Chapter 5: Dreaming

It was a normal day, just like any other for the ANBU captain. Training in the field, scattered Cumulus clouds roaming an otherwise blue sky, it was a beautiful day. He had just returned from a successful solo mission and was expecting his kohai to show up to continue training any minute. The captain couldn't help but smile at the thought of how quickly that open-faced teen with the over-expressive eyes had wormed his way into Kakashi's lonely, barricaded heart. It was as he was thinking this that Genma, another member of his team, found him looking hassled and frantic, not his usual playful demeanor at all. Kakashi was immediately on alert.

"What happened?" He asked quickly.

"Kakashi-san, Konoha was attacked! It was while you were gone, the Stone must have found out that we decided to assist Sand primarily in their disagreements. It wasn't a large battle, they just sent a few shinobi they could spare to leave an impact with us about how unhappy they were with our decision."

"Who's hurt?" The attack was definitely bad news, but that alone wouldn't have worked Genma up to this point.

Genma paused at this and took a deep breath, he knew this next part was not going to be easy for his captain to hear.

"Tenzo happened to be at the initial attack point. That alone probably kept the attack from being worse than it was. He took three of them out, but the fourth hid and got him pretty good. He's at the hospital. Raido and Yugao are with him now. The medics are doing everything they can."

Kakashi sank to the ground wordlessly, only one word chanting in his mind. No. No. No. No. NO.

Machines beeped out the young mokuton shinobi's heartbeat as the rest of Team Ro sat or stood in silence.

"He was pretty badass," murmured Yugao, "taking out the three of them before they even knew what hit them. I got there just a second too late." She rubbed a tear out of her eyes, while Hayate squeezed her shoulder gently.

"It wasn't your fault," he said gently, always the voice of reason, Hayate was. "Kid's a fighter, he'll be fine." The second part he said louder to let penetrate throughout the quiet room. Tenzo had to be fine, he may have been the youngest of the group, but he was somehow the light in all the darkness of their missions. No matter how many assassinations he did, there was something about that big-eyed innocence that made him seem more like an angel than a demon. An angel couldn't leave those who needed him.

The room seemed to be watching their captain as much as they watched the unconscious body. Kakashi hadn't left the chair closest to the bed, two of his hands gripping tightly to one of the young shinobi's. The team knew how important this boy was to their captain, even if the captain himself wouldn't see or admit it, and they all knew this was going to be hard.

There was a gentle knock on the door as it opened and a nurse walked in. She seemed to hear the question in all of their eyes and decided to give them the full truth of what happened to their teammate.

"His wrists are broken and shoulders dislocated, presumably to stop him from using mokuton. When he started to use it through his chest, his chakra circulation was squeezed at his heart. Not cut off directly, but the chakra channels were almost suffocated, which caused his chakra to backfire against his system. His heart and lungs took the brunt of it, since that's where he was forming his chakra. We have fixed the damage to the degree where it is not life-threatening, but he will take a significant recovery time."

"Will he wake up?" No one knew who asked the question, but it didn't matter, they all would have.

"We do not know," she said quietly, looking at the body, "he will have to make that decision himself. But, we do have reason to hope, his body has already started the mending process on his wrists and his heart is most definitely beating on its own, we're using the machine to track its strength and make sure the repair we did is holding."

A relieved sigh made its way around the room, nurses never told guests to have hope if the situation looked incredibly dire. He was already healing himself, his body decided to live strong; they all knew, in their hearts, that his mind would soon follow and they would be looking into those dark almond eyes soon enough.

He awoke a day later, and the day after that, he was sitting up on his own and asking all his visiting teammates for the latest gossip. The medics and his team had reason to believe he had made a full recovery. The chakra channels had only been squeezed, not cut off, so he would be able to remain a shinobi. As soon as this news was out, Team Ro decided on celebratory drinks in honor of their comrade. When Tenzo was out of the hospital, they would go another round, but for now they all needed this.

Not long after the crew got to the bar, the whole place seemed to be in joy of Tenzo's sacrifice and recovery; even those who weren't in ANBU and knew very few details about the incident were drawn into the celebration. Except one person. One person who couldn't believe that he'd almost lost another one. And one man in green spandex and orange leg warmers who saw a certain ANBU captain down an entire bottle of sake on his own.

Kakashi woke up at this point, sweating and shaking. He glanced at Yamato, who seemed to be lost, writhing in his own dream world. A night of past nightmares it seemed to be. The copy ninja stood up and wanted to run, needed to run, had to get away from seeing his kohai in that hospital bed again, get away from this feeling. He had recognized it immediately in the dream, and looked down at his wrists. He would do anything, anything, to stop that feeling. Like he was suffocating, like he was losing, like there was too much at stake, like his heart would stop beating from so much pure emotion. He drew in a shuddering breath, opened his window, and jumped out into the night.

Tenzo could finally walk on his own again. His arms were in slings, his hands and wrists casted tightly, but his legs could move! He could still be a shinobi, still be in ANBU, and he had saved his village from a full-on attack! It could have been better, also could have been worse, he would take what he had and just be happy that his legs decided to hold him up. It was a cool morning, still dark, but the sun would be up shortly, and Tenzo didn't want to lay around in his bed for much longer. So, he carefully stood and went to his door.

He could hear the commotion as soon as he left his hallway. Nurses running with bags of blood for transfusion, a medic shouting orders about blood type, detoxing his system, arranging a bed, contacting the therapist. Wait, therapist? That was a little weird. Tenzo forced himself to turn around, this wasn't any of his business; this was someone who apparently needed more than just medical help. Maybe he'd just witnessed a comrades death, maybe it'd been by his own hand (that would be more traumatic than Tenzo could ever imagine), maybe. Stop, none of your business, he scolded himself gently. He started to walk back to his room, letting the sounds grow quieter behind him. He glanced back just one more time, he couldn't help himself, and froze. His mouth dropped in horror and within seconds after the bed disappearing down a different hall, he was running. He had seen the stretcher, a mass of unruly silver hair, and accompanied by a quiet man in green spandex who Tenzo assumed had never been quiet in his life until that moment.

He caught up to the rolling bed quickly and immediately registered that the patient was, indeed, Kakashi and he was unconscious. The only apparent injury was to his wrists, which were now wrapped in thick bandaging.

"What happened?!" His voice came out half screeching and half in a croaky-whisper. The medics turned, not having noticed him there until his question. They stopped for a moment, struck by the pained and confused expression written plainly on the young shinobi's face. They looked forlornly at him and one of them even started to tear up. He got more frantic, they were treating this like he was about to die. Kakashi couldn't die! Not from some stupid cuts on his wrists! Not like this! He wasn't dying! What happened?! What was going on? The questions and exclamations tore out from his body in strangled gasps before Gai's arms were around him and carrying him away from the bed. The medics returned their full attention to Kakashi. Tenzo's gasps turned to sobs as the question kept coming. What happened? What's going on? What is wrong with Kakashi?

Gai put Tenzo back down onto his bed and made him take deep, full breaths for a few minutes before talking.

"Your lungs shouldn't have taken such an outburst, are you alright?" The big man was quiet and reserved, a most un-Gai response which worried Tenzo more.

"What happened to Kakashi-senpai?" He asked this time, in control of his voice and ready to hear the explanation that would make this all make sense.

Gai looked at the door, down at the floor, fiddled with Tenzo's sheets, anything but look the young man in the eyes.

"He attempted suicide by cutting his wrists while he was drunk."

Tenzo felt himself fall backwards onto his pillows. His mind in blur, no coherent thoughts, no words, just hurt and sadness and a deep ache to be by his friend's side. He felt the tears stinging at his eyes again, this time not out of frustration. He made one word come out of his mouth, so quietly that Gai might have missed it had he been sitting any farther away.

"Why?"

"He's been falling into darkness again, getting cold, his eyes starting to look dead again. There has been rumor of another war starting and that Konoha may not be able to stay out of it. He lost everything, everyone in the last war. You had us all worried there, kid, from that run-in with the Stone. Kakashi didn't leave this chair until after you could sit up again. It's hard for him to feel that way. You're his friend, maybe his most important friend, you make his eyes light up." Gai stopped for a moment and sighed, "I promised his father a long time ago that I would always be his friend. Then his father committed suicide only a few weeks later. I always intend to keep that promise because Kakashi is a very important person to me. But he is a difficult person to be friends with. He took his father's suicide hard. He was only 7 years old."

Tenzo stopped breathing, he didn't know this, any of this. He knew his friend was hurting. He knew about Obito, Rin, and Minato. He didn't know that their deaths weren't the first ones to hit Kakashi.

"Now then, Young Tenzo," Gai was starting to get some of his energy back, "I'm off to our dear friend's bedside to see how youth is overpowering his drunken decision." Gai clapped his shoulder strongly, squeezed gently, and left the room, allowing Tenzo to deal with the whir of thoughts in his head.

As the sun finally rose and peeked out of the clouds, a nurse came in to check on the mokuton user.

"How do you feel this morning, Tenzo?" She asked gently, he noted dimly that she had been there in the dark of the morning.

"How is Kakashi?" He countered.

She hesitated, but seeing the determination in the young man's eyes, she knew she couldn't make him stay in his own bed.

"If you feel up to walking on your own, I'll take you to see him," she said trying to have no emotion.

"Of course I can walk," he mumbled, standing up.

"He is in a single room, I won't permit you to continue your hospital stay with him," she said as they walked. "He will be required to have daily meetings with a therapist while he's here and we don't need anyone witnessing that to make him feel more vulnerable."

Tenzo nodded as she pushed open the door they had arrived at.

He thought he was ready for this: that he could look at his friend the same way he always had. The man was exactly the same person, nothing changed. Except that it had.

Gai was asleep in a chair in the corner, a blanket tucked around him. Kakashi was just there, sitting in the bed, fingering the sheets, but even Tenzo could see that he was really just staring at the bandages on his wrists. He looked up as Tenzo finally stepped into the room.

"H-hey, Senpai," he managed to get out quietly, almost unsure of the words.

"Hey, kohai," came the response mirroring his tone. Tenzo lifted his eyes to meet Kakashi's and felt himself pulled to the bedside. He briefly considered taking the chair next to the bed, but somewhere, deep down, he knew that wasn't right. He sat on bed and leaned back against the headrest, right next to Kakashi. Neither spoke. The only sounds in the room were Gai's light snoring and the nurse closing the door as she left, she'd return for Tenzo before the therapist showed up.

"I'm sorry," the apology was soft, quiet, and completely sincere.

"Don't be sorry," Tenzo whispered back, feeling his eyes get wet again, "just don't do it again."

There was a pause.

"I don't think I will," Kakashi conceded.

Yamato gasped awake. Head rushing as he tried to remember where he was, not in his bed or a hospital bed. Kakashi. He had fallen asleep on his couch. He looked around wildly and couldn't see silver hair.

"Kakashi-senpai!" He shouted, he probably wouldn't have been so distraught if he hadn't just woken up from dreaming about that incident. He jumped off the couch as he saw the open window and called for the copy ninja again.

"Bedroom," came the slightly disgruntled response. Tenzo ran in and found Kakashi in nothing but a pair of sweatpants rubbing his hair dry with a towel.

"Don't do that, at least write a note and tape it to my forehead or something." He said, slightly angry, but mostly relieved that nothing had actually happened.

"You were dreaming about it too, then?" He asked the question casually enough, but Yamato could see the muscles in his back tighten uncomfortably.

"Yeah," Yamato sighed, "we don't have to talk about it."

"I went for a run, did a few laps around the village. Couldn't sit still."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"I can't lose you."

"I know."

A sigh escaped.

"It's terrifying and suffocating, but I really can't."

"I know."

"I hate it. I hate that it sounds like my life is your responsibility."

"I know."

"You shouldn't have to live because of me. You should live because of you."

"I do."

"Then why do you always come? Why do you always stay?"

"I love you."

Another sigh.

"Yeah, I know, but you shouldn't. I'm not worth this."

"Yes you are." Yamato pulled off his shirt and got into Kakashi's bed, arranging the pillows so that he could sit up a little.

"You're too good to me." It was sincere, not sarcastic.

"Yes." Yamato acknowledged. Kakashi crawled onto the bed next to him and settled himself onto his partner's chest.

"I love you too," he whispered it softly, a gentle acceptance in his voice, finally admitting it to himself.

"I know." That makes it worth this.