a/n: happy thursday uwu
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don't kid yourself
and don't fool yourself
this love's too good to last
and i'm too old to dream
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Between missions, his father used to take him on outings, little excursions where the company consisted of the two of them. Kakashi, despite his young age, deigned himself too mentally excellent to find these trips fun or exciting; he would spend the time it took to arrive at their destination complaining about missing training, about how his dad was supposed to act like a the ninja he was, and real ninja never took breaks for frivolous nonsense. Sakumo would always respond with a simple laugh, deep and full, a sound that his son often found himself missing after his father had grown despondent—even more so when he was gone.
They two of them would always walk through the front gates of the village and into the woods, carrying a cooler full of lemonade and homemade sandwiches and a pack with whatever else they would need. Some days it was fishing rods and bait rented from one of the civilian district's recreational shops; others it was a motley of old camping supplies that had seen better days but were still perfectly usable.
Kakashi wanted to go swiftly as he made his way through the cover of trees, over creeks and rocks with edges smooth and eroded by rain, cool to the touch. But Sakumo would calmly insist he slow down and enjoy, to listen to the birds warbling and singing to each other from high branches. Soak in the light of the sun as it trickled through the trees, all its golden warmth tender on his skin in a way he never got to enjoy when rushing through. Feel the way his feet pressed into the earth, the delicate skeletons of fallen foliage and pine needles cushioning the fall of fresh, waxy green leaves. Just be.
As a stubborn child, he made a show of putting up a fight, of hating the trite idea of walking when they could run—he and his father were two of the fastest shinobi in the country, save for the Yellow Flash. And then he would take a moment to notice what Sakumo patiently waited for him to see and feel, and he would settle into quiet. Peace.
They spent these afternoons by the valley river, catching trout that shimmered bronze and wet when their scales caught the sunlight. Sakumo would tell him anecdotes from missions or memories about his mother, most of which occurred before she grew sick. When he smiled, his eyes would crinkle at the corners, soft and cinnamon warm; the creases in his forehead would vanish like they had never been there. Kakashi drank in every moment of it.
If time allowed, the two of them would make camp for the night near the riverbank. They stargazed by the firelight, watching its sparks float heavenward to join the twinkling points in the sky. It was easy to get sleepy after eating a supper of broiled fish and soft bread from home. There was a happiness that came from a full stomach and the low, soothing timbre of his father's voice as he pointed out constellations, ones which would guide them home if they were ever lost. A fullness came from the cool streaming of the river over rocks and the crackle of the kindling wood as it succumbed to the heat. Out there, it felt like the world was infinite, and they were the only two living in it—and for a child, even one like him, that was something spectacular.
By the end of the night, he would find himself asleep in the space between Sakumo's arm and chest, curled against his side and buried in his long silver-white hair. He would stay half-awake as his father carried him gently inside the tent, tucked him beneath the worn quilt from their sofa, smoothed his hair back from his face over and over to lull him back to sleep. Even now, Kakashi could recall the way their clothes smelled rich with smoke, the familiar tune his father used to hum beneath his breath while the insects chirped outside. He could remember how no matter what childish acts of arrogance he used to put up, Sakumo would take it in stride and treat him with kindness all the same.
More than anything, Kakashi could remember feeling safe, loved, wholly and unconditionally.
Happy.
And he'd never really been since.
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Kakashi woke with a bit of a start—something had jarred him into doing so, and after a moment of tension in his limbs, the culprit came from a loud knock on the door. He ran a hand through his hair, separating it from his forehead where it had stuck with sweat. The bedroom wasn't cool enough to ward off the summer air creeping in through the windowpanes above his head, unfortunately, and he'd been asleep deeply enough to dream. He got up to pull on a masked undershirt and answer whoever was waiting outside.
The peephole only revealed a warped image of a white mask, one he found to be designed in the general shape of a frog upon opening the door. A shock of buttercup yellow hair on its wearer told him all he needed to know, even if he hadn't sensed his wild chakra.
"Sen—" The ANBU agent cleared his throat. "Hatake Kakashi, you have been summoned by the Hokage for your immediate presence."
Kakashi glanced at the clock by his stove and dread immediately stiffened his fingers, flexed in his palms. Clearly he'd slept through his alarm, too far in sleep to notice. He was almost twenty minutes late—and today was not a day which could afford any of his usual habits. Within seconds he turned back toward his bedroom, grabbing discarded clothes along the way and slipping them on.
"How pissed is she?" he asked frankly, pulling sweatpants up toward his hips.
Naruto shrugged, all formality out the window now that the message was delivered. "More than usual, I guess. It's hard to tell when baa-chan gets all serious."
Kakashi's eyes closed as he exhaled deeply, flak vest heavy in his hands as he took it from its place on the back of the couch.
"Go ahead of me. Tell her I'm coming as quickly as possible."
"No can do." He scratched the back of his head, sending the blond locks into a bit of disarray. "She told me I couldn't come back unless you were with me."
Fuck, Kakashi thought, trying not to grind his teeth. Of course not. There was no time to put it on his hitae-ate the way he preferred, so he let it sit over the collar of his sweater.
The second his sandals were on and his vest was packed full of the necessary tools, he formed the necessary hand signals and prayed that Naruto followed suit. With a flare of chakra, he disappeared.
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The day had come for Sasuke's sentence to be brought to an end.
After Kakashi's meeting with Tsunade, it hadn't taken the council long to move forward with their plans. It seemed as though they'd been waiting for a response out of mere courtesy, which made him question how much say he'd had in the decision to begin with. Something told him it wasn't much.
The procedure for semi-permanent chakra suppression wasn't impossible, but it required a hell of a lot of finesse and strength to carry out, even more so to reverse it. Of all the people in the village, the only ones capable of performing it were Tsunade and himself: both of them were highly proficient in fuinjutsu, had deep stores of chakra available, and had the most precision when it came to controlling and utilizing them.
Naruto was a good candidate for learning how to make the seal for future cases, but even with his clan's history with fuinjutsu and the taming he'd earned with the kyuubi, his chakra was still far too unstable to be reliable in such a delicate situation. Not to mention that his way of picking up and utilizing new skills was a bit unorthodox. Sakura was probably the only other person who was capable of learning how to properly do so and execute it without a hitch. She'd always had an excellent control on her chakra—and after all, she was Tsunade's apprentice.
It was why Kakashi wasn't surprised to see Sakura standing in the back of the room once he arrived. Rather than the hospital, they'd been asked to come to a wing of ANBU's medical facility, one not far from the autopsy rooms and classified medical archives. Tsunade had to give indisputable permission for whoever accompanied her today, himself excepting—the clearance level in the building was extremely high.
No one would tell me where you were. I don't have the clearance to find that kind of stuff out.
Kakashi looked to where Sakura leaned against the wall, her shoulders sloped forward to let her arms curve around each other and meet at her palms, fingers intertwined. She didn't seem quite as excited as he would think her to be at a time like this. Despite the prospect of witnessing a classified technique, as well as the prospect of freeing her old teammate—someone she'd spent years pining after and fighting for—from the only punishment he was still bound to, she looked unmistakably dejected.
He supposed he couldn't blame her. He hadn't quite been looking forward to this day either.
"For god's sake, Kakashi," Tsunade growled as she approached the doorway he'd been ushered through just seconds before. Sakura's gaze instantly snapped up to his in surprise. He looked away from their tired green and into the Hokage's dark, furious gold. "What excuse do you have for being late today?" She hooked a finger through his headband, still resting at the base of his neck, and scowled at his wrinkled clothes. "Certainly it wasn't because you were getting dressed."
"I had to feed the dogs," he replied with a good-natured crease of his eyes. It was always safer to evade a less exciting truth when she was angry. "Apologies, Tsunade-sama."
"Save it. We need to get to work." She slapped a calligraphy brush into his hand. "You remember the formula's inscriptions, correct?"
"Yes." Despite no longer having a sharingan, it wasn't something he could ever forget. Not after performing the opposite process.
She nodded resolutely and turned away. "Everyone out except for Kakashi, Shizune, and Sakura. I'll call you back in once we're finished."
The medic-nin filed out promptly, their white uniforms bright against the concrete floor and walls. Once they left, the space seemed huge, swallowed in darkness. Fluorescent lights could only do so much in a room without windows.
"Sakura," Tsunade said, commanding her attention in a voice less harsh than usual. "Follow me."
"Yes, shishou." Sakura instantly regained composure, back going straight and face serious, alert with attention. The two of them walked together to the far side of the border. Someone had already come to frame the sealing area in thick black lines, forming a large rectangle that stretched across most of the room. Kakashi took the middle while Shizune made her way to the closer side.
The middle was the most crucial part—it locked in all of the external chakra that would be used to unwrap Sasuke's seal. There weren't many in total, but each symbol was vital to the process. One wrong stroke and the whole thing would go south in an instant.
He took some ink from inside his flak vest and began writing, watching as the black soaked into the stone floor. For a brief moment, he pondered Tsunade's reason for making everyone leave: it was more than likely that no one else would be able to understand the significance without explanation. Even if they could, most of it would be covered—and after the process was complete, this would disappear, as if it had never happened in the first place. But then he heard her speaking.
"This line is used in the beginning of any chakra-sealing technique."
Kakashi glanced up to see Sakura looking intently over Tsunade's shoulder as she painted characters around the border. He'd been right after all—she was here to learn.
"Oh," Sakura said, pointing to something. "That's the same order used for a summons, isn't it?"
"Exactly." Tsunade's arm glided across the floor before her, writing with practiced skill. "They're elemental, so you see them in most fuinjutsu. But only in formulas that involve humans—or animals, in the case of summons. Shizune's drawing the same ones."
Sakura nodded, absorbing the words with a concentrating crease in her brow, a somewhat familiar expression of hers. Once she began asking about the order of elements, how they corresponded to ruling planets and medical techniques, Kakashi turned back to his work. Her questions echoed against the dark corners of the room, as did Tsunade's stern but detailed answers.
His own kanji were bold, rough strokes, words that were harsher and less forgiving than the elements. He wrote them slowly, methodically, precisely. As he worked, he could feel something trickling down his spine and into his stomach, dreadful and unpleasant—each character felt like he'd written it in blood. The image of him using a seal on Sasuke the first time, that horror during the chuunin exams, came to mind all too easily.
"Can you explain these to me, sensei?" Sakura asked, suddenly standing beside where he was crouching. Or perhaps she'd already been there without him noticing. His thumb twitched against the brush.
"Ah…yep. Uh, they're written and activated in clockwise order," he replied, finishing the last kanji in the innermost circle. The floor was cold beneath the palm he used to brace his weight. "You start with the binding character — it takes the chakra of the people performing the unsealing and attaches it to the subject."
"And you're performing it?" When she moved to crouch beside him, she was close enough that he could easily see how her eyes were just a bit wider than usual, her fingers trembling enough to be noticeable. Too alert. She already knew the answer.
"With Tsunade-sama, yes." He couldn't remember if Sakura been there for the initial sealing—all he could remember were the pained screams, the way his arms felt so intensely weak, the sweat trickling down his brow, the overwhelming thought that he was failing Sasuke again by giving a life's worth of problems a temporary fix. He cleared his throat, now suddenly thick. "We're some of few that have enough chakra stores."
Sakura nodded slowly, prompting a piece of hair to fall from her bun and into her face, partly obscuring an eye. She didn't move to fix it—her hands were too busy wringing together and gently cracking her knuckles. "How much will it use?"
"Normally, it takes just about all of it." The hand holding his brush felt too warm, almost to the point of itching, and he realized that he'd forgotten to put on gloves earlier. Ink stained his fingers in little black flecks and bruises of charcoal, seeped under his nails like dirt. Or blood. He clenched his fist around the handle. "But since we're only restoring half, it won't take very much so long as we're precise."
That last part didn't escape her notice—she started chewing at the inside of her lip, which he saw was chapped. There was a moment where she didn't speak and didn't seem like she would, so he decided to continue.
"The next character is steel, which activates the concealment one beside it," he said, inclining the tip of his brush toward the respective kanji. "That's where the unraveling starts. With these and the nature character afterward it'll reverse—"
"Sensei," Sakura quietly interrupted.
"Hm?" Kakashi blinked, glancing over to find her looking at him intently, brows set straight on her forehead and that pink lock of hair still hanging in her line of sight.
She cast a glance over her shoulder, presumably where Shizune and Tsunade were chatting over a scroll by the closed doorway, and then looked back to him. "Do you think this is a good idea?"
He didn't need to ask what she meant by that. It was the same question he'd asked Tsunade, the same one he'd been asking himself. He could hear her inhaling, exhaling through her nose steadily, could see the tightness in her jaw.
His first instinct, as always, was to sugarcoat it—to give her the answer she wanted more than needed. But he was exhausted and his mind felt off, uneven; and there was something about the way Sakura was being direct with him, urgent instead of polite, that stopped him from doing so.
"I don't know," he whispered beneath a sigh, and then just loud enough for her to hear, "I don't know, Sakura. I guess we'll find out."
She watched as he scratched at the masked skin beneath his jawline before turning her eyes to the ground. "Kakashi-sensei, I don't—I've been meaning—"
"You two finished over there?" Tsunade called, halting the conversation in its tracks.
In an instant, Sakura stood up and let it dissipate entirely, smoothing her hands against her white scrubs. "Yes, shishou."
Kakashi closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then followed suit. They weren't even close to finished, but now was absolutely not the time. "Yes."
"Alright, then," the Godaime declared firmly, opening the door with a loud metallic shriek of its hinges. "Bring him in."
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He hadn't actually laid eyes on Sasuke in years, so when the ANBU guards escorted him into the procedural room, Kakashi was taken aback. Now, as he walked into the room guided by the operatives behind him, it was as if he were an absolute stranger.
And to Kakashi, he may as well have been.
The surprising part was not that he had grown—that much was to be expected. It was more that he no longer looked like a boy in any sense. No longer did Sasuke look like his brother—thin and lean, somewhat feminine in how he carried himself, quietly foreboding in a way that was apparent in the eyes more than anything. In his place was a man with wide shoulders, a distinct frown to his straight mouth, and height that surpassed both Neji and Naruto, the two agents escorting him. Dark hair, long enough to reach past his chin, obscured the rinnegan in his left eye.
The overhead lights had been turned off and the medic-nin were already in place, kneeling at each corner of the sealing area where small torches had been lit. Shizune and Sakura stood by the wall adjacent to the doorway, situated so that they would be facing Sasuke to watch the entire process. Tsunade and Kakashi stood on opposite sides of the area.
"Sasuke," Tsunade greeted with a formal tone.
"Godaime-sama," he replied with that same bored-as-ever voice, only slightly deeper than Kakashi remembered.
"Let's get started, shall we?" The woman meant business, and the room went silent in response.
When Sasuke stepped forward, Neji came to stand at the head of the area, posture rigid. It was no secret how much he disliked Sasuke, but without Kakashi's sharingan his byakugan was a necessary component.
Naruto made to stand by Shizune and Sakura, but Tsunade stopped him at once.
"No. You take Kakashi's things to the guards and wait for orders at headquarters." In the end, Kakashi had to shed his vest and headband—the metal could cause an interference that he wasn't willing to chance. Shizune came forth and handed Naruto the neatly folded items, which he took with as much hesitance as if they were poisoned. Even behind a mask, anyone could tell he was confused.
"Wait, why?" he whined, disappointed. "I thought—"
"Your signature is too powerful. It'll disrupt the entire process."
"But you were—"
"Go," Sasuke commanded suddenly, looking at Naruto with his dark, unobscured eye. Kakashi realized that this was the first time he'd made eye contact with someone since entering the room. A tension fell over everyone, thick and tangible for a full minute, before Naruto did as he was told and sulked out. The sound of the door echoed when it closed behind him. No one acknowledged that it had been slammed shut.
"Enough chitchat," Tsunade said when none of them moved. "Shizune, take his robe."
She did, which left Sasuke standing in nothing but a pair of black undershorts, stark against his almost blindingly pale skin. There was nothing to show for his sealing besides a small dark circle at his solar plexus. Despite not having expendable chakra, he'd clearly been training—his body was strong and well-muscled, his posture impeccable and poised in that certain way only skilled ninja could achieve.
As much as he didn't want to admit it, the sight didn't strike Kakashi well. Even if Sasuke had been training for the original date he would reacquire chakra access, he looked powerful in a way that wasn't reassuring. Revenge. Revenge. A whole clan slaughtered.
Sasuke came to the middle of the sealing area and promptly laid down over Kakashi's calligraphy, effectively ending his train of thought. Everyone else shifted, preparing themselves. He and Tsunade were the last two to crouch into kneeling positions.
The floor was cold on Kakashi's knees, even through the fabric of his sweatpants, and it sent a shiver up his back. He ignored the aching in the joints of his fingers, likely preemptive from the anticipation of what was coming. He did not look at the faces of those around him, especially not those of his former students. Especially not at Sasuke's. He only looked at Tsunade when she poised the first hand seal of the process before her chest.
Kakashi copied her movements. His chakra thrummed in every limb and muscle, building and flowing, ready for whatever would come. And then came the glow from the ground beneath him, and there was no turning back.
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"Fuck," he whispered sharply, hissing through clenched teeth, and decided it was time to leave the stall. He'd stopped vomiting a few minutes before, but a violent roll of nausea still burned in his stomach and threatened to claw its way out of his throat.
The door squeaked and echoed as it thumped against the inside. The bathroom was small and empty, not well lit at all. It was a typical ANBU setup. Kakashi yanked his mask further down his neck, splashing cold water in and around his acid-coated mouth, and braced himself against the sink's counter.
For whatever reason, it hadn't worked. And it had been brutal. Despite Sasuke's attempts to bite the bullet, to grit his teeth and bear the pain, there were times when it was too acute to be tolerated in silence. No wonder Tsunade had only wanted to give him back half to start with—save for the obvious.
Kakashi was grateful for her reasoning. Mentally, more than physically, he wasn't sure he would have made it through the rest. He just wished it had fucking worked.
It was like every bad memory had resurfaced with the screams. Every time he'd performed a seal on Sasuke. His hand pummeling through Rin's chest, her heart still beating around his fingers. Obito disintegrating right before their eyes like he'd never been human. Sasuke nearly slaying Sakura before Kakashi had barely managed to interrupt. Sasuke charging at him with cold, murderous intent. Getting the news of Asuma's death. Minato and Kushina's memorial service. His ANBU teammates mutilated to death. His father with a blade through his stomach, sticking out of his back like an exposed bone, coated thick with blood and wrong, wrong, all wrong.
He'd held it together until the medic-nin took an unconscious Sasuke to the recovery wing and Tsunade had sent everyone out, her furious frustration barely managing to stay at a simmer. Once most everyone had left the room, Kakashi had practically sprinted here with an all-consuming need for quiet and escape. He didn't even realize he'd gotten sick until he was left empty, dry-heaving.
He refused to look in the mirror. He didn't need to know what he looked like. All he did was rinse his mouth out, over and over until the nausea rose in another potent wave and made him stop immediately.
Once he caught his breath, he pulled his mask back into position and headed out of there with a plan to go back to his apartment and sleep it all into nothing.
But he hadn't noticed Sakura's signature there. Not until he found her standing in the hallway, at least. Her skin looked a bit pallid; her eyes were dull in the gray, chilly hallway, but they snapped up to him the second the door swung open.
"Kakashi-sensei," she breathed like she couldn't get it out fast enough. "Are you—did it damage—"
"No." He had to clear his throat. There was no use trying to lie about feeling like shit if she knew there was something wrong. "It's nothing. I, uh…think I just ate something bad."
"I have some medicine for that, if you want." She stepped closer, an urgency in her voice. "You won't even have to go to the hospital. It's at my house."
Kakashi could almost feel his bedsheets, taste the sleep he needed more than anything. "Really, don't worry about it, Sakura-chan. I can probably just sleep it off. It's—"
"Sensei, listen, I—I need to talk to you."
The hand she placed on his forearm made him freeze.
"Please," she said on the edge of a whisper. The image of her before the procedure—which now felt like it'd happened days ago rather than a couple of hours—sprang to his mind, and he took in how clearly she was trying, the difficulty with which she was keeping herself composed. His eyes felt tight at the corners.
"Okay."
"Really?" He hated himself for the amount of surprise and relief evident in her face. "You'll come with me?"
With a slow surrender of a nod he made his decision. "Lead the way."
She dropped her hand, exhaling in one great breath, and started walking beside him. He felt himself breathe again too.
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Her apartment was decorated in a far less dainty manner than he would have imagined, if he ever had. It was clean and tidy to be sure, but most of the furniture was comfortably secondhand; the blankets and pillows were feminine but worn in a cozy way that his own belongings lacked. Rather than charming, his were just…old.
Her ceiling fan spun in a perfect, dizzying circle, swirling cool air over him where he sat on the sofa. The living room was warm from a morning without air conditioning; it let a distinctly floral scent permeate the room, one his sensitive nose drank in with each breath. He guessed it was from the clean laundry hanging on the rack in the kitchen.
His breaths were measured to keep the nausea at bay, though they faltered a bit when the tea kettle started whistling. The smell of dried ginger joined the air as Sakura fussed around the stove, and then she reentered the den, setting a mug for him on the coffee table and joining him on the sofa with one of her own.
"Let that sit for a while," she told him, voice soft. "It'll be easier on your stomach when it's not so hot."
He nodded, offering a weak smile with his eyes. "Thank you."
Her fingers tapped slowly against her mug; the steam rose to her face in silky white tendrils. She tried to smile back, he could tell, but she wasn't good at hiding her feelings. She never had been.
"Do you want me to heal you a little? I have a good jutsu for curing throat inflammation after…getting sick."
"You don't have to do that," he declined in what was intended to be a polite way.
"I want to." She finally met his eyes. The expression there made his stomach clench in a way that had frighteningly little to do with feeling ill. It was determined, simmering with whatever she was holding back.
He could give her this, he reasoned. It would give both of them something to do; it would be something that dissolved some of the distance and the pressure of what was being left unsaid. She recognized the moment he gave in.
"Here. Lay down." Sakura rearranged herself on the table when he slowly stretched out, then set her mug beside his untouched one. With a glowing hand, she took one of his, sending a tentative line of chakra down his wrist and up toward his chest.
It was hard not to watch her work, even if it was for something relatively minor. This was her element. The control came so naturally to her, and the healing was a perfect way to balance her tender heart with her strength. He remembered thinking the same thing years ago during the war. Even when everything was pure chaos, she held her own; when she'd fought as hard as she could, she still pushed herself to heal everyone else, himself included.
"You know this technique tells me how people get injured or sick, right?"
In another situation, she would have been teasing him. But here, all he could do to focus on the way her chakra seeped through his muscles, his spine, his throat, and not what lay beneath her question.
"I've been wondering," Kakashi began instead. "Why do you heal from my arm if you're healing something else?"
If she called bullshit, she didn't say so. "Honestly, I wasn't sure if you'd be comfortable with me making direct contact."
"Ah." He tried to match her sheepishness—she was right, after all. The hazy memory of her healing his infection all those months ago came to mind; he'd been far too gone to be uncomfortable with the contact then.
She was quiet for a little while then, her fingertip a gentle but steady weight against the inside of his ink-stained wrist, her chakra dissipating the traces of burning nausea as it passed.
"Was it because of the sealing?"
Kakashi knew he couldn't avoid talking about it forever. Not when it was so present in his own thoughts. It didn't mean he wanted to talk about it. "Must've been. I'm not quite as adept at handling these things without a sharingan."
A strand of hair fell into her face when she nodded, curving under her chin.
"I'm…" Eyes closed, she drew in a wavering inhale. "I'm worried."
I know. It wasn't exactly what he wanted to say, but it was his first reaction. It would work on enough levels to encompass his meaning. Or so he hoped. But she beat him to the punch before he could respond.
"I knew it wasn't going to work."
Kakashi felt his stomach lurch. "What do you mean?"
"I just…had this feeling." Her fingernail traced a nervous pattern on his skin, one she didn't seem to be aware of. "Medically speaking, it should have been fine. Your chakra attached to him without a hitch, too. I'm not sure what went wrong, but it should have worked. It's probably the rinnegan."
He had no idea how to respond to that, not when his heartbeat was quick at the base of his throat.
"Don't you think that's some kind of sign?" She'd finished healing him by now; her chakra left his system with a soothing ebb. "I think we're all just expected to trust him now, and I know that I'm supposed to believe in Tsunade-shisou's position on all of this." Her thumbnail tapped his palm one, twice. A third and fourth time. "I trust her more than anyone, but I haven't felt right about any of this. This is different."
He closed his eyes, too. Say something. Anything. But he wasn't sure what he could say without it all spilling out.
Sakura dropped his hand into her lap, no longer holding it. "He's not the same person anymore. It's like…like Naruto completely grew up, and he learned so much and harnessed all that power into something unbelievable, but he's still Naruto. And I like to think I've grown up, too, but sometimes I still feel like the exact same girl I was when I was ten, or twelve, or sixteen."
A phantom pain bloomed against Kakashi's chest, one that was strongest during the war when he saw just how much they'd all grown and changed, knowing he'd had no part in it. He'd been proud of them without having any right to be. It was when he'd so blindly hoped that they could still function as a team; that their growth and youth and optimism would bring all three of his ex-students back together the way Sakura and Naruto had wanted more than anything. The way Tsunade was convinced they still did.
But Sakura was right, and he knew that what he'd been telling himself all along was right too—things had changed too much.
"I just…" she continued, breaking through the silence, "I don't know how we're supposed to deal with him."
He wished he could find a way to be reassuring. He wished he could tell her something that wasn't a product of his own worries or the surge of bad memories he was battling every second of today. It was difficult, though, when he didn't even know how to help himself. There was only one thing he knew he did best.
"We just do," Kakashi found himself saying, voice low in his chest. "We deal with it like everything else."
Her eyes, intensely green, flickered up to his beneath her lashes. "How?"
"Like any other mission or fight. We come up with what strategy we can, and then figure it out as we go."
This seemed to surprise her a little, or at the very least made her grow more thoughtful. Kakashi watched as she blinked a few times, as a crease appeared beneath her forehead seal, as her gaze went vacant and she processed whatever conclusion she'd come to.
"I know you're right, I do. But still—"
Both of them paused as a chakra signature registered, one that was approaching the front door at a pretty good pace. Already tense, Kakashi stiffened, poised to either defend or escape depending on who it belonged to.
"Ah," Sakura said to herself, "that'll be Ino. She's probably coming to see if I'm alive after the procedure."
It was meant to be a joke, he knew, but Sakura grew despondent quickly after speaking.
Kakashi understood why. He still sat up.
"I'll just be a minute." She carefully set his hand on his leg, asking him to stay and finish their talk. There was no way she'd be satisfied with just that, especially when they'd been interrupted. If it hadn't been today…if it were any other day, he wouldn't have found himself being such a cowardly piece of shit. But by the time she was at the door, he was already standing, looking for his pack before remembering it was still with Naruto.
"How'd it go? You okay?" He heard Ino at the front door, making her way in without any other ceremony or greeting. "Wait—who's here?"
Kakashi was gone before either her or Sakura could find him in the living room. The only indication of his presence was the tea mug he hadn't touched, though was starting to wish he had.
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..
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