scrub blood off my hands that wasn't there." Never before has Sasuke heard Kakashi's voice crack, and the sound of it now shocks him to his core. "It didn't matter that I knew deep down it wasn't my fault, that I knew it was Rin's decision. It was my hand that killed her, and because of that I grew to blame and hate myself so much I was convinced I truly was that horrible a person."

Kakashi sighs, taking a deep breath. "And it only seemed to get worse as the years went on. I tried to lose myself in my duty as a shinobi. The fighting and killing—they became second nature to me, and I tried so very hard to make those missions become my life, my identity. If I were in the village, alone in my apartment, I had nothing to distract me from myself. My head, as you can imagine, was not a very pleasant place to be. So I threw myself into the ANBU and never looked back." He laughs a sad, telling laugh. "It was the worst mistake I ever could've made, because it never worked.

"Over time I'd begun to cling on to the pain the memory of Rin's death brought me because I told myself it was my punishment for killing her. It was my way of atoning for my sins. Tearing myself down, denying myself the right to be happy, pushing away the people who only wanted to help—I thought they were the least I deserved for what I'd done. And once I'd gotten lost in that toxic cycle, it was the hardest thing I've ever done to get out of it."

Sasuke's entire body has grown still. He sees himself so clearly in Kakashi's shoes; sees how his future could so easily align with what Kakashi's told him, and how it very nearly did.

"I'll spare you the more gruesome details, because the ways in which we process trauma are very different, and I also don't want to mention anything more that could potentially be triggering to you. But I will tell you what I've learned from my experiences, because I wish more than anything that someone had been there to guide me in the right direction back then." Kakashi's voice grows quiet. "Because I see myself in you, and I want to support you in perhaps the only way I can right now."

Sasuke meets the older man's gaze, willing him to continue.

"Learning to forgive yourself for the past is perhaps one of the hardest things we as humans will ever experience. At times it will seem never-ending. I wish I could tell you that self-forgiveness is a linear, steady process, but I would be lying. And it looks different for all of us, no matter how similar our experiences might be, so take what I say with a grain of salt."

Kakashi pauses, the silence between them weighted and poignant.

"Our minds can be horribly cruel to us, as you know. They feed us nightmares. They refuse to let us sleep. They make it so easy for us to latch onto past mistakes and so exhausting for us to move on from them. At the end of the day, though, Sasuke, remember that the past is in the past. You can't change it no matter how much you might want to; no matter how much time you spend wallowing in it. You will have those memories from the Land of Iron with you for the rest of your life, just like you'll have the memories of everything else you've been through since you were a child."

Sasuke closes his eyes. It's so easy, almost. So easy for him, in some sick, self-deprecating way, to focus solely on the things he did wrong—to loathe himself for them—than allow himself the time and space to heal from the trauma of his childhood. Was that what he unknowingly decided atoning for his sins looked like?

He thinks of his family, of Itachi. Years later and he still blames himself for their deaths, even though he knows he shouldn't. He thinks of how much he misses them; of how often the night of the massacre still haunts him in his sleep.

Of how he's just barely scratched the surface of accepting how deeply his trauma runs, and how long a journey indeed he has ahead of him.

"When it comes to the Land of Iron…understand that torturing yourself over what happened that day will never do you any good, nor will torturing yourself over everything else I'm sure you feel guilty about. It took me years, Sasuke. So many long, agonizing years to realize that lingering on my negative memories of Rin's death was dangerously unhealthy. It's okay to feel guilty. I would be surprised if you didn't. But there's a difference between feeling guilty and allowing your inner critic to slowly eat away at your sanity until you feel there's no recovering from it. I imagine you know what I mean."

Sasuke grits his teeth and refuses to answer.

"Acknowledge your mistakes and the guilt that comes with them. Apologize to the people you've wronged, and accept responsibility for the pain you've caused them. What's important, however, is that you use your mistakes not as a tool to punish yourself, but as a learning experience: a promise that they won't happen again. Not that I believe you would ever do something like that again," Kakashi adds, "but alas. We wouldn't be here if you saw yourself as I see you. As I know Sakura and Naruto see you."

But alas. If only that were the case.

"Acknowledge your mistakes, Sasuke. Acknowledge that you hurt others. Acknowledge that what happened in the past brings even you pain, and that it's okay to feel that way. Invalidating your own emotions is the last thing you should be doing if you ever want to make amends with yourself, after all. But you cannot keep tormenting yourself over these things, as I'm sure you do expertly.

"It sounds so simple, but the sooner you realize that the best thing you can do is to learn from your mistakes, forgive yourself for them, and let them go, the sooner you'll find yourself a much healthier person. You'll come to accept the past for what it is and understand that the choices you make now and in the future are what matter most. You'll no longer be a hostage of your past, but rather a survivor of it, stronger and wiser because of what you've learned from it.

"These things take time, though," Kakashi says, the weight of years of grief and heartache evident in his words. "Only you will be able to find out what forgiving yourself and atoning for your sins really looks like, and believe me when I say that you must learn to be patient with yourself and the speed at which you heal. Unlearning your own self-hatred is hard work, especially when you've spent more than half your life cultivating it. I know from experience."

Kakashi lowers himself to the ground, legs folded. He gestures for Sasuke to join him. Side by side they sit, silent for a moment but for the sound of the wind flowing gently through the trees around them.

"Talk to me, Sasuke. What are you thinking about?"

Sasuke gazes at Rin's headstone. He reads her name once, then twice. Three times over. Finally he finds it in him to answer, "It terrifies me to think of what would have happened that day if you and Naruto hadn't come. I…" Looking at the grave suddenly becomes too much, and he turns his focus to the dark forest beyond. "Sakura caught me at my absolute worst. The lowest I've ever fallen. I'd given myself so entirely to my rage that I barely remember the details. How horrible is that, Kakashi? I would've killed her and barely remembered doing it." He closes his eyes, disgusted with himself. "And even now that sounds like an excuse."

"To think I'd find someone who's a harsher critic of themselves than I am," Kakashi replies cheerily. Sasuke fixes him with a glare, but Kakashi simply presses on, "I am in no way trying to justify your actions, but let's think about what you'd been through prior to and leading up to that moment. You lost your entire clan at the age of seven at the hands of the brother you adored. You based your entire life on revenge, and once you'd finally gotten that revenge you found out that Itachi did it to protect you, and that the village you were raised in played a significant part in the orchestration of it all.

"Sasuke," Kakashi continues softly, "you experienced several horrifically traumatic events at extremely vulnerable times in your life. What you went through...I can only try to imagine what it was like, and even then the mere thought is agonizing enough. I am not trying to justify your actions, merely telling you to treat yourself with a bit of kindness."

Sasuke blinks away the sudden stinging in his eyes. "I don't need your pity," he snaps, but even then it's a knee-jerk reaction, lacking animosity. He knows Kakashi's right—it's just not something he's used to hearing, nor is treating himself with kindness something he quite knows how to do yet. "That doesn't change the fact that I nearly killed her."

"But you didn't." Kakashi's voice grows stern. "You are tearing yourself apart over what-ifs. Sakura is alive. Don't forget that you're talking to the man who put a chidori through the heart of the girl who loved him, Sasuke."

Sasuke swallows, bowing his head, remorse weighing on him almost to the point of physical pain. He wants to apologize to Kakashi for the insensitive comment—they're sitting in front of Rin's grave, for Kami's sake—but the older man continues on:

"Sakura's alive, and she forgives you, and she wants nothing more than to see you happy. But you must allow yourself to be happy, Sasuke. That'll never be the case if you continue to punish yourself for something that didn't happen, and if you don't learn to forgive yourself for the things that did. Our time on this earth is finite and precious. You can't let your obsession with the past distract you from all the things life has in store for your future. And you especially shouldn't let it hold you back from enjoying what you have in the present. You'll only come to regret it if you do. Trust me."

Sasuke knows Kakashi is right. He knows, yet years of guilt and self-hatred have left little room for forgiveness. He's torn between trying to accept Kakashi's words as the truth and vehemently denying himself that right: so as a result he simply says nothing.

Another few minutes pass in silence. Sasuke senses that Kakashi is giving him time to cool down, to process everything he's told him, which he'll come to appreciate later on. In this moment it only grates on his nerves.

Kakashi eventually clears his throat. "As I mentioned," he begins casually, "mind-reading is unfortunately not in my repertoire of talents. But I would like to say that I am quite observant. Since you are incredibly stubborn, I'll say this in a way that hopefully gets through your thick skull."

Sasuke narrows his eyes, unsure of what the older man is thinking.

"I think you care about Sakura so much it scares you."

He nearly jerks back at the unexpected words.

"Even when you three were still my students I saw how you treated her. You may not have realized it then, and your feelings toward her may have been entirely platonic, but I saw it regardless. You loved her as much as the person you were then was capable of loving another, given everything you'd been through. You would've done anything in your power to keep her safe."

Sasuke opens his mouth—

"Am I wrong?" Kakashi gives him an expectant look.

He remains silent.

"You would've done anything in your power to keep her safe," Kakashi repeats. "That day at the bridge, as you mentioned, Sakura caught you at your absolute worst, and yes, she nearly died by your hand. But she didn't, and she forgives you for it now," he adds. "Now the war is over and we're experiencing peace for the first time in years. Yet this time hasn't been easy for you, has it? Some days you feel you have too much time alone with your own thoughts. Others it's all too easy for you to pretend everything's okay when you know deep down that isn't true. We've all forgiven you for the past, even though you may not understand how we possibly could, especially when it comes to Sakura. You haven't forgiven yourself, but we've all forgiven you, and sometimes that feels like it's enough, doesn't it?"

Sasuke's jaw clenches. He refuses to give Kakashi the satisfaction of seeing that every word hits far too close to home.

"Then there's Sakura. Sakura is a living, breathing reminder of your guilt. Just when you think you've made progress, just when you think you've healed and the past no longer has a hold of you, she's there—reminding you simply with her presence that you once fell so hard and so low that you would've killed the last person you ever wanted to hurt. I can imagine that's very difficult for you. Running away from the worst parts of ourselves is easy. Dangerously so. What's brutally hard and a seemingly endless uphill battle is recognizing and accepting those parts for what they were. Acknowledging them, forgiving yourself for them, and finally understanding that those parts of you no longer exist and thus no longer hold any sway over you.

"You are not the boy I met at the bridge that day," Kakashi says with utter sincerity, "although you may think he still exists somewhere inside you. You must realize that you will always, always be afraid of yourself if you continue to think like that. You'll find yourself wanting to be closer to Sakura as you've tried to be for the past year, but you will always keep her at that horribly perfect distance—where you can watch over her, protect her, while never letting her get too close because you simply don't trust yourself. Because you care about her too much to put her at risk, and you're just too afraid you'll hurt her again."

Finally Sasuke meets Kakashi's gaze. The older man's eyes curve up in a perceptive smile.

"Would you ever hurt her again, Sasuke?" Kakashi asks with a note of confidence that implies he already knows the answer.

Sasuke blinks. He turns to look at Rin's grave again, this time unflinchingly.

He gazes upon the headstone and thinks of Kakashi, who—through trial and error and many, many years—was able to forgive himself for inadvertently ending the life of a precious friend. He imagines his own journey will be long and arduous as well; yet necessary, and so very worth it.

He thinks of his nightmare: how it brought his worst fear to the forefront of his mind and nearly destroyed him as a result. He thinks of how worried he was the entire time Sakura was late from her mission, and of the sheer relief he felt at seeing her home, safe and sound.

"I would very much like to be your friend, Sasuke-kun. If you'll allow me. It won't happen overnight, and that's okay—I'd like to think there's no harm in trying. Neither of us will ever forget the past, but I'm tired of running away from my fears." Sakura smiles a small smile. "You've been a fear of mine for quite some time, whether I wanted to admit it or not. Training today forced me to think about a lot of things I shouldn't have been hiding from myself, or from you. I want to be honest from now on. I want to change."

He thinks it's time he's honest as well.

Kakashi said the words aloud but Sasuke now feels the clear, unerring truth of them in every bone in his body: Sakura is without a doubt the last person on earth he would ever want to hurt.

And there is not a goddamn ounce of that boy from the bridge in the person he is today.

It's with the utmost finality that Sasuke answers, "Never."

A/N: This is without a doubt the most difficult thing I've written to date. To think that the upcoming chapters won't be getting any easier is both a blessing and a curse. I'm excited to go through this journey with you all, but conversations like these are complex and heavy—and they take quite a bit of time for me to fully flesh out in a way I'll be satisfied with. Hopefully they're as worth it for you to read as they have been for me to write. :)

As always, your reviews are everything to me. I'd really appreciate it if you'd let me know what you thought of this chapter!

With love,

Shannon

P.S. I apologize for the lack of SasuSaku content recently. :( I'm dying to get to it too, believe me.