Tear Me Open
Flax seeds, they tear me open and supposedly you could crawl right through me….
"Clear!"
The Kakashi that I see on that gurney, stretched out, strapped down, and pale like a lab specimen; is not the lover with the dreamer's touch, not the shinobi with the devil's eyes, not the analyst with the gorgeous brain, not the smiling sleeping face. Not Kakashi.
He is not anything, but a blob of meat. An empty house, windows open, but dark behind the lashes. Curtains drawn on the lack of furniture. On the lack of life. The color has even drained from his hands, from the pink tips. The once pink tips that blushed a baffling shade of persimmon in the Fire Country heat.
Nothing about him is right. The hands are too quiet. Too still, they don't dance. The eyes don't leer behind the eggshell fabric of their lids. The mouth does not cup humor against it, curving ever so slightly into that crooked smirk.
He is there, but gone. He just looks…different. He just looks empty. I see it. Lady Tsunade sees it, too. As the crowd of medic ninja create a sterile gloved army around her, Shizune at her elbow, Tsunade pumps her fists full of white hot chakra again.
"Clear! Now!" she bellows, eyes alive and burned bright, a sterling silver in the panic light of that frenzy, fisted energy. Shizune rips Kakashi's vest and shirt away, and Tsunade pounds those fists against his chest. The force jackknifes Kakakshi's body upward. It rattles like a kicked wooden plank against the metal gurney and then is still.
The smell of the chakra burning like sacrificed oils makes the air thick with ambience. The surge glitters, a networkof blue and purple veins darting like impish butterflies just under the skin covering his chest before it disappears. Then nothing. Shizune's eyes are wide and open and wet. Brown and wet like an all encompassing mudslide.
But I am invincible. I have been destroyed. I feel nothing. I float in a cradle of numbness that rocks me tight and strokes my hair and promises to never let me go. To never let me want, desire, hurt again.
'Kakashi I love you. More than…I don't know…anything. And if anything ever happened to you I would die."
Feel nothing.
Next to me Asuma chews his thumb and cannot look. His eyes are red and puffy, and he looks away. He looks behind. He looks at the medic ninja with their faces tight like latex. He looks anywhere but at the gurney where the empty body lies motionless.
"Lady Tsunade." Shizune says gently.
"Quiet."
Her brow is furrowed. Her eyes glow with something strong. White. Hard. Her hands begin to glow again, the immense chakra there coats the air thick and heavy, and everyone standing too close is forced a step back from the pure pulsation of it. She lowers her hands a little. "Come on, Kakashi." she breathes. And lowers her hands onto his chest.
Shock. Jerk. Nothing. Flat. Pale. Corpse.
Numb.
Inside the hollow digs deeper. Sharper. I'm bleeding out somewhere in there I know. "Clear!" Shock. Jerking. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
The tears come. Unwanted, but they come. Down my cheeks. Fast. Stinging. It hurts. God, why does this have to hurt so bad? Why? Please take away this pain.
'Please don't cry. I won't ever let anyone hurt you like that again. Believe me….if something happened to you I….would….die."
The emergency room door is flung open behind us. Heads turn, eyes catch her just as she loses her balance, stumbling in. Anko coming in, hair wild, eyes puffy, holding one hand under that blossomed belly, ready to burst like a fat tire. At the sight of Kakashi's jerking empty body her knees buckle.
I catch her, I grab her arm and pull her to me. Our arms encircle one another. My hand goes to her belly. Our cheeks pressed together meld the tears into one river. It's destiny. What was and what was to become meet here now at what can never be again.
Again.
We share the womb. We share the tears. The sleeping face. We share this pain.
"Clear!"
"Lady Tsunade, please….he's gone."
"No! Clear!"
"Lady Tsunade….he's….
"Kakashi Hatake come on! You're not dying on me you selfish mother!"
"Lady Tsunade…."
They move forward on her, even as she raises her arms for another go. Even as the body still convulses, the chakra a dying fireworks show across that creamy sky slice of chest. The medic ninja take her elbows and began to pull her away, for some reason that cannot be understood, she lifts her arms to wipe away the ferocious tears in those vivid eyes and
"Clear!"
She pounds her glowing hands into his chest again. And watches the body jerk as they pull her away, and Shizune with her mud slide eyes moves to cover the face with a blue sheet and hide the stillness.
Then
Beep….Beep….Beep…
Anko moves, mouth open, the tears making tire marks down her cheek preserving this wreck. My breath catches in my throat. Asuma looks. And Tsunade pauses there in the door, elbows still gripped away from her, some ferocity left in that smile.
"Kakashi…."
"Yes." says Shizune, and peels the sheet back from the face again. "We've got a pulse."
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When Anko can't stay I do. I stay with him always. Watching him sleep. Watching the stillness of that face no longer shining. Flat because the heart is pumping, but the lungs don't work on their own, and the brain has shut down.
Down Down Down.
The machines do all work. Making all the noise. Do all the moving. Anko cries. And cries. And cries. Runny nose and excavated eyes puffing out like picked treasures. She says "If he knew…if he had a choice he would not want to live like this."
'If anything ever happened to you…I…would….die."
Deep down inside somewhere I know she's right.
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But the memories and the words written in along the walls of my skull are not enough. The thirst is unquenchable. Watching that face. That broken, empty face like a tipped over glass who's juices have seeped free, is enough to rip a person open inside. They say if he does not make any progress soon they'll pull the plugs. Which is to say that I will die.
The days become like years it seems. And the hole inside grows bigger and deeper and wider. And one night I'm sitting there beside his bed listening to the whirr of the machines. The artificial lungs pulling, the heart pumping, the organs churning. And in the darkness looking at the pale splendor of his face, the hollows, the holes, the nothingness where there once was light I see him open his eyes.
"K-….Kakashi?!"
"….Kurenai….." his voice is a wheeze. A desperate cough that tugs his breath away. His face fills vividly with pain. "Don't try to talk." I beg him. I stand up and lean over to be closer. The monitors and machines are going crazy.
"No….I….need….to tell you…" he stops to breathe. Hard , laborious the sound like wind pushing through a punched tire. The pain weaves baskets in and out of his face with an incomprehensible misery that lasts a second and fades, lasts and fades. My self is splintering, I stroke his cold cheek as if that could comfort him. His effort at a smile rips me asunder.
He gasps for air a little, shifts and the pain makes him cry out.
"Kakashi! Let me get you a nurse….do you…"
He stops me quietly, shaking his head, sigh…a wheeze comes from something collapsed inside. "No…just give me…your hand….and…lean in close, please…" his fingers flex and just this once again began to tremble. In anticipation, in memory, I don't know. But it's certain that I have to put my hand in his.
And his fingers lock in mine and tremble there like the flit of a caged butterfly. I lean in until his lips full and soft are pressed against the lobe of my ear. I hear his voice clearly for the one precious second that it takes to say this and in this instant it is clear and devoid of pain. Just pure. Just at peace.
"I love you, Kurenai Yuuhi."
"Kakashi!" but his hand goes foot-less and still, the butterfly wing dance silenced. And the next day Lady Tsunade instructs the medical ninja to yank the machines.
