I'm so sorry I'm so freaking bad at editing guys, I just get so impatient to post chapters my eyes glaze over little typos. I went back to Ch. 35 and fixed the goddamn thing, if you see shit like that again please yell at me, seriously. My kingdom for a beta reader lol
And now, Onwards.
- Echo -
Sakura curls up into the park bench, too exhausted to walk back to the hospital, and too disoriented to navigate home. Despite the memories she associates with being here, she falls asleep in the evening air.
First she has nightmares, but then she dreams. And she dreams. And dreams…
The smell of orange blossoms hits her first. There's the sound of running water, and the wisp of steam against her skin. She steps out from transparent shadows and into a secluded clearing she somehow knows and doesn't know.
Glacial blue waters stretch out before her, sheltered by a towering fence of bamboo latticework and another one of climbing ivy. She's back at the Ryokan, she realizes. She smells the metallic waters of the hot springs, but it's layers with a blanket of perfumed blossoms.
"A bath always seems to make you feel better." Yume-Kakashi says as a greeting.
The dream ripples around her, a warm and comforting embrace. She's so amazed at everything around her that, for a fleeting moment, she forgets to be sad. "What is this place?" She asks, turning in a circle of wonder.
The slate flagstones beneath her feet are just as she remembers them. Barely slippery and cool to the touch.
In response, Yume-Kakashi takes her hand. He leads her slowly, step by step, into the warm hot spring water. He pulls her in and cradles her into his chest. "You'll see." He promises with a smile.
Together as one, they go under. They sink like stones to the bottom of the pool. It's several seconds before she realizes she doesn't have to hold her breath. It's a strange experience, breathing water. But in the nonsense way that dreams often do, it feels like something she's done this before.
Light pours down through the milky water, casting an aurora of rainbows across their skin. Yume-Kakashi beside her is luminescent, silver hair drifting in a gentle currents she doesn't remember from the real bath. They sit at the bottom of those ice blue waters, holding each other in a peaceful stillness.
After a period of time that feels just right, he kicks them gently to the surface. Blossoms stick to the tangles in her hair. Everything smells like oranges.
"This is beautiful." She finally says, turning to him in earnest. She knows she's suppose to feel sad about something, but every time the feeling surfaces, it's as if it falls away from her. "Are you doing all this?"
Yume-Kakashi treads water beside her, pearls of it clinging to his cheeks. "Remember what I told you before? Sometimes when I'm not here, I'm there? This is what I meant by there."
"That is…amazing." She says. She drags her fingers through the water, feeling the slip of the minerals against her skin. Everything feels so real. She wonders absently if she is truly with him now, or if all this is just a lucid dream.
"Does it matter?" Her Kakashi asks. Even now he's reading her mind.
"No. I guess it doesn't." She says. She wasn't the biggest fan of real at the moment. "But…How am I here?"
"I don't think how matters as much as why." He says, swimming backwards just enough that he can really look at her. "I think I finally figured it out, Sak. I understand why I came to you."
"What are you saying?" She asks, hypnotized by light and dark of his eyes. She wants to look away, but she can't. She can't focus on much, really.
"I think I have a memory from before you first summoned me. A memory from a long time ago…If I close my eyes now, I can see it clear as day."
He closes his eyes as he says the words, and when he does, the world displaces around them. It shimmers like a Suna mirage, morphing from one thing into the next. The waters around her disappear. All at once, she's standing in the middle of a park. Bamboo becomes cultivated trees, flagstone turns to even pavement. And there, behind her where she knows it should be, is the stone bench she's asleep on out in the real world.
"I don't want to be here." She says to Yume. Her voice wavers on the edge of thin and hollow.
But then her Kakashi takes her by the hand, and the glimpse of pain begins to ebb. She's back in serenity once again.
"In my memory of you, I see this exact park bench. I know it's you, but you're very small. 12, maybe 13 years old? And you're so sad, just like now…" His voice trails off like he's lost in his own thoughts.
Her gut clenches and unclenches when he loses focus. It feels like one of those wet towels you roll up tight so you can wring the water out, only it's happening inside her body and she doesn't want to be here anymore.
"This is the night Sasuke left." She says. Her voice is the low rasp of a dull knife cutting through parchment paper. "The night he told me my love was worthless before abandoning me here on this bench.
She looks everywhere except behind her. "But that wasn't the bad part, really…It wasn't even that I never saw him again. It was that I continued missing him, even after everything he did." She shivers like there's snow in her lungs. This time her sorrow doesn't slip away.
"I know that memory too, but this is not that one." Yume-Kakashi says. "Sasuke ran away at night, but here?" He gestures around to the too-bright morning. To the flowers that hum with so much color they practically bend under the weight.
"I think this memory is from the morning after. It's from when I-… when he found you."
And like the lyrics of a forgotten song, the events of that morning start coming back to her.
She thinks back to that bittersweet time, facing it the way you reluctantly face a parent when you know you're about to be scolded. She turns towards the bench with trepidation and anxiety, only to realizes the memory isn't as bad as she expects. This is a time tainted by the events around it. On its own, it holds no pain beyond Sasuke's absence. The memory settles into her like a featherlight touch.
"I remember finding you here, asleep on this bench." Kakashi says, and she doesn't miss his use of the word I. "I remember waking you up, the fear on your face and how you couldn't make it through a word without sobbing. I think this was your first panic attack, waking up and realizing Sasuke had left?"
Slowly, Sakura nods. He's right. This had been the beginning of her fickle relationship with anxiety and compartmentalizing. The memory replays before her now, like she's fallen into a sensory drill.
"I remember you taking me into your arms and letting me cry into you jacket." As she describes the morning after Sasuke left, Yume Kakashi acts it out. He pulls her down in his chest and holds her for what feels like hours.
"I know I wasn't actually there. I know it was actually him, but I remember this moment like it was me. I told you everything would be okay, that I would keep you all safe even if it cost me my life." Then, Yume kakashi looks at her. "Sakura, I think that memory is the seed of who I am. I know I'm not really him, but I think I exist because of that day. I was built around who he was to you in that moment, and now I exist to keep you safe."
"Safe from what?" She asks into his neck.
"From your loneliness. From your pain, your fear. From anything you need protecting from. Since the very beginning, the desire to keep you safe has driven everything I feel. It's behind every decision I have ever made. Any small danger that exists… I think I would burn the world for you if I thought you needed me."
When he says the word burn, a heat rises within her. She pushes her body deeper into his, desperate for the promise of security it provides.
"At first, you needed something physical from me. You wanted to feel wanted, and I gave that to you. Then, you just needed me to talk. It took me a while to become what I am…but I exist because you loved me into life, and I'm really, really happy you did, Sakura."
When his voice trembles with his own rush of emotions, Sakura feels her chest stir in response. Something electric was happening between them. It felt like Chakra being poured back and forth and back between the two of them.
He'd always been there, waiting for her. He knows her every wish and desire. He's generous and funny and unbelievably kind. Maybe at first, he was just a Genjutsu. But after her battle with her Sensei today, she couldn't deny the reality that he was becoming. Exactly what he was, she didn't know. Still, she could no longer say he wasn't real.
He made her feel very real things.
He made her happy, and he made her feel safe. He could burn her with a fingertip brush or calm her down with a lingering kiss. More than anyone else, he had changed her life. What could be more real than that?
He reaches up a tentative hand and cups her at the bend of her neck. "Thank you for loving me, Sakura." He says. "I know I was just a dream. But you were my reality."
Love blooms wild in her chest. Not for the man that he resembles, but for the man he really is.
"I'll always love you." She promises him, leaning her face into his touch. He is as full and warm as anything in her life has ever been.
"And I will always love you back.
And that's…what makes this so very hard."
It's only now that she realizes how quiet the world around them has become.
She doesn't have to open her eyes to understand the sadness on his face. She feels it through the featherlight press of his thumb across the bruise on her jaw. She hears it in the way his voice cracks when it breaks over the word hard. Something tries to pull the sadness from her again, but she clings to it with an iron grip.
When she opens her eyes, the world is watery; the colors around them a smear of mixed paint. She realizes that it's not the world. There are tears in her eyes and down her face, and she doesn't know how they keep getting there.
She reaches for him through their tethered bond, and that's when she understands. These tears are his as much as they are her's.
Because he's about to leave her forever, and there's nothing they can do about it.
"Please…don't go…"She begs, unashamed of the weakness that coats her mouth like an oil slick.
"I have to." He says through quiet words. He folds her deeper into his arms, and even though he doesn't need breath, she's afraid her arms will crack his ribs.
"I've become the dangerous thing in your life that needs to burn. Every time you summon me I get stronger. I'm already pulling too much chakra from you as it is… Next time, I don't think there will just be a bloody nose or a splitting headache you can heal. I don't think I'll be able to stop myself from manifesting completely. And when I do…The next time you summon me out of fear like you did today… I'm afraid I'll kill you."
She knows he's doing something to keep her calm because every time a feeling starts to rise up inside her, something tries to sooth it back to bed. She scrabbles for dominance over her emotions, but her fight with him ends in a dead end tie.
"I… I can't do this without you." She pleads, clinging to the scraps of things she can feel. She doesn't want to be put to sleep, she doesn't want to feel nothing at all. "I can't."
She hammers a fist against the wall that's holding her emotions back. She won't let him keep this from her. What ever she's doing, it seems to be working. Kakashi has to shake his head to ward away their shared dizziness. He takes a breath, and turns to her. He's just as fragile as she is.
"Don't talk about my girl like that. My girl is smart, and she's tough, and she's a survivor. You built my life entirely from scratch. I know you can rebuild yours too."
Her grip on his fingers goes white knuckle, but even then he doesn't flinch. "I refuse." She says in a dangerous growl. She levels him with a diamond look that says she will not go peacefully into the night. She's already lost two loves today. She will not lose a third.
Finally, her Kakashi looks down. His shoulders go slack. He is resigned.
He's about to drop the real bomb.
"I need you to promise me something. Once I'm gone… don't bring me back. Don't do anything stupid either, because this time I won't answer your call. I can't…. I can't say goodbye to you twice. So if you ever loved me, please. Don't make me have to do this again."
His words are a blade to the center of her heart, but it's his voice that twists the knife.
Something fragile between them snaps. It's the breaking of a bell string and the clatter of a chess piece on bathroom tile floors. When his voice cracks, the rest of her emotions he's been suppressing begin to seep through. There's so much of it, like a tidal wave about to crest. But even now, she can feel him trying to hold the worst of it back. He stands his spirt between her and her pain, prepared to take the blow.
Through her tears, she comes to a decision. "I will make you that promise." She says, "But only if you let me feel everything. If I'm going to say goodbye to you…I don't want to be numb."
"You don't know what you're asking, Sakura." His voice is full of very real fear. Both his pupils dilate wide.
"You don't need to protect me from this. I…I've got me now."
And when she says it, it's like a curse is lifted. The magic words finally spoken out loud.
She is free, and he is too.
Because she sees now that this had been his job all along. Every time she was sad or hurting, every time she was scared and alone… Every time she didn't know how she would make it through the next 24 hours, he was there. He'd always been there to talk her down while he held back the worst of it.
The gravity that holds authority over their shared dream flips, turning over like an hourglass. One moment, everything she'd been feeling was falling away from her, drifting off into the stars. Grain by grain, he has been siphoning away the layered pain of this horrible day.
But now, bit by bit, it's all coming back down.
She was really going to miss him.
She was finally going to have to learn to be alone.
At first, her sorrow is soft as snow, like the blizzard she'd dreamed to life in her apartment.
"Don't forget to water your plants when you get home. But don't drown them like you did last time. Naruto will kill you if you let them wilt." Yume is smiling up at her through his mask, but it's as fake as the easy tone he forces out. He squeezes her hands in his when together, they begin to tremble.
"And don't let Tsunade keep bullying you into the night shift. She only does it because she's waiting for you to learn to stand your ground. Tell her that you're the head of surgery now. You will schedule your own damn shifts."
Something dark begins to cloud her eyes. Her breath comes out in thin, ragged gasps.
"Kakashi?" She asks, voice shaking. Why was she starting to feel so cold? More grains of emotion fall onto her, slowly burying her alive.
"Ino is probably going to try to smother you once Shikamaru is gone. Don't get grumpy with her when she pushes you to go out. She's a really special friend. It's okay to lean on her."
The sound around her goes in and out, except it isn't the sound, it's her breath. Sakura can feel herself hyperventilating, the air drying out her throat. The hair on the back of her neck stands up. There are no other noises to be heard because their shared world is disappearing.
She was going to lose him. She was going to be alone.
With every rapid breath she takes, the bubble of light around her gets smaller. She can only see a few feet in every direction now, the darkness steadily closing in.
"What's going to happen to you?" She demands, turning her eyes to her Kakashi. To the man who had polished her heart like a marble and given it back to her, better than new.
"I don't know." He says simply. His voice wavers in his chest as he looks around . He's shying from the dying light. She can see that he's afraid.
It was really setting in. She is never going to see him again.
She is never going to see him again.
He was going to be alone.
"I take it back!" She yells, scrambling back to his arms. The tidal wave is upon her now, lifting her up the crest to unfathomable heights. "I take it back! I don't want to go, please!" But there was no stopping what she had begun.
In desperation, she flings out her energy, lashing herself to Kakashi like a belay line. Loop after endless loop of rope, she ties herself to him like the life raft he is. But even still, he slips from her.
Even when his face is the agony of a thousand deaths, she doesn't want it to be over. She doesn't want to leave him behind to vanish in the dark.
And then, all at once, she's at the peak of the wave. Everything is emotional whitewash around her. Everything is still.
She's in the beat of silence between the exhale of one breath and the inhale of another. The moment stretches into eternity. There is just his pleading, trembling whisper echoing out into the void.
"Let me go, Sakura."
.
And then, just like that...she wakes up.
It's sometime after midnight, and everything is dark around her. The bars are closed and the streets are quiet. For the first time in years, she is truly alone.
Her ears ring from the nothing. The air smells like nothing. Her vision goes white, then clear, then not. Not white like his hair, or the halo'd glow around him. There is just the big great eternity of nothing spreading out in every direction. It just goes on, as far as she can see.
She doesn't scream, and she doesn't tremble. She picks herself up and goes home to her empty apartment where no one greets her, and maybe no one ever will. The void of her bedroom doesn't hit her like a bomb. It hits her like the lack of one.
Even when she get's home, the house remains empty. Because there is nothing left inside her now, and she knows there won't be anything for a while.
There is just the echo left behind where the everything use to be.