Chapter Note: Kakashi may have an idea as to why he's sick. Also, side note for everyone, this fanfic is currently cross-posted to Wattpad and updated on the same days in case anyone uses Wattpad more often and would like to read it there. It will also be cross-posted to AO3 in the future.
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Avurin stayed in Kakashi's bedroom for several hours, wiping sweat from Kakashi's face with the rag and occasionally waking him to get him to drink water. He was never fitful in his sleep and never fought with her about his care. Part of her was relieved that he wasn't pushing her away the way most prideful shinobi would. She felt her eyelids becoming heavy sometime during the night and fought sleep as she laid her head on the edge of the futon. Just as she felt herself slipping into a nap, she felt something brush against the crown of her head. She carefully opened her eyes and looked at the offending hand hovering over her head.
"You know, I think I'm feeling much better. You should go to your own bed and let me rest on my own tonight and tomorrow. I'll call you if I need you." a rough, low voice told her. Kakashi was looking at her through hooded eyes, his Sharingan focused on her. She was prepared to argue but he narrowed his eyes sharply, a look that told her not to ask questions. Nodding slowly, she pushed herself up and started walking towards the door.
"Okay. If you need anything, just tell me." she muttered as she walked into the hallway, closing the door behind her. She was confused and felt pushed out of the room despite him not putting his hands on her or directly telling her to get out. She knew he was most likely not any better than earlier and she hadn't felt like she was going to be allowed to check. Something about him felt dangerous and on-edge. She wouldn't push back on this, she almost felt like she couldn't.
She dragged her feet to her room. Something about this situation had taken a turn and she wasn't sure how to feel about it. Shaking her head, she changed into softer clothes for the night, leaving her arm coverings on, and laid down in bed. She was worried for him, but why? Why did she care if he lived or if he refused treatment? Rolling over facing away from the door, she forced herself to go to sleep.
The next day, she walked into the hallway to see a note on the floor under Kakashi's door.
"Do not come in here until I leave another note. Just leave food and water outside of the door and I'll get it from there. I'm very sorry."
The handwriting was shaky and it was written on the piece of paper she'd kept in Icha Icha Paradise as a bookmark. She shoved the paper in her pocket and stomped into the living room. What the hell was going on? She started preparing a small breakfast of rice and eggs with a side of miso soup and when she finished, she placed Kakashi's meal on a tray with a glass of water and left it outside of his door like he'd asked.
Throughout the day, she did small chores around the cabin to see if she could get a glimpse of the man around mealtimes, however he always managed to open the door at the exact moment she wasn't looking or happened to be out of view. He left the dishes from his meals on the tray outside of his door after a few minutes each time and she never heard a noise from the room. If she didn't know any better, she would think that he'd placed a silencing seal on the room.
Despite the infuriating situation with no answers, she continued the process for a couple of days and even started a project of making him a proper cloth face mask for him to use instead of bandana when he was finally ready to leave the room. She'd had scraps of black cloth from previous clothing projects that she decided to use to make a simple face mask. It was while she was finishing some of the stitching on the mask that she heard the door open and feet softly padding into the living room. She looked up from her place on the couch and Kakashi gave her an apologetic smile, scratching the back of his head.
"Hey. Sorry about that." he said. She shook her head and turned her attention back to the mask as he sat on the other end of the couch. He wasn't going to give an explanation and she didn't need one. Whatever that was, it was his own business.
"How are your wounds?" she asked stiffly. Right at that moment, she accidentally poked herself in the finger with the needle she was using. Hissing and putting her finger in her mouth, she heard a chuckle from the gray-haired shinobi currently lounging on her couch.
"Much better, actually. Thank you. I kept the stitches intact. You did really good work." She felt her face flush at the compliment while she still had her finger in her mouth. She pulled her finger out and looked at the needle poke to make sure it wasn't still bleeding. Kakashi shifted slightly closer to her to look at the cloth in her hands. "What's that?" he asked.
"This is a new mask that isn't part of your destroyed shirt. I wasn't sure if you had a spare with you or storage scrolls when you got attacked but I figured you'd be more comfortable with an actual mask instead of my bandana. It's not going to be perfect but it'll hold you over until you get home." she said casually, holding up the mask in front of her to make sure she had sown everything together evenly. Kakashi carefully took the mask from her fingers and held it up. It was a wraparound mask that he could just pull over his head to sit around his neck and then pull over his face.
"It's perfect. Thank you for thinking of me. I'll put it on right now." She turned her head away to allow him the privacy to switch to the new mask. It was better if she didn't know what was under the mask and it was a good thing she hadn't taken it off at any point during his time here. She remembered that the mask was a lifeline of his when they were younger. He tapped her shoulder to tell her it was okay for her to turn around and was met with a smiling Kakashi, both of his eyes closed with happiness.
"It fits well enough. If you need me to adjust anything, just say something and I'll fix it. It's not exactly Anbu-grade so try not to get caught in a fire jutsu but it'll hold you over. Can you breathe okay?" she asked, tugging one of the corners next to his ear where the stitching was. He tilted his head to let her look at her work.
"I can breathe just fine, thank you. This is actually very comfortable and feels durable enough. I think I might just wear it back home." She could hear the smile in his words and appreciation. Determining that the stitching was up to her standards, she stepped back and put her hands on her hips.
"Well, I'm glad. Dinner will be in a few hours so if you're feeling well enough, feel free to raid my books again. I won't ask questions about what happened but if it happens again, I'll expect some sort of explanation. I'm going back down to the creek today so I'll be gone for a little bit. I'm sick of fish at this point so I'm going to get us something fresh to eat."
She left the cabin with Kakashi reading another book from her bookshelf, looking content to sit for a few hours. She had made sure he knew where to get fresh water so he could keep drinking fluids before leaving with her bow slung across her shoulder. She was hoping to find rabbits today to add to a stew she'd been wanting to make and she'd brought her sifter in case she had free time to look for more treasures.
Walking the familiar path to the creek, she sighed at the realization that the past few days had been so different from what she'd been living for the past decade. She'd taken in strangers for the night before that couldn't afford a room in the nearby town or desperately needed to stop on a long journey, but none of her visitors had been like Kakashi. So close to a piece of her past, yet casually nothing like what she remembered. She tried not to think about where she came from or how the people from her past were doing after a decade of her absence, but something like this forced her to dwell on the thoughts.
Her parents had been shinobi as well and had died on two separate missions. Her mother had lost her life first on a mission in Iwa while tensions were high. Her father had been so distraught that he took a mission far above his capabilities being as emotionally compromised as he was and his entire team was wiped out by a missing nin during the mission. That left her by herself, a Genin who wasted no time fighting to become a Chunin so she could pay rent and not lose her family home. She threw it all away in a single rainy night covered in blood, determined not to follow in her parents' footsteps and die on the cold ground during a mission for a village who wouldn't even know her name if it wasn't on a mission report mentioning her death.
Did she have a grave back home? The thought made her stop walking for a moment. Had people missed her? She'd only had a few friends. Asuma was always nice to her, even after she'd become emotionally distant following the loss of her parents. Kurenai as well. And Gai... She pressed her hand to her face, feeling a familiar ache behind her eyes. She'd probably devastated the overenthusiastic green-clad fool. She sat down at the base of a tree near the creek, pulling her knees to her chest. It had been ten years, they had to be over it by now. She was dead on paper and they never needed to know that she was actually alive.
Gathering herself together, she used her chakra to walk up the tree and perch herself on a low branch. Bringing her hands together for a few simple signs, she camouflaged herself. Now she just had to wait.
After two hours at the creek, she'd collected three rabbits and a few shells from the creek. Focusing on hunting had banished her thoughts back to where they belonged. She was happy with her hunt and what she'd found in the creek and was excited to start on the stew she had planned.
"I'm back!" she called into the cabin as she walked through the door, taking her sandals off.
"Ah, so you are. I have a few questions." Kakashi stared at her from the kitchen table, her Konoha headband on display in the middle of her mementos from her time as a shinobi. Her blood ran cold. A bingo book from ten years ago, her kunai from that rainy night, still covered in dried blood, and a photo of her with Asuma and Gai as Genin fresh out of academy. She had almost forgotten about the photo, it had been shoved into the bottom of the kunai bag Kakashi had dug each of the items from.
"And that, Kakashi, is why I should have just sent you on your way this morning. Always snooping through people's things and wanting to set things right by the law. Are you going to drag me back?" she glowered, dropping the rabbits in her sink to get them out of her hands. Kakashi was not impressed with her assessment.
"They thought you died. I stood with Gai at your funeral. Yet, here you are. I knew you looked familiar so I did some digging, yes. You didn't hide these very well, a loose floorboard is easy to spot by anyone worth their position as a shinobi. My question is, why?" He'd completely ignored her question, instead glaring daggers at her. She glared right back as she dug a bottle of sake from one of her cabinets, slamming it down on the table with two worn cups. She dragged a chair out, threw herself down, and poured them both a cup.
"Fine. You want to play that game, let's talk." She downed the entire cup in front of him and pulled the arm bands off of her arms, exposing the knotted skin from the massive scars she'd received years ago. They had never been stitched, only held together by tight bandages as they healed. The skin was knotted in places, smooth and shiny in others. It wasn't pretty. "Teammates willing to do this to a teammate for a village unwilling to accept an incomplete mission deserve to be punished. Instead, I was the one punished for months for lying about two well-qualified shinobi. A trip during a high-stakes chase here, a loose kunai swipe there, and many more incidents putting me in the line of fire made me question my loyalties. Especially when I was the one left behind each time or used as bait." She poured herself another drink, downing it and slamming the cup on the table.
"No one would accept that teammates would willingly do this to their third teammate. Not shinobi with such a great record of success, in line to become Jonin. I was told I had to have been under a genjutsu, or I had to have been hallucinating from blood loss every time I was dragged back heavily injured. I fought hard, sometimes the only thing saving me from certain death on those missions was my own strength to complete the mission by myself. My teammates would be waiting back home, laughing about leaving me behind every time, wondering if I'd died that time. They didn't want me on their team. They called me slow, they said there was nothing special about me. I wasn't Hatake Kakashi, I wasn't Asuma with the pedigree to get me anywhere, and I wasn't an Uchiha with Sharingan. They wanted someone special, not me." She put her arms on the table, scars on full display.
"The only way they could get me off of their team was for me to die. So while we were being chased by rogue nin through this area, they cut me down and left me for bait. Said maybe they'd have a little fun with me, a fourteen year old girl, and it would give them enough time to get home and report the success of our official mission. I bled out in this very forest, barely managing to wrap myself up enough to get to the nearby village. I was given care for two days and told to get moving so I did. I wasn't going back to Konoha just to be told I was lying again. I wasn't going to be bait again. I was done. I am done. So there you have it, Kakashi. The reason for Okita Avurin's death. She is dead. Gone. Never coming back. It's been ten years, I won't reopen old wounds for the few people who cared about me by returning." With that, she poured herself another cup and drank the entire thing. She needed the numbness of her fingers and her mind to lay this out for the prodigy of her class, the law-abiding shinobi everyone looked up to.
He sighed and looked down at her headband, still scratched and dented from the several close calls. The blood on her kunai pouch had been her own, she'd never bothered to wash it. When she had built the cabin, she had built the compartment in the floor of her own bedroom to bury the memories. Now it was out in the open and the air in the room felt heavy. She watched Kakashi take his own cup, pulling his mask down enough for his mouth to show, and downed the entire thing, gently setting down the cup and replacing his mask. She couldn't even bring herself to feel any sort of shock at seeing part of his face, she was too upset.
"I'm sorry." he stated simply. He picked up the photo off of the table and took a few moments to look at the happiness on the Genin's faces, gently setting it back down with a sigh. "You were alive this entire time. It's hard to comprehend given how much I got to know you through Gai, Asuma, and Kurenai shortly after your funeral. I'd never really paid attention to anyone in the academy, too focused on moving up. I didn't pay attention to anything other than myself during that time. You were being tortured on every mission right under everyone's noses and while I was too stubborn and too focused on my own success to say I should have noticed, I'm disturbed that no one else did. I understand. Some things are better left alone. So that's what I'll do, leave it alone. I'll be gone in the morning and Avurin will still be dead to everyone in Konoha."
He poured himself another cup and downed it, letting her process her thoughts. She stared at him for a moment before shoving her chair back, standing to grab her Konoha headband, throwing it as hard as she could at the wall. The ache in her eyes was growing, and she could feel the tears soaking her face. Gritting her teeth, she turned back to Kakashi.
"You will never understand! I made everything in this home by hand, I fought long and hard to achieve this peace and buried the Okita name under a floorboard where it should have stayed. Then you get yourself hurt and I'm so fucking soft that I take you into my home, my peaceful existence, and you dig this shit up while I'm trying to get you healthy enough to go home. You told me your fucking name in my living room and I recognized you right then. I've agonized over keeping someone so nosy and fucking self-absorbed so close to my secrets. And you say something like that? You understand?! You're going to leave me to my peaceful existence as a hermit? Fat fucking chance, Kakashi! You're a by-the-book asshole that's going to report this as soon as you get back! You're going to find a way to drag me back there and I'm going to be miserable all over again!" She was screaming, her mind screaming to tear the entire house down. Every ounce of effort she'd put into it meant nothing now.
"Despite what you may think, having not been hidden away from the world for a decade, some of us have learned some hard lessons in those ten years. I lost my entire team, one I had to leave behind to save the other, he gave me a parting gift and told me to leave, to protect the other with my life." His hand lightly covered his eye that held the Sharingan. "The other was put in a position where if I didn't do something, she was going to destroy the village. She killed herself jumping into one of my attacks and I still feel her blood flowing down my arm when I think of her. Those who fail the mission are trash, but those who leave their teammates behind are worse than trash. I'm discovering today that those who injure their teammates intentionally and leave them behind are even worse than that." He sighed heavily, pouring himself another cup but not drinking it just yet.
"I've learned that most shinobi can't even look beyond themselves and their own goals. I've turned down so many Genin teams at this point based on that very principle that I'm convinced our shinobi will never reach a point where they'll understand what I'm talking about. You do. I won't go against your wishes on this and I'm not dragging you back. I would do the same thing if I didn't have a promise to keep." He drank this cup more slowly, his mask just barely pulled down below his lips. Avurin looked away, staring at her headband on the floor against the wall. She took a deep, shuddering breath.
"You'll really just leave? You won't tell them I'm here?" she asked quietly before slowly looking back towards him. She had to be a mess in his eyes at this moment, but she couldn't bring herself to care. He put his elbows on the table and leaned against it.
"I'll leave when you want me gone. No one has to know that you're here. You've made a home for yourself and you've found peace. There is no reason to bring you back and force you to serve a village that has wronged you. If you ever do decide to come back, I'll be there. So will Gai, Asuma, and Kurenai. It will be your decision and yours alone. As far as I'm concerned, I met a wonderful merchant named Aki while I was on vacation. That's that." He took another sip from his cup and smiled softly. She huffed and sat back down across from him.
"Thank you."