'There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover's whisper, irresistible-magic to make the sanest man go mad.' (The Illiad, Book 14, Lines 259-261)

Konoha

A child's hand clutched his wrist as he pressed gauze against her abdomen. Blood poured from the wound. It always did in his dreams. All of the gauze in his pack and hers bore down on the gash that ran across her abdomen. He always came up empty. There was never enough. The clotting aid did nothing as she continued to bleed out.

Adrenaline coursed through his veins. His lungs fought to keep pace with every breath his brain demanded to comprehend the fact that his best friend lay dying on a river bank. It was just a C-rank mission. Their first without their sensei. His eyes burned as he watched the tenuous grasp she had on life begin to slip. Her blood mixed with the water and moved slowly downstream, threading itself through the algae on the surface.

"You're going to be fine. I promised your brother you'll come home. You're going to be fine. Just hang on, okay? Just tell me what to do. How do I fix you?"

She always had the answers for everything. She was always better at everything than he was. Crimson blood soaked her curly grey hair, already caked with mud from the riverbank. Her soft grey eyes had begun to close, and her hold on his wrist loosened.

Another breath painfully escaped her lips as she gasped out. "Shisui. Let go. The Iwa… they'll come back around. Bisuke, make sure they make it out."

"Mina! Tell me what to do!" Shisui cried.

Bisuke's canine voice intervened from the warm spot on the left of her body. "Boss?" A wet tongue licked her fingers at the edge of her gloves. The nin-ken wiggled himself beneath her still hand, allowing her to feel his soft fur one last time.

Shisui barely registered his tears turning to blood underneath the harsh pulse of chakra flowing into his eyes. It smeared across his face, staining his cheeks with red as he sniffled. "I can't. I can't just leave you here to die."

Her chest began to rattle as her body prepared for the last breath it would take. "It's okay. Let go... Take them…nii-san" The weight of her Konoha hitai-ate was lifted from her forehead and the tanto in her hand was now in Shisui's. "Go…"

Her breathing finally stopped as he wailed against her soaked chest when he could no longer feel her heartbeat. His hands folded into fists before he got up. Running into the woods, he turned around for one last look while Bisuke bit down on his shirt and urged him to move forward with a harsh bark.

Uhei's fur was warm against Shisui's body as he scooped him off the forest floor from his hiding place beneath a mulberry bush. The dog's own wound was starting to soak through the bandages. The scent of iron was thick in the air, staining his memory, calling to him through time, as the trio ran away. They left Kaminari Hatake's body at the forest's edge. No time could be spared to use a body scroll as a large force bore down on their position. Chakra continued to bleed into his eyes until his sharingan morphed once more.

"No!" Shisui shouted, sitting straight up from his bed with a kunai in hand. His chest heaved, and sweat beaded on his forehead. He could hear Itachi's movements in the room next door. He quickly scrubbed his hand over his face.

"Just a dream," he said loud enough for Itachi to hear. The shuffling stopped, mattress springs squeaked slightly as Itachi got back into bed.

"Just a dream," he whispered to himself. Without thinking, he clicked on the lamp next to him. Opening the nightstand drawer, he pulled out the long-buried picture of his genin team.

Three bright-eyed and fresh genin stood in front of Tsume Inuzuka and her ninken, Kuromaru. With his violet eyes and brown hair, Isamu was dead two months after it was taken, aged eleven. Beside him was a younger version of himself. Short brown curls and stars in his eyes, a recently awakened sharingan with a single tomoe, aged six. On the very right was Kaminari Hatake; his oldest friend, and rival. Innocent. They all looked so innocent frozen in time. He almost envied the children in the photo—they didn't know that the last of their genin team would die at age eight on the banks of the Teshio River. He traced the faces with his index finger before putting the picture back into its hiding place. It did not do to dwell on the dead, yet even after thirteen years, their ghosts haunted him.

Mist covered the cemetery in the early dawn, its tendrils wrapped around the memorial stones moving with the wind. The lone sound of a scrub brush could be heard in row eleven. Bristles attacked the granite and polished away the moss that had grown over the last month.

Gently tracing the kanji engraved into the stone, Kakashi sighed through his mask as the last of the suds was rinsed off.

Genin Hatake Kaminari

Born June 30th, 34

Died October 18th, 42

Beloved sister, friend, and comrade

He always wondered if he would have been a better brother if she would have lived. If he had trained with her more, perhaps.

When he visited these sacred grounds, he always left her stone for last. Minato-sensei, Rin, Kushina: their stones were freshly cleaned and scrubbed after every ANBU mission that the gods saw fit to return him from. To mock him, to punish him with this living hell of a life. Even as he closed his eyes to rest, his sister lived among the ghosts that haunted him—the biggest haunt of them all.

His thumb gently stroked a faded purple silk ribbon in his hand before he closed his eyes and let her ghost speak. Imprinted all too well in his memory was the day he came back from Kannabi Bridge. His equipment hadn't been off for more than five minutes before Genin Uchiha Shisui had knocked on his door.

"Hatake-san," the eight-year-old genin greeted. His hollow eyes and pale cheeks were stark against a filthy navy shirt.

Kakashi looked behind the genin for his baby sister but did not see her. He opened the door wider and allowed the younger boy into the Hatake apartment. The moment he was past the entrance, Shisui had bowed down on his hands and knees in front of the teenager with Kaminari's tanto and hitai-ate in his hands.

"Hatake-san," Shisui tried again, tears thick in his throat. The expression on his face did not suit the baby fat still on his cheeks. "Your sister has been killed in the line of duty defending the last of our genin squad. She...shshee...she told me to bring you…" the younger boy sniffled but resolutely continued, "Her hitai-ate and tanto."

"You're...the only survivor?" Kakashi murmured, his voice on the edge of cracking. Shaky hands collapsed to his knees. He looked up towards a blue door that would never be carelessly thrown open again. A small pair of pink recreational shoes sat neatly in a cubby. The purple silk ribbons that tied them together gleamed in the dim light. They would never be worn.

A broken sob from the younger boy kneeling before him was the confirmation he needed to add to his own anguish. An eternity passed in that moment as the two boys let their shared pain flow between them.

Kakashi didn't know if he was speaking to himself or the younger boy as grief settled around them and he put his hand on Shisui's shoulder.

"Get up, Shisui. You are going to live with the loss of your team. You are going to honor them and make sure that their sacrifice was not in vain. Live the way—the way they would have wanted you to."

Before Shisui parted that day, Kakashi gave him Kaminari's tanto, ostensibly so he would remember the promise to honor his team's sacrifice. In truth, he couldn't bear to look at it. The small wolf on the leather sheath he commissioned for her seventh birthday was more reminder than he needed.

The ribbon was still soft in his hand, the only thing he allowed and kept carefully folded inside his hitai-ate, one of the few things that survived the Kyuubi attack.

"Maa, Mina. Your genin teammate is doing fine. Seems a little stressed, but he'll hold. You probably wouldn't approve, but I bought him the latest copy of 'Icha-Icha' for his birthday yesterday. I know, I know, but Obito thought it was hilarious. Today's your death anniversary, ya know. It's been thirteen years since you died. I've always found it ironic two of the most important people to me died within a span of three days. Only one walked back through the gates…a mistake. Sometimes I wish you would walk through…ah. If wishes were horses."

The last ghost thus appeased for another month, he stood quietly as the hours passed by before leaving and heading home to his empty apartment.

AN: thank you so much for reading! If you have the time, please leave a comment!

This fic is beta'ed by: CherryBerry12, Moonlady9, and MrsSakuraHatake