—White

Consciousness returned in flashes.

Kakashi found himself struggling against the sheets tangled around his limbs. The air around him was heavy with a sweet smell. Cicadas cried mournfully. It wasn't night or day, but something in between.

Someone must have opened the window while Kakashi was sleeping; now a slight breeze was scratching at the blinds. Kakashi shivered in his paper-thin hospital gown. It stuck to his hot, itchy skin.

He needed to find Gai.

Kakashi tried to free himself from the blankets. They were so tightly wound around him, they chafed his wrists. He squirmed and pulled until he broke into cold sweat. Unceremoniously, the blankets slid aside, exposing the restraints beneath them.

Slack-jawed, Kakashi stared at his wrist. Red marks had appeared where the stiff material had cut into his flesh. He was panicking despite himself, not because of the situation itself – he had been through much worse – but because it wasn't right. And that meant—

A sudden noise drew his attention. Fine powder rained down on his face, Kakashi whipped around. Cracks were running along the ceiling like snakes trying to hide from the light.

The restraints would not give, sooner would his wrists. There were bones in his thumbs he could break to escape, he remembered dimly. It was too late, though, the ceiling was crumbling; the sweet smell intensified. Decay.

To be buried alive, Kakashi thought, would be only fitting for him.

When the darkness came down, bat-like, he closed one eye and opened the other to catch a glimpse of Obito's spirit.

"Kakashi-san? Are you awake?" Kakashi looked up into the distraught face of a young medic, who was grabbing his shoulders and giving him gentle shakes with annoying irregularity.

"Are you okay?" He asked, articulating every word carefully in a clear and loud voice, as if Kakashi was losing his hearing instead of his mind.

"No," Kakashi answered in his most ʻeager to be helpfulʼ voice. "I'm not."

"I think I'm cracking," Kakashi stated matter of factly. His own choice of words sent a shiver down his spine.

"You don't say." Tsunade leaned back into the plastic chair she had brought for their talk and folded her arms. "You've had a few night terrors, but all in all I'd still say you're doing much better. You're awake for one thing."

He couldn't help but agree with this. Partly at least. Ever since he had woken up for the first time, he hadn't been able to keep track of complicated matters like the passage of minutes, hours or days, he knew, however, that it hadn't been that long and he already managed to sit up by himself, eat and make his way to the bathroom without help. In many ways he had recovered.

In other ways, he was much worse.

"I don't know if we're really having this conversation right now or if I'm just imagining it. I don't know if I'm really here at all."

Tsunade frowned. "You think you're hallucinating this?"

"I don't know what's real anymore. I knew I'd killed Gai, but you're telling me I didn't—"

He broke off. Tsunade had gotten up and come closer while he spoke. Now she leaned over him, certain parts of her anatomy brushing his chest. He fought the urge to look down, meeting her penetrating stare instead. Her face was close enough to kiss. It was nothing short of terrifying.

And then in one fluid motion she swung her right arm back and forward again with a sharp whoosh and Kakashi thought that he might be quick enough to catch her wrist, except that just as he had finished thinking that thought, her hand collided with his face.

He swore he could the feel individual impact of each of her five fingers as hot pain exploded all over the side of his face with an intensity that drowned all his other senses, leaving him momentarily deaf to the no doubt very satisfying slap.

"Ouch, that stings." Tsunade was still shaking her hand and flexing her fingers by the time he managed to peel himself off of the pillow that had broken his fall a little. It was a miracle that he hadn't been catapulted out of the bed altogether.

Kakashi gaped at her.

"Did that feel real? I thought it might be more effective than a pinch."

He took in his surroundings – he'd made a habit of it by now, checking for signs of… well, madness, to be honest. His cheek burned, there'd be a glowing red handprint if he peeled away the mask, he was sure of it. The window was closed. The room smelled unpleasantly of hospital. The thin crack in the ceiling showed no intention of moving any time soon.

"More or less."

With a sigh, she let herself fall into the chair again. "You know, I warned you that something like this might happen."

If she had, he sure didn't remember.

"What do you mean?"

She glared. "I told you to leave it, didn't I? You shouldn't have forced yourself. Your body could handle it – somehow. But your mind… well… I don't think I have to elaborate at this point."

"You mean, I'm going to stay like this?" Some of his dread at the prospect must have shined through because the Hokage softened.

"No, my guess is you'll get better – it just hit you harder that it would have an Uchiha."

Instinctively, Kakashi reached up to the bandage covering the eye.

"What did Gai say?" He had asked this question before, probably more than once. He couldn't help it, in sanity or madness, his thoughts spiraled back to that point.

"Not much, certainly nothing useful. You two sparred; you passed out. That's it," she answered dismissively. "You can ask him yourself when he gets back, but I doubt he'll be much help."

He remained silent, reluctant to voice his disagreement, but when she peered at him with narrowed eyes, she seemed to be able to read his mind, although he had kept his expression carefully contained.

"You're still worried that he's really dead, aren't you?"

"Killing him is the only thing I remember," Kakashi said sadly, knowing that that memory would haunt him forever. Real or not, it had already taken its rightful place next to all his other failures.

Tsunade got up. "He brought you here and I talked to him. I doubt that I hallucinated that. Besides, from what he told me, I guess you got your wish."

He suspected that as well. His eye felt strange and it had sucked up most of his chakra within seconds. It was different now, more powerful.

And more dangerous.

She was about to leave, then paused in the doorway to turn to him once more.

"Kakashi, I know it may not seem like it right now, but you were lucky. This time. Be careful. A shinobi of your rank is responsible for a lot more than just his own life."

With one last look, Tsunade closed the door behind her and left him at the mercy of his mind.

Sunlight filtered into the room, painting a grid of light and shadow across Kakashi's blanket-covered torso. Only Half-awake, he groaned softly. Even though most of the sunshine was kept out by the blinds, the room was still too bright for Kakashi's sensitive eye.

He struggled against the tight, over-starched sheets. During the night they had got tangled around his limbs like restraints.

"You should greet the morning more with more enthusiasm, rival! Every new day is a new beginning isn't it?"

Kakashi sat up so abruptly it made his head swim. There was only one person in all of Konoha who talked like that. Well, two actually, Kakashi thought dazedly, but the person standing in the shadows was too broad and tall to be Lee.

Kakashi thought he could actually feel his heart skip a beat. "Gai."

He moved, his back to Kakashi, towards the window. Like a musician's fingers his played over the blinds as if they were dancing over the strings of an instrument.

Light – shadow –light– shadow –

Light.

Gai forced the blinds apart, flooding the room in brightness that seemed to drown out everything else.

Kakashi held up a hand to shield his eye; he grit his teeth against the sudden painful onslaught of light.

The room was white and the fuzzy black of silhouettes painted on a backdrop of nothingness.

"Every new beginning is a chance to redeem oneself, isn't it?"

At the words, at the unfamiliar cold tone of Gai's voice, something constricted deep inside Kakashi. The left side of his face throbbed as Gai's hand fell away from the blinds.

With the room sliced and diced in light and shadow again, Gai turned towards the bed – towards Kakashi, who sat frozen, still stuck, trying to shield himself. From what, he was only just beginning to realize.

Gai's face was a mess of black and red. A spiral, tunnel, dark bloody hole under his thick left eyebrow, a thin-lipped sneer baring blood-stained, ivory-white beast-teeth.

"Look what you've done to me," he said, stepping closer until Kakashi could smell the sweetness of death on him. "And for what?" Gai hissed, feral.

For whom, Kakashi thought miserably.

"The night terrors are fewer and farther apart and you seem more focused and coherent. All in all, I'm pleased," Tsunade said, leaning back in her customary chair.

"I don't feel particularly—"

"You're better," she interrupted him with an impatient wave of her hand. "Now, I have patients here who didn't land themselves in here because of nothing but their own pigheadedness."

She was about to get up when Kakashi decided to throw caution to the wind; it wasn't like the Hokage was interested in his personal life, it wasn't like she hadn't seen him vulnerable before.

"When is Gai coming back?"

She sighed, looking down at him, taking him in in all his patheticness, no doubt.

"His worry-date is in two days," she replied. The wording was so very like her, Kakashi thought, avoiding a direct promise of Gai returning. This was the world they lived in. He felt it weigh on him like a lump of lead.

When she finally turned away, her fingertips brushed his arm lightly. He couldn't tell whether it was accidentally or on purpose, whether it was meant as a comfort or not and whether it made him feel better or worse.

He listened to the fading clacks of her heels on the hard floor.

Worry-date? Kakashi thought bitterly, I'm already worried.

Kakashi blinked the sleep from his eye, feeling disoriented. Something had woken him from his afternoon nap, and for once it hadn't been his own hoarse screams.

There was a soft knock on the door to his room, then the sound of a man clearing his throat. Kakashi was wide awake instantly, feeling himself tense up expectantly. He struggled into a sitting position and did his best to smooth the sheets somewhat, to look, well, a little less like a frail hospital patient.

"Come in," he called. Had his palms always been this sweaty? Should he maybe grab one of his books to look more casual? But the door opened before he could dig up one of the volumes from under his pillow, so he folded his arms instead and sat up a little straighter for good measure.

"Yo," his visitor greeted in a tone so lackluster it might have come from himself. Kakashi slumped back against the headboard in disappointment. Behind a big fruit basket Asuma craned his neck to investigate the source of the dull thump, that the collision of Kakashi's back with the headboard of his bed had produced. "You okay?" he asked. "Heard you'd returned to the world of the living."

Kakashi waved his hand in a vague come-closer-gesture. "I'm fine," he said. "Thanks, you can put that down over there." He pointed to a small side-table next to his bed.

"It's from all of us," Asuma explained without going into who exactly that entailed; he seemed quite happy to get rid of his burden, though, setting it down a little too hastily and nearly dropping a few apples in the process. However, being a ninja came in handy in any fruit juggling emergency.

"So…" Kakashi said, once his visitor had settled into the plastic chair.

"So?" Asuma clearly had no bedside manner at all.

"What did I miss?" Kakashi prompted.

"You mean apart from your student passing the preliminaries?"

"Ah." So this was where this was going. Kakashi had thought he'd detected some tension when Asuma'd entered. He would have to try to appease him; technically he owed the other jounin now. Going through that with Sakura would have been his job… Or Tsunade's. Probably Tsunade's.

"How did she do?"

"She passed."

"So you've said." He was beginning to understand why Gai hated his ʻhip and modern attitudeʼ so much. This was infuriating. But Kakashi wasn't the type to lose his cool. Ever. And if Asuma wanted to play it like that, he would wait. He let silence stretch between them. He let its non-entity fill the room.

Asuma's hands crept into the pockets of his pants.

"What the hell were you two doing?" Surprisingly he didn't sound as angry as Kakashi had expected. Merely tired, worn-out.

He looked past Asuma, out of the window. A small bird flitted past. A sparrow, probably.

"So it's going to be like that. You're almost as bad as Gai..."

"You talked to Gai?"

"He wouldn't say anything either, no, that's not true, he wouldn't shut up, but he didn't answer my questions, nothing but his usual Springtime of Youth this and Eternal Rivalry that nonsense." Asuma shook his head; his fingers moved beneath the fabric of his pants. "Can I smoke in here?"

"This is a hospital room," Kakashi stated evenly.

"Tch." Antsy was a fairly accurate description of Asuma's state, Kakashi thought. It wasn't like him either. If there'd ever been a contest for most laid-back shinobi, Asuma would have given him a run for his money.

Now he could hear the crinkle of plastic and paper in Asuma's pocket, betraying the other's restless fingers. He decided to give his colleague a break.

"Maybe if you lean out of the window," Kakashi suggested." But if Shizune catches you, I'll deny having said that."

"I wouldn't expect anything else," Asuma said tersely. He was at the window in two strides, opened it roughly and lit his cigarette with the impatience of an addict.

Kakashi watched him breathe smoke for a while.

"We've got a lot of work, you know." Asuma offered between drags.

His back was to Kakashi, his eyes probably not so much on the view of Konoha before him but the distant horizon.

"People having to take your missions because you're in hospital for something that – allegedly – happened during a spar, that's not right," he said finally.

"I'm sorry," Kakashi said because he couldn't think of anything else to say except for, "Thank you."

"Don't thank me."

He wondered whether he should tell Asuma to thank Kurenai for him, but decided against it.

It wouldn't bring her back any sooner, and, like the Hokage, he had learned the hard way to not take anyone's return for granted.

The sound of the sliding door opening woke him up.

Kakashi groaned, wiping his brow. The bandages over his left eye were rough against the back of his hand. Outside the birds were just waking, too. His room was cast in tones between grey and black. It wasn't really light yet. The small hours right before dawn, Kakashi guessed.

Hospital staff, then.

The medics came and went at regular intervals, checking temperature, blood pressure, pulse and whatever else it was medics had to check.

He would lie still and endure, his eye closed, trying to go back to sleep.

The footsteps came closer; then the scrape of the chair and a slight creak as someone settled into it.

Almost delirious from a sudden feeling of premonition, Kakashi opened his eye and rolled on his side to see the person he had been waiting for all this time sitting next to his bed as if he'd never been away.

"Ah, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you," Gai said, scratching the back of his head sheepishly.