Naruto: A Winter's Lullaby
Oct. 12th, 2008 08:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tuesdayficarchivedTitle: A Winter's Lullaby
Fandom: Naruto
Character(s)/Pairing: Kakashi (Guy/Kakashi)
Word Count: ~2700 words
Summary: Kakashi's finding that some things are difficult to recover from.
Notes:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
uminohikari did an awesome beta of this; any mistakes left are most decidedly my own. This is my last Naruto fic for a little while (I'm sure I'll be back, if my backburner wip folder is anything to go by), but I'm glad I'm ending on a Kakashi fic. It's AU, by which I mean that the premise is the key to the whole fic. Enjoy!
—
More snow stole into the valley in the quiet of night. It covered the trees and piled over the opening to the cave Kakashi had sheltered in when his choices were to bind his wounds or be tracked by the blood loss to his dead body. He stayed in for the first day, trying to marshal what little strength and chakra remained. Every few hours, he changed the stained bandages on his forearms, upper shoulder, and right thigh. The bandages looped tight and messy around his abdomen he left alone. He drank from the small trickles of melting snow and tried to not to breathe too hard. Eventually, he fell asleep huddled in the thermal blankets from his field kit, his backpack serving as a rather lumpy pillow. In his dreams the world turned to soft spun glass, hues of yellow and green and red and black and pink bleaching out to white, white, clear white burning to the touch.
The second night, the temperature dropped sharply. The half-melted snow hardened into a thin wall of ice Kakashi gouged through with a kunai and then threw his whole body against the next morning. He stumbled through the broken ice and snow to the outside's abrasive air, oriented himself south, and moved on.
—
When he reached Konoha, he was diagnosed with hypothermia, mild frostbite, and lingering chakra depletion. He would keep all his fingers and toes, but it was a near thing. It felt like the cold had sunk into his bones, his teeth chattering despite his best efforts. Even once he'd warmed, he was too warm, Tsunade said. Fever and infection had firmly caught their claws, and Kakashi was relegated to a hospital bed. She disappeared, but Shizune came in to check on him and change his bandages. Kakashi wanted to protest that he'd managed well enough on his own, but his words were slurred and didn't fully make sense even to his own ears. He was easily impeded in his own attempts, pressed back down against the mattress as Shizune went at his shoulder.
Shizune frowned when she changed the bandages along his stomach, hands too firm, too gentle. Kakashi sucked in a clenched breath and refused to flinch at every small touch and tug. She swam in and out of his vision and the hours passed in a fog of pain and prodding and being pushed and pulled and moved to another bed. Finally he was left alone, just him and the lurching mattress and ceiling and a green and black blur off to one side. After a while, even the blur disappeared.
It was hard to grasp a single coherent moment until the pink of Sakura's hair filled his vision as she tugged his blanket out of place, bent over his bandages. Sakura checked on him with a forced casual concern, told him through the haze he was fine. Kakashi smiled to reinforce it and realized in a detached way this might be the first time Sakura had seen him without the mask. She draped a cool washcloth over his face before Naruto came to squawk indignantly at him for his unexpected disappearance.
Naruto ranted on about it awhile, objecting to Kakashi having taken their opposition with him, without the decency to leave a note or let anyone know he was okay and wasn't dead like—before he'd reappeared at the village gate "like a pale and vengeful ghost!" Naruto stopped, expression stricken, but quickly regained his serious, earnest demeanor.
Kakashi laughed, and it hurt. Sakura dragged Naruto away with a look that said she would Talk to him.
—
The fifth morning in the hospital, Kakashi woke at dawn to see green slip out the window, briefly blocking the hues of pink and orange filtering in. He closed his eyes and went back to sleep to chase endlessly after the red and black and gold always flitting just out of reach, ignored the grass tangling at his feet. A hand gripped his own and he released it, slid sideways in the dirt. Fresh dirt and copper filled his lungs and he couldn't taste the air, smell the frost encroaching. Plants crinkled, crushed underfoot. Wait, he wanted to say. Wait.
No one ever did.
—
Tsunade finally let him leave after two weeks, belly tight but bandages no longer bloody. "This is your second fall down a mountainside in a month. Find someone to look after you or I will," she promised grimly, and Kakashi nodded his agreement, wondered if taking Naruto out for ramen would count.
They went to Ichiraku, Naruto uncharacteristically quiet until he had some food in him. Steam rose from the bowls. The ceramic was warm against Kakashi's hands, and he swallowed the heavy bites in the moments Naruto looked away. There were plenty of opportunities.
Irritated, Kakashi said what they both must be thinking, the only thought that hovered in easy reach these days: "It was necessary." There was an awkward silence, and Naruto hurriedly shoveled noodles between his lips, chewing noisily. Kakashi cleared his throat and wondered how Guy might go about this. Then again, no matter how ambitious Neji was, Guy would never have to—
"But just because it's necessary doesn't mean it's forgivable." Kakashi placed his chopsticks flat across the edges of the bowl, stomach cramping. He'd been overly optimistic, if that was possible, in recovery time.
"M'not about that," Naruto eventually garbled around mouthfuls of noodles. "M'pissed about the disappearing."
Then Sai stalked by the stand, and Naruto pulled an adequate reproduction of the quiet, but quick retreat that had gotten Kakashi in so much trouble in the first place.
—
Ramen was a mistake. Kakashi spent his first night at home hunched over by the toilet, forehead pressed to the tiled wall and wondering if what came after might not be a little more peaceful, or at least smell less sharply of rancid sweat and vomit. He hoped it was peaceful and castigated himself for that hope. After a few hours, he pulled together the will to apply water and washcloth to strategic stretches of skin. Baths were still forbidden outright, and Kakashi thought longingly of hot springs and a warm shared bed after.
He indulged himself for several semi-pleasant minutes, then tried to shed the fantasy like the water he wrung from the cloth. Despite his efforts, traces remained. The sheets were cool when he slid in, and he slipped into dreams of summer nights and another's hands against his skin.
—
Three weeks of down time were almost shameful for someone of Kakashi's status, and even books began to pale in the face of so much vacant time. When Guy appeared on Kakashi's doorstep and said something about Tsunade sending him, Kakashi welcomed the distraction even as he swallowed hard against the flood of words and resisted the impulse to send Guy right back. Instead, Kakashi pulled the door open another inch and stepped aside.
Guy's sandals looked too familiar on the shoe rack, so Kakashi busied himself with the kettle and hot plate in his makeshift kitchen. He remembered that he had yet to grocery shop since he'd returned, and his search for any forgotten packets or pinch of loose leaf tea turned up nothing. Guy had quietly turned off the hot plate, anyway, and when Kakashi looked over he was approaching with steady footsteps and an implacable expression.
"What did you think you were doing?" Guy asked.
"Making tea?"
Guy kept coming forward like he had no concept of personal space. Kakashi considered retreat, but behind him was only the bed, and it would only be putting off the inevitable. Then again, it was his only reassurance, each strike against the inevitable, when it felt like he was only a tool to speed the march of time and age and the consequences of betrayal.
(His eyes had been so wide as the snow rushed toward them that Kakashi had been able to see the little cobweb veins, had a clear view as—)
The mattress, at least, was soft against his legs and back, and Guy warm above him, like he was a sheathe for flame, and all Kakashi wanted to do was burn.
—
Of course nothing was ever that simple.
"Ouch, ouch, that's—" Guy shifted to the side, careful of Kakashi's midsection. Guy's arms remained wrapped around Kakashi, one across his chest and the other sneaking its way under his neck. After a few minutes lying there, feeling the weight of Guy's arm like an anchor and staring at the ceiling, Kakashi asked, "What do you want?"
"Nothing," Guy said. Then, "Just. I don't want you . . . to be happy, but—"
"Thanks," Kakashi said.
"Shut up," Guy said mildly. He continued, "I can't expect you to be happy, but I want to know you'll be okay."
"Sure, I'm okay," Kakashi said. "Now that we have that sorted out, you can kindly fuck off."
Guy only moved closer, pressed warm against Kakashi's side. He kissed Kakashi's forehead like he was a child to be hushed or comforted in the night.
"No one's okay," Kakashi said after the suffocating weight of silence drove it out of him with his breath. "No one."
Guy carded his hands through Kakashi's hair until he fell asleep, but still he dreamed of red, red, blue, white collisions and explosions behind his eyes. When he woke, Guy was gone and the bed was cold, empty as always.
—
If Asuma were still around, Kakashi would have heard sooner, but as it was all his best sources of gossip and secondhand knowledge were gone, names long since inscribed in village stone. He only heard about the missing mountain peak by walking past the ramen stand as Iruka's voice rose. He was fairly easy to rile and usually quick to calm, but this time he went on for five straight minutes, and Kakashi paused to listen.
Iruka's voice softened, finally, and he said, "You can't keep doing this, Naruto. We're concerned. I'm concerned."
"Tell Tsunade-baasan to mind her own business," Naruto snarled and came storming out. It was a measure of his agitation that he not only walked away from Iruka, still his respected idol, but he didn't notice Kakashi standing in the shadows. A full bowl of ramen was growing cold on the counter. Iruka heaved a sigh and scrubbed a hand through the strands of his bangs and into his ponytail.
"A mountain?" Kakashi asked softly, stepping out into the light once Naruto had disappeared around the corner. Iruka directed a long-suffering look his way.
"More a peak, but . . . " Iruka's voice faded like wisps of mist in face of the morning sun. He sighed. "I don't think he'll lose anyone else easily."
Kakashi swallowed down his first words. "The last wasn't exactly easy," he said in the calmest voice possible, new words like razors on his tongue. Then he walked away, because he didn't have a Sai or Sakura to keep him from trouble, and Iruka didn't deserve his anger over this.
A mountain peak. Good to know.
—
He woke in the middle of the night for no discernible reason. His heartbeat was steady, his hands bunched in the covers. He still hurt all over, but only as though he'd thrown himself down a steep, rocky hill the previous night, a clear sign he was healing.
Kakashi released the blankets, hands cramping, and crawled out of the bed. He went to the bathroom, and on washing his hands caught Obito's eye in the mirror. He was on his knees in front of the toilet, peering into the filling water, a half-second later. Then his eyes were clenched closed and soon he was empty, empty.
The dry-heaving continued on and off for fifteen minutes. When he rinsed his mouth at the sink, he kept his eyes closed and stumbled back to bed blind.
—
Sakura came to visit around lunchtime, arms linked with Sai and Naruto like she was presenting two particularly poor presents.
"I still haven't been grocery shopping," Kakashi said.
She bumped Naruto with her hip and he raised his free hand to reveal several bags of fresh vegetables. On Sakura's other side, Sai also carried ingredients.
"And I don't have a real kitchen," Kakashi felt it necessary to point out.
Sakura released her teammates and ducked past him and in through the doorway. She looked around with a slightly disapproving expression, then turned a bright, brittle smile his way. "We'll make do."
It was almost their team motto at this point. Sai set his groceries down by the refrigerator and pushed Naruto down by the small wooden table. Kakashi made his bed and tried not to bristle at so many people in the small space of his apartment or make a break for the door or window. It helped that it looked like Naruto was suppressing the same thoughts, and they nearly exchanged bitter half-smiles, but Naruto's eyes skipped away at the last moment. Kakashi adjusted his hitaiate and tried not to feel his wounds so deeply. They were only flesh, and flesh was known to heal despite best intentions, leaving only memories in imprinted skin. Surreptitious glances showed that Naruto's had already.
—
Kakashi pulled the kunai back only by strongest force of will, fighting instinct while half-asleep and nearly unaware of what was happening.
"Guy," he said, slitting open both eyes just to be sure, "knock next time."
Guy fingered the nick at his throat and smiled. "I'll keep that in mind."
Kakashi slunk back to his bed, gathering the scattered covers along the way. He put the kunai back on the bedside table, wrapped himself in the covers in the way his sensei once said made him look like a demented caterpillar, and spread out along the left side of the bed. Guy's footsteps sounded politely up to the bed. A floorboard creaked, and Kakashi nearly made a comment about overdoing it, but then the mattress was shifting and Guy was pulling Kakashi closer and stealing a corner of the uppermost blanket in the process.
Kakashi came close to making a comment about death wishes, but there were some paths of thought he didn't want to run down right now, and the death of a lo—one of the few remaining people important to him would push him fast and easy in that direction. Instead, Kakashi let the incursion pass without skirmish and curled an arm around Guy's shoulder.
—
When Kakashi startled suddenly awake, his back was wedged firmly against Guy's chest. The covers tangled together around them. Even in sleep, Guy was careful of Kakashi's wounds—his hands were well clear of Kakashi's mid-abdomen. It was uncomfortable to turn into that embrace. Something wrenched in Kakashi's gut as he rolled over. He breathed shallowly and tried not to antagonize the stitches further.
Each of Guy's breaths had the faintest burr underlying the inhale, a striking contrast to the snores like sonic winds when they were young and Guy would nap in the grove near the training grounds. Kakashi soaked in unexpected warmth and wondered what later costs might be. He didn't sleep, but it was more restful than he'd felt in (five weeks, six days, two hours, and a steady progressing tick of seconds up to minutes up to hours again) a long time.
Guy drew away when dawn crept crimson against Kakashi's eyelids. His fingers smoothed the edges of Kakashi's lips, and then he withdrew from the apartment entirely.
—
The memorial stone had a new name carved in it, and Kakashi knew he shouldn't have stayed away so long. At least Obito knew not to worry.
Hello, Obito, how are things? Failure as usual? Failure, failure . . . failed. I failed you.
Team was better, best, most important of all, and anyone who thought otherwise was lower than scum, than the mud under miles of melting snow, and who could have known an avalanche would be so fortuitous or could be induced so quickly? Who knew he'd have to use it against one of the only three people who'd once given him serious hope for the future, on a day that felt centuries old, memory cracked and worn like a photograph handled too often.
He finally asked the question dancing behind pressed lips, perched on a twice-bitten tongue, the question his sensei had once asked to turn Kakashi's question back on him:
"What good is one man alone?"
The stone had no easy answers.
eta: And if you have no idea what this story is about, check the tags for the missing character.
Fandom: Naruto
Character(s)/Pairing: Kakashi (Guy/Kakashi)
Word Count: ~2700 words
Summary: Kakashi's finding that some things are difficult to recover from.
Notes:
uminohikari did an awesome beta of this; any mistakes left are most decidedly my own. This is my last Naruto fic for a little while (I'm sure I'll be back, if my backburner wip folder is anything to go by), but I'm glad I'm ending on a Kakashi fic. It's AU, by which I mean that the premise is the key to the whole fic. Enjoy!—
More snow stole into the valley in the quiet of night. It covered the trees and piled over the opening to the cave Kakashi had sheltered in when his choices were to bind his wounds or be tracked by the blood loss to his dead body. He stayed in for the first day, trying to marshal what little strength and chakra remained. Every few hours, he changed the stained bandages on his forearms, upper shoulder, and right thigh. The bandages looped tight and messy around his abdomen he left alone. He drank from the small trickles of melting snow and tried to not to breathe too hard. Eventually, he fell asleep huddled in the thermal blankets from his field kit, his backpack serving as a rather lumpy pillow. In his dreams the world turned to soft spun glass, hues of yellow and green and red and black and pink bleaching out to white, white, clear white burning to the touch.
The second night, the temperature dropped sharply. The half-melted snow hardened into a thin wall of ice Kakashi gouged through with a kunai and then threw his whole body against the next morning. He stumbled through the broken ice and snow to the outside's abrasive air, oriented himself south, and moved on.
—
When he reached Konoha, he was diagnosed with hypothermia, mild frostbite, and lingering chakra depletion. He would keep all his fingers and toes, but it was a near thing. It felt like the cold had sunk into his bones, his teeth chattering despite his best efforts. Even once he'd warmed, he was too warm, Tsunade said. Fever and infection had firmly caught their claws, and Kakashi was relegated to a hospital bed. She disappeared, but Shizune came in to check on him and change his bandages. Kakashi wanted to protest that he'd managed well enough on his own, but his words were slurred and didn't fully make sense even to his own ears. He was easily impeded in his own attempts, pressed back down against the mattress as Shizune went at his shoulder.
Shizune frowned when she changed the bandages along his stomach, hands too firm, too gentle. Kakashi sucked in a clenched breath and refused to flinch at every small touch and tug. She swam in and out of his vision and the hours passed in a fog of pain and prodding and being pushed and pulled and moved to another bed. Finally he was left alone, just him and the lurching mattress and ceiling and a green and black blur off to one side. After a while, even the blur disappeared.
It was hard to grasp a single coherent moment until the pink of Sakura's hair filled his vision as she tugged his blanket out of place, bent over his bandages. Sakura checked on him with a forced casual concern, told him through the haze he was fine. Kakashi smiled to reinforce it and realized in a detached way this might be the first time Sakura had seen him without the mask. She draped a cool washcloth over his face before Naruto came to squawk indignantly at him for his unexpected disappearance.
Naruto ranted on about it awhile, objecting to Kakashi having taken their opposition with him, without the decency to leave a note or let anyone know he was okay and wasn't dead like—before he'd reappeared at the village gate "like a pale and vengeful ghost!" Naruto stopped, expression stricken, but quickly regained his serious, earnest demeanor.
Kakashi laughed, and it hurt. Sakura dragged Naruto away with a look that said she would Talk to him.
—
The fifth morning in the hospital, Kakashi woke at dawn to see green slip out the window, briefly blocking the hues of pink and orange filtering in. He closed his eyes and went back to sleep to chase endlessly after the red and black and gold always flitting just out of reach, ignored the grass tangling at his feet. A hand gripped his own and he released it, slid sideways in the dirt. Fresh dirt and copper filled his lungs and he couldn't taste the air, smell the frost encroaching. Plants crinkled, crushed underfoot. Wait, he wanted to say. Wait.
No one ever did.
—
Tsunade finally let him leave after two weeks, belly tight but bandages no longer bloody. "This is your second fall down a mountainside in a month. Find someone to look after you or I will," she promised grimly, and Kakashi nodded his agreement, wondered if taking Naruto out for ramen would count.
They went to Ichiraku, Naruto uncharacteristically quiet until he had some food in him. Steam rose from the bowls. The ceramic was warm against Kakashi's hands, and he swallowed the heavy bites in the moments Naruto looked away. There were plenty of opportunities.
Irritated, Kakashi said what they both must be thinking, the only thought that hovered in easy reach these days: "It was necessary." There was an awkward silence, and Naruto hurriedly shoveled noodles between his lips, chewing noisily. Kakashi cleared his throat and wondered how Guy might go about this. Then again, no matter how ambitious Neji was, Guy would never have to—
"But just because it's necessary doesn't mean it's forgivable." Kakashi placed his chopsticks flat across the edges of the bowl, stomach cramping. He'd been overly optimistic, if that was possible, in recovery time.
"M'not about that," Naruto eventually garbled around mouthfuls of noodles. "M'pissed about the disappearing."
Then Sai stalked by the stand, and Naruto pulled an adequate reproduction of the quiet, but quick retreat that had gotten Kakashi in so much trouble in the first place.
—
Ramen was a mistake. Kakashi spent his first night at home hunched over by the toilet, forehead pressed to the tiled wall and wondering if what came after might not be a little more peaceful, or at least smell less sharply of rancid sweat and vomit. He hoped it was peaceful and castigated himself for that hope. After a few hours, he pulled together the will to apply water and washcloth to strategic stretches of skin. Baths were still forbidden outright, and Kakashi thought longingly of hot springs and a warm shared bed after.
He indulged himself for several semi-pleasant minutes, then tried to shed the fantasy like the water he wrung from the cloth. Despite his efforts, traces remained. The sheets were cool when he slid in, and he slipped into dreams of summer nights and another's hands against his skin.
—
Three weeks of down time were almost shameful for someone of Kakashi's status, and even books began to pale in the face of so much vacant time. When Guy appeared on Kakashi's doorstep and said something about Tsunade sending him, Kakashi welcomed the distraction even as he swallowed hard against the flood of words and resisted the impulse to send Guy right back. Instead, Kakashi pulled the door open another inch and stepped aside.
Guy's sandals looked too familiar on the shoe rack, so Kakashi busied himself with the kettle and hot plate in his makeshift kitchen. He remembered that he had yet to grocery shop since he'd returned, and his search for any forgotten packets or pinch of loose leaf tea turned up nothing. Guy had quietly turned off the hot plate, anyway, and when Kakashi looked over he was approaching with steady footsteps and an implacable expression.
"What did you think you were doing?" Guy asked.
"Making tea?"
Guy kept coming forward like he had no concept of personal space. Kakashi considered retreat, but behind him was only the bed, and it would only be putting off the inevitable. Then again, it was his only reassurance, each strike against the inevitable, when it felt like he was only a tool to speed the march of time and age and the consequences of betrayal.
(His eyes had been so wide as the snow rushed toward them that Kakashi had been able to see the little cobweb veins, had a clear view as—)
The mattress, at least, was soft against his legs and back, and Guy warm above him, like he was a sheathe for flame, and all Kakashi wanted to do was burn.
—
Of course nothing was ever that simple.
"Ouch, ouch, that's—" Guy shifted to the side, careful of Kakashi's midsection. Guy's arms remained wrapped around Kakashi, one across his chest and the other sneaking its way under his neck. After a few minutes lying there, feeling the weight of Guy's arm like an anchor and staring at the ceiling, Kakashi asked, "What do you want?"
"Nothing," Guy said. Then, "Just. I don't want you . . . to be happy, but—"
"Thanks," Kakashi said.
"Shut up," Guy said mildly. He continued, "I can't expect you to be happy, but I want to know you'll be okay."
"Sure, I'm okay," Kakashi said. "Now that we have that sorted out, you can kindly fuck off."
Guy only moved closer, pressed warm against Kakashi's side. He kissed Kakashi's forehead like he was a child to be hushed or comforted in the night.
"No one's okay," Kakashi said after the suffocating weight of silence drove it out of him with his breath. "No one."
Guy carded his hands through Kakashi's hair until he fell asleep, but still he dreamed of red, red, blue, white collisions and explosions behind his eyes. When he woke, Guy was gone and the bed was cold, empty as always.
—
If Asuma were still around, Kakashi would have heard sooner, but as it was all his best sources of gossip and secondhand knowledge were gone, names long since inscribed in village stone. He only heard about the missing mountain peak by walking past the ramen stand as Iruka's voice rose. He was fairly easy to rile and usually quick to calm, but this time he went on for five straight minutes, and Kakashi paused to listen.
Iruka's voice softened, finally, and he said, "You can't keep doing this, Naruto. We're concerned. I'm concerned."
"Tell Tsunade-baasan to mind her own business," Naruto snarled and came storming out. It was a measure of his agitation that he not only walked away from Iruka, still his respected idol, but he didn't notice Kakashi standing in the shadows. A full bowl of ramen was growing cold on the counter. Iruka heaved a sigh and scrubbed a hand through the strands of his bangs and into his ponytail.
"A mountain?" Kakashi asked softly, stepping out into the light once Naruto had disappeared around the corner. Iruka directed a long-suffering look his way.
"More a peak, but . . . " Iruka's voice faded like wisps of mist in face of the morning sun. He sighed. "I don't think he'll lose anyone else easily."
Kakashi swallowed down his first words. "The last wasn't exactly easy," he said in the calmest voice possible, new words like razors on his tongue. Then he walked away, because he didn't have a Sai or Sakura to keep him from trouble, and Iruka didn't deserve his anger over this.
A mountain peak. Good to know.
—
He woke in the middle of the night for no discernible reason. His heartbeat was steady, his hands bunched in the covers. He still hurt all over, but only as though he'd thrown himself down a steep, rocky hill the previous night, a clear sign he was healing.
Kakashi released the blankets, hands cramping, and crawled out of the bed. He went to the bathroom, and on washing his hands caught Obito's eye in the mirror. He was on his knees in front of the toilet, peering into the filling water, a half-second later. Then his eyes were clenched closed and soon he was empty, empty.
The dry-heaving continued on and off for fifteen minutes. When he rinsed his mouth at the sink, he kept his eyes closed and stumbled back to bed blind.
—
Sakura came to visit around lunchtime, arms linked with Sai and Naruto like she was presenting two particularly poor presents.
"I still haven't been grocery shopping," Kakashi said.
She bumped Naruto with her hip and he raised his free hand to reveal several bags of fresh vegetables. On Sakura's other side, Sai also carried ingredients.
"And I don't have a real kitchen," Kakashi felt it necessary to point out.
Sakura released her teammates and ducked past him and in through the doorway. She looked around with a slightly disapproving expression, then turned a bright, brittle smile his way. "We'll make do."
It was almost their team motto at this point. Sai set his groceries down by the refrigerator and pushed Naruto down by the small wooden table. Kakashi made his bed and tried not to bristle at so many people in the small space of his apartment or make a break for the door or window. It helped that it looked like Naruto was suppressing the same thoughts, and they nearly exchanged bitter half-smiles, but Naruto's eyes skipped away at the last moment. Kakashi adjusted his hitaiate and tried not to feel his wounds so deeply. They were only flesh, and flesh was known to heal despite best intentions, leaving only memories in imprinted skin. Surreptitious glances showed that Naruto's had already.
—
Kakashi pulled the kunai back only by strongest force of will, fighting instinct while half-asleep and nearly unaware of what was happening.
"Guy," he said, slitting open both eyes just to be sure, "knock next time."
Guy fingered the nick at his throat and smiled. "I'll keep that in mind."
Kakashi slunk back to his bed, gathering the scattered covers along the way. He put the kunai back on the bedside table, wrapped himself in the covers in the way his sensei once said made him look like a demented caterpillar, and spread out along the left side of the bed. Guy's footsteps sounded politely up to the bed. A floorboard creaked, and Kakashi nearly made a comment about overdoing it, but then the mattress was shifting and Guy was pulling Kakashi closer and stealing a corner of the uppermost blanket in the process.
Kakashi came close to making a comment about death wishes, but there were some paths of thought he didn't want to run down right now, and the death of a lo—one of the few remaining people important to him would push him fast and easy in that direction. Instead, Kakashi let the incursion pass without skirmish and curled an arm around Guy's shoulder.
—
When Kakashi startled suddenly awake, his back was wedged firmly against Guy's chest. The covers tangled together around them. Even in sleep, Guy was careful of Kakashi's wounds—his hands were well clear of Kakashi's mid-abdomen. It was uncomfortable to turn into that embrace. Something wrenched in Kakashi's gut as he rolled over. He breathed shallowly and tried not to antagonize the stitches further.
Each of Guy's breaths had the faintest burr underlying the inhale, a striking contrast to the snores like sonic winds when they were young and Guy would nap in the grove near the training grounds. Kakashi soaked in unexpected warmth and wondered what later costs might be. He didn't sleep, but it was more restful than he'd felt in (five weeks, six days, two hours, and a steady progressing tick of seconds up to minutes up to hours again) a long time.
Guy drew away when dawn crept crimson against Kakashi's eyelids. His fingers smoothed the edges of Kakashi's lips, and then he withdrew from the apartment entirely.
—
The memorial stone had a new name carved in it, and Kakashi knew he shouldn't have stayed away so long. At least Obito knew not to worry.
Hello, Obito, how are things? Failure as usual? Failure, failure . . . failed. I failed you.
Team was better, best, most important of all, and anyone who thought otherwise was lower than scum, than the mud under miles of melting snow, and who could have known an avalanche would be so fortuitous or could be induced so quickly? Who knew he'd have to use it against one of the only three people who'd once given him serious hope for the future, on a day that felt centuries old, memory cracked and worn like a photograph handled too often.
He finally asked the question dancing behind pressed lips, perched on a twice-bitten tongue, the question his sensei had once asked to turn Kakashi's question back on him:
"What good is one man alone?"
The stone had no easy answers.
eta: And if you have no idea what this story is about, check the tags for the missing character.
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