In Another Life

When Kakashi finds you, the air is thick with the stench of scorched grass and blood. The remnants of jutsu still hiss in the brittle underbrush. The sky above is a dull bruise, smeared with smoke and the lingering echo of chakra that doesn’t belong.

Your knees are in the dirt.

Tenzo’s limp form is cradled between your arms, his blood soaking through your sleeves, hot and sticky. Your hands are locked in place—one at the gash in his side, the other still clenched from the moment you forced the trap to snap on you instead.

You saved him.

You saved him.

But it feels like you left pieces of yourself behind to do it.

Footsteps behind you—steady, deliberate. Too quiet to be angry, too loud to be comforting.

Then Kakashi’s voice. Low. Sharp. Measured.

“What happened?”

You don’t answer right away. You can’t. Your mouth is dry. Your heart is still beating too hard, too fast.

You say the only thing that matters: “He’s alive.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

The words dig under your skin like glass.

You lift your head. “It was a trap,” you rasp. “Something—I don’t know. It felt like chakra, but wrong. It pulled me. I reacted.”

“You moved,” Kakashi says, flatly. “Without checking for seals or traps. Without backup. Like a genin with no field sense.”

The quiet that follows is sharp enough to draw blood.

Your jaw tightens. “I made a call.”

“You made a mistake,” he snaps.

Your head jerks up at that, fury sparking behind your eyes. “He’d be dead if I hadn’t—”

“And he wouldn’t have needed saving if you hadn’t walked straight into the jaws of it like a damn fool!”

You stagger to your feet, blood on your hands, grime streaked across your face. “I handled it!”

“You call this handling it?” His arm sweeps to Tenzo’s unconscious body. “He nearly died because of your recklessness!”

You lunge at him without thinking. The shame, the exhaustion, the rage—it erupts out of you in a single, wild swing.

He catches your wrist with inhuman speed. Forces it down. But you twist free and shove him hard across the chest. He doesn’t budge.

“You think I wanted this to happen?! You think I don’t know I fucked up?!” Your voice is hoarse, cracking. “I heard it. I felt it. It sounded like—like someone I knew. Someone I trusted. I reacted. I didn’t think—”

“Exactly,” he cuts in, ice cold. “You didn’t think. You ran in blind, let your emotions lead, and someone paid the price for it. That’s not instinct. That’s weakness.”

Your breath catches like a blade in your throat.

And then, quieter, crueler: “You’re a liability.”

It lands like a kunai between your ribs.

You stare at him. Frozen.

Your next breath is shallow. You can’t meet his eyes. Not after that.

Not when part of you agrees.

You speak, but your voice is no longer your own. “Maybe I am.”

He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t blink. Just looks at you like he’s already written you off.

You take a step back, then another, the space between you widening into something unfixable.

And then something inside you breaks.

You move again—this time not with fists, but with the raw, pitiful desperation of someone trying to prove they still matter.

You shove him. Hard.

He grabs your collar.

You react on instinct. Fist to his side. Elbow to his ribs. He blocks you. Dodges. Grapples.

It’s clumsy and vicious and more grief than technique. You want to hurt him. You want him to hurt you back.

You want something to break.

He pins you, just for a second, grip tight and breath sharp.

And then you stop.

Go limp.

The fight leaves your limbs like water.

You breathe hard. Eyes burning. Shoulders trembling under his hold.

“I hate you,” you whisper.

He lets you go like you burned him.

You stagger a step back. Wipe your face with a bloodied sleeve. You don’t look at him again.

“I’ll get him back to Konoha. You don’t need to come.”

“I’ll come,” Kakashi says, cold as ice. “But only because I don’t trust you not to make another mistake.”

You don’t answer.

You kneel back beside Tenzo. Scoop him up with all the gentleness you can muster. Your shoulder screams from where the blast threw you. Your ribs grind. Your fingers tremble. But you carry him anyway.

You don’t speak for the rest of the trip.

Kakashi doesn’t either.

The walk back is long.

Too long.

Tenzo leans heavily into your side, his weight a constant reminder of what happened. One of his arms is looped loosely around your shoulders; the other hangs limp, blood-soaked sleeve stuck to his skin. His breathing is shallow but steady. He murmurs occasionally—your name, maybe, or fragments of protocol—but mostly he stays quiet. The kind of quiet that worries you.

But it’s not the silence from him that grates.

It’s the silence ahead.

Kakashi doesn’t speak. Doesn’t slow. Doesn’t glance back.

He walks a few paces ahead, posture straight, pace even, the perfect outline of an ANBU operative.

Professional.

Efficient.

Cold.

The path winds narrow and dark beneath the thickening trees, dappled in patches of early sunset. The light glows orange and gold across the forest floor—soft, almost beautiful. A cruel contrast to the ache burning down your spine and the metallic tang of blood still drying on your uniform.

Your shoulder is screaming, your arms are sore, and Tenzo is getting heavier with every step.

You pause near a stream to get him some water, kneeling down to cup it in your hands. He drinks slowly, quietly, and you wipe the corner of his mouth with a worn sleeve. You glance up.

Kakashi is still walking.

He never stopped.

Never looked.

Not once.

You don’t call out. Don’t ask him to wait. Because if you do—if you so much as speak to him—you know it’ll snap. Something sharp and brittle that’s barely holding itself together inside you.

So you adjust Tenzo’s weight. Let the sting behind your eyes pass. And you keep going.

Your hands are steady. Your voice, when you check on Tenzo again, is calm.

You focus.

Mission first.

That’s what they drilled into you. What you trained for. What he taught you.

Mission first. Everything else burns.

By the time you reach the outskirts of Konoha, the sky is bruised deep purple. Lantern light glimmers along the walls, warm and distant. Familiar. But it doesn’t feel like coming home.

Your legs feel like they belong to someone else. Your throat is dry. Your back is on fire. But you don’t stop.

Kakashi doesn’t either.

You reach the gates together—but apart.

He doesn’t so much as glance at you. Doesn’t offer to help with Tenzo. Doesn’t even acknowledge that he exists.

And that hurts more than anything else.

You don’t say goodbye.

He doesn’t wait for one.

You get Tenzo to the hospital yourself. Refuse the help of a nurse who tries to take him from you too early. Stay until the medic-nin arrive and you’ve made sure he’s conscious, responsive, stable.

Only then do you let yourself be led away.

At ANBU headquarters, you file the report. Brief. Precise. Stripped of emotion. You lay out the facts like they’re weapons on a table, sharp and clean and cold. You sign your name with a hand that still aches.

And when they ask where Hatake is—

You don’t answer.

Not out of spite.

Just… because you don’t care.

Not right now.

You leave the office with the same empty expression you’ve worn for the past hour. Step out into the hallway where the torchlight flickers too bright, and everything smells like steel and old paper.

And you realize—

You’re tired in a way you haven’t felt in years.

Not the kind of tired that sleep will fix.

The kind that sits in your chest like broken glass, catching on every breath.

Because something’s changed.

Something between you and Kakashi that had already been cracked has finally shattered.

And the worst part?

You’re not sure it can be put back together.

You hate him.

You hate him enough to feel it in your bones.

Enough to mean it.