It’s You
It’s nearly midnight when you leave the apartment.
You don’t remember deciding to.
One moment, you were staring at the ceiling, arms limp at your sides, heartbeat sounding far away in your chest. The next, your sandals were in place, and your cloak hung off your shoulders like a second skin. Cleaner than before, but it still smells like the forest. Like smoke and ozone and something older than rot. The scent clings to you—embedded deep in the lining, just beneath the fabric.
Your hands are steady.
But it doesn’t feel like they’re yours.
The streets are empty, blanketed in the kind of silence that never feels entirely still. A breath being held. A space between blinks. The lamps throw long shadows across the stones, and your feet find their path without thought. You move with the same instinct you use in combat—quiet, purposeful, invisible.
You don’t have a plan.
You only know where you need to be.
You have to see him.
Have to make sure he’s breathing. That his chakra still hums, however faint. Maybe then this sick coil in your gut will loosen. Maybe then the forest will let you go. Maybe then you’ll let you go.
The hospital looms quiet in the dark. Pale light spills from the windows, too sterile to be warm. You slip through the side entrance with practiced ease, chakra muffled, movements smooth.
No one sees you.
You remember this hall. Remember the last time you were here. Broken ribs. Concussion. The mission where Kakashi nearly died and you didn’t sleep for two days watching him breathe through bandages and blood.
Now you’re on the other side of it.
You slip into Tenzo’s room like a ghost.
He’s a pale outline against the bed linens. Still, but not lifeless. His brow is creased like he’s dreaming something dark. Bandages wrap his torso, his arm, his temple. Monitors beep slow and rhythmic beside him, blinking green in the dim.
He’s alive.
Your knees buckle a little in relief, and you sink into the chair at his bedside before your body thinks to argue.
You stare at the floor for a long time. Breathing through your teeth. Fingers curling against your knees hard enough to ache.
“I’m gonna fix it,” you whisper.
The words scrape out of your throat like they’ve been waiting hours to crawl free.
Tenzo doesn’t move.
You lean forward, elbows braced on your thighs, the weight of everything pressing down on the slope of your shoulders like it’s been waiting for solitude to crush you.
“I don’t know what it is,” you say, voice thin, shaky. “That thing in the forest… it saw me. It knew something. And I—” You swallow. “I think it’s still with me. Inside me. I can’t feel the edges of myself anymore.”
You laugh. But it’s not a sound meant for joy.
It cracks out of you like breaking glass.
“Kakashi thinks I’m a liability,” you say, sharper now. “Like I haven’t been dragging myself across every damn mission for this village. Like I didn’t throw myself in front of that chakra blast to keep you from dying.”
Your voice breaks. Your throat aches with it.
“I should’ve died.”
You stare at your hands. They’re trembling now.
You ball them into fists.
“He said it was my fault. That I don’t think. That I should’ve known better.” Your nails bite into your palms. “Maybe he’s right.”
Silence wraps around you like smoke.
But the silence isn’t empty.
It’s waiting.
“I’m sorry, Tenzo.”
You lift your head and blink at the dim room. Tenzo’s face is still, but there’s something—something just beneath the surface of his chakra. Like a tug. A ripple.
You look past it.
Look through it.
“I have to go back,” you murmur. “I don’t know what I’m going to find. But I’ll find something. I’ll burn it out. Or let it take me. But I won’t just sit here and rot while it waits for the next chance to break someone else.”
Your voice steadies.
Cold. Focused.
“I’ll go alone. I have to. I can't let it hurt anyone else.”
You push yourself to your feet.
Your resolve feels like a weight belted to your ribs, anchoring you just enough to keep you moving.
“I can’t just sit here,” you say again, to no one. “Not like this. Not when everything’s… wrong.”
Behind you, a breath shudders.
“Don’t.”
Soft. Raspy. Barely there.
But you don’t hear it.
You’re already turning.
Already walking to the door, steps quiet but purposeful. You’re a shadow now. A blade drawn before the sheath knows it’s missing.
Tenzo stirs behind you, his fingers twitching against the sheets. His lips part. He tries to speak again—your name on the tip of his tongue—but it slips into silence.
You’re already gone.
And as the door eases shut behind you, the lights in the room flicker once.
Then again.
As if something else—something other—just left with you.
This particular morning, the hospital smells like every mistake Kakashi’s ever made.
Clean. Bleached. Hollow.
A scent that never leaves the back of your throat.
He moves down the hall with quiet steps, nodding to a nurse who barely looks up. The Hokage had told him Tenzo was stable. Nothing more. But stability isn’t the same as safety. It isn’t peace of mind. It sure as hell isn’t forgiveness.
The door creaks when he opens it. He hates that. The sound. The feeling. Like walking into a grave that hadn’t closed properly.
Tenzo lies half-upright against the pillows, pale and sunken in a way Kakashi’s never seen on him before. Alive, yes. Breathing. Healing.
But not okay.
Something in the room feels off. Dense. Like the air is holding its breath.
Kakashi steps in. Doesn’t speak. Doesn’t know what to say. Instead, he hovers, eyes flicking over every line of gauze, every monitor, the slope of Tenzo’s ribs beneath the sheet.
“You look like shit,” he says finally.
Tenzo huffs. It sounds painful.
“Was hoping to at least beat you on that front,” he mutters, voice like gravel.
Kakashi offers a small huff of breath—somewhere between a laugh and an apology—and drags a chair close.
It’s quiet after that. Quiet in the way that means something’s building. Waiting.
He doesn’t realize how tightly his hands are clenched until his knuckles ache.
It’s Tenzo who finally breaks it.
“She was here, you know.”
Kakashi’s head lifts, sharp. “What?”
“Last night,” Tenzo murmurs. “She came in while I was still half out of it. Slipped in like she used to on recon missions—quiet, all shadow and guilt.”
The words twist inside Kakashi like wire.
“She was… off. Not just tired. Not just shaken.” Tenzo looks at him then, really looks. “Something’s wrong, Kakashi.”
His name hits harder than it should.
“She said it touched her,” Tenzo continues. “Said she couldn’t breathe. Said she had to go back. Alone. Before it got worse.”
Kakashi doesn’t move.
Doesn’t blink.
Tenzo’s voice softens, raw. “She wasn’t making sense. Kept talking like the mission wasn’t over. Like she couldn’t leave it behind because it hadn’t let her go.”
Kakashi stands too fast. The chair nearly topples behind him.
“She went back?” His voice is too flat. Too controlled.
Tenzo swallows. “She said she’d fix it. That she had to. And then she left.”
Kakashi’s stomach lurches.
Every instinct, every nerve ending lights up in alarm.
His mind is already racing—calculating how far you could’ve gotten, what gear you’d take, the fastest path back to the anomaly site. The shift in your chakra after the fight. Your eyes when you looked at him like he’d driven a kunai through your chest. The way you said you hated him.
And all he gave you in return was silence.
Coldness.
Distance.
He wanted you safe. That’s what it was supposed to be. That’s why he pushed you away.
Because if you got too close, if he let himself feel too much, you’d be the one he lost next.
But pushing you didn’t protect you.
It broke you.
You went back because he made you believe you had no one left to rely on. Not even him.
The realization slams into him harder than any blow he’s ever taken.
The last thing he said to you—the last thing you heard from him—was cruel.
It was meant to scare you. Distance you.
It worked.
Now you might die with those words as your final tether to him.
And that—
That is unbearable.
He doesn’t speak again. Doesn’t even look at Tenzo.
He just moves. Fast. Sharp. Focused in a way that feels like desperation masquerading as control.
He’s gone before Tenzo can stop him.
Gone, chasing the echo of the only person who’s ever gotten under his skin enough to matter again.
You.
With your ghost-soft footsteps and your too-loud heart.
With your anger, and your recklessness, and your silence that mirrors his own.
With that wound in your soul now tearing wider by the hour.
He can’t let it end like this.
Not like this.
Because if you die thinking he hated you—
If you die without knowing the truth—
There won’t be anything left of him to save.
The trees feel taller this time.
Not in the way they should. Not in the way that speaks of old forests and steady growth. No, they loom now — hunched and strange, twisted as if they grew sideways and then thought better of it halfway through. Their branches stretch over the trail like ribs, curved and too close, too much, like they might interlock above you and snap shut.
You know this path. You’ve taken it in summer heat, in autumn rain, in shinobi black and ANBU grey. You could map it in your sleep.
But now?
It doesn’t feel like yours anymore.
You don’t know how long you’ve been walking. Maybe hours. Maybe longer. Time bends in this place. The sun’s light trickles through the canopy, but it never moves. Just hangs — burnt orange and coppery, like rust bleeding through the sky.
Your hands are cold.
But not numb.
You flex them out of habit, blinking down at the dirt on your fingers. There’s mud on your knees — a thick crust of it, dried in streaks that say you fell at some point, hard. You don’t remember when. You don’t remember the ground hitting you or the weight in your chest that must’ve come after. But it happened.
There’s blood too.
Old.
Flaked along the edge of your sleeve, copper-dark and stubborn. A smear beneath your thumbnail. You don’t think it’s yours.
Tenzo’s, maybe.
You don’t want to think about it.
You keep walking. Not out of duty anymore. Not even out of clarity.
The forest is calling.
You feel it in the hush between your steps — in the way the branches creak in the windless sky. You hear it in your name, or the memory of your name, pressed against the base of your spine and whispered into the soft parts of your thoughts.
Fix it.
That’s what you told Tenzo, wasn’t it?
You remember your voice breaking. Sitting beside his hospital bed like you were praying and already mourning in the same breath. You remember the smell of antiseptic clinging to your nose, the tired weight of the walls, the faint flutter of his chakra against your own.
You remember that.
You don’t remember leaving.
But your boots are here. And your blade is here. And your hands haven’t stopped shaking since you passed the first marker stone an hour ago.
You reach the outpost ridge.
Or what’s left of it.
The rock face is fractured, sloping into a shallow collapse, and the tree line beyond looks burned at the edges. No signs of fire. No ash. Just… absence. Like something devoured the memory of flame without leaving heat behind.
The clearing lies ahead.
Too still. Too quiet.
No birds. No wind. No insects clicking against bark or fluttering wings. Just the hum of something just beyond the edge of your hearing. The suggestion of sound, without sound at all.
You kneel.
Right where Tenzo had fallen. The earth still bears the scar of impact — half-healed, like the forest tried to cover it and gave up halfway through.
You press your palm to the gouge.
Nothing.
You press harder.
A spike runs straight through your spine. Cold, bright, bladed.
And then—
The world tilts.
Not the way it does when you fall. Not dizziness. Not disorientation.
But wrong.
You’re still kneeling in the dirt. Still breathing. But it’s not you breathing.
Something else — something older, heavier — is watching through your eyes. Its gaze slithers behind your ribs like a hand, fingers curling around your lungs, thumb pressing against your throat.
You stagger back.
Your foot slips.
You catch yourself just in time, panting, sweating, eyes wide.
“I’m fine,” you whisper, voice thinned and cracking. “I’m… I’m fine.”
But the forest doesn’t believe you.
Neither do you.
You wrap your arms around your chest — to hold yourself together, maybe. To hide from the cold that’s not cold. You sit in the dirt, knees drawn up, breath stuttering. The air is thick. Not heavy — full. Like something’s breathing it for you.
Kakashi’s voice tears through you like a blade.
You were reckless.
You endangered the mission.
You’re the reason he nearly—
You choke.
Your hands clench in the fabric over your stomach. You want to scream. To tear the memory from your head with your bare hands and hurl it into the earth.
But the forest is listening.
And whatever crawled beneath your skin is still here.
Waiting.
You squeeze your eyes shut. Try to remember why you came. Try to remember what you’re even trying to fix anymore.
Your chest aches.
Not just with guilt.
With grief.
Grief for something you can’t name. Grief for the person you were before this mission. For Tenzo. For the man you hate. For the man you don’t hate. For every cruel word you swallowed, and the ones that burned coming out.
You’re breaking.
Not loudly.
Not in the way anyone would see.
But in that quiet, careful way that doesn’t stop.
And the forest?
It opens its arms.
And welcomes you home.
The forest is too quiet.
He notices it five steps in. Maybe even sooner. Maybe the quiet was the first thing that greeted him.
Not the silence of prey on alert or shinobi holding their breath — he knows that kind of quiet, trained for it. No, this is something else.
This is the kind of silence that waits.
It fills his ears like pressure underwater, like static behind his thoughts. He can hear the thud of his own pulse. The crunch of his own steps. Even his breathing feels too loud, like the woods are offended by the noise.
And the air—
Thick one moment, sharp the next. Warm across the back of his neck, chilled through his chest. It moves without direction, stirs leaves that don’t fall. The forest can’t decide what time it belongs to, what season it’s meant to hold.
Or maybe it knows, and he’s the one out of sync.
The trail is familiar.
Should be.
He’s walked it a hundred times. So have you. The ridgeline, the slant of soil, the scatter of pine needles underfoot—it’s memorized muscle memory. Even blindfolded, he should be able to move through this stretch with ease.
But…
The rhythm’s wrong.
A twist here that didn’t used to be. A shadow too dark for midday. The marker stone by the third tree shouldn’t be cracked, but it is, like time passed and no one told the rest of the forest.
It’s like walking through a dream.
No—not a dream.
A memory that doesn’t belong to him.
What happened here?
What the hell touched you?
He crouches low by the ridge—by that gouge. Where Tenzo fell. Where you had stumbled forward, hands shaking, face pale. He hadn’t forgotten the way you pushed yourself upright even then, voice calm, deliberate. Controlled.
But not anymore.
This place is still, the kind of still that sets his nerves alight. He doesn’t trust it. Doesn’t trust that anything watching is doing it from afar.
With a flick of his fingers, he pulls the smallest scroll from his pouch and unseals it. Smoke unfurls like breath. Pakkun materializes, nose already twitching before his paws settle in the dirt.
The little ninken sniffs once, twice, then grimaces.
“Something stinks,” he mutters. “And not just the air.”
Kakashi’s voice is low as he says your name. “She’s ahead of me. I need the trail. I think she’s hurt.”
Pakkun flicks his ears. “You think, or you hope she’s not dead?”
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to.
He’s already moving again, the muscles in his legs too tense, his breath shallow. His focus sharpens. Snaps tight like a wire.
They walk in silence for a stretch. The kind of silence that frays the edge of Kakashi’s patience.
“She didn’t smell injured when she left,” Pakkun says, eventually. “She was off. Unsteady. But not bleeding.”
“She wouldn’t show it if she was,” Kakashi replies. “Not to anyone.”
He would know.
You've always been proud. Even more so with him. Especially lately.
Another ten paces. A patch of turned leaves draws his eye — deep enough to show the imprint of a boot. Recent. But wrong. The distance between steps is too wide. Not the stride of someone calm or even focused. A slip, maybe. Or a fall.
Another few feet. A smear of something dark catches the edge of a rock.
Pakkun’s already there, nose low.
“Blood,” he says, then pauses. “Fresh. Not much.”
Kakashi crouches beside it. Doesn’t touch. Just looks.
His stomach turns.
You wouldn’t leave blood behind unless you didn’t realize it. Unless it didn’t matter anymore. Unless—
Unless you're unraveling.
He closes his eyes. Just for a second.
He sees your face again. Torn and flickering under light of the sun. That fragile voice. That anger carved with something too deep to name.
I hate you.
He remembers every word he hurled back. Not to protect you. Not to protect himself.
Just because he’d been angry.
And hurt.
And scared.
He opens his eyes. His fists curl.
If I lose her too—
He doesn’t finish the thought.
He’s already moving.
Faster now. Branches slash at his shoulders and face. The trees lean in, closer than they should, as if trying to slow him. The wind claws at his cloak, thick and sluggish like it’s trying to hold him back.
He pushes harder.
Pakkun barks sharply to the left. “This way!”
Another bootprint. A drag of a heel. A scuffed kneeprint where moss has been ground into the dirt.
He’s gaining.
But the trail’s wrong.
You should’ve stopped. Made camp. Anything.
But there are no signs of rest. No signs of thinking. Just relentless forward movement, staggering and crooked, as if pulled by something that doesn’t care whether you’re breaking.
His thoughts are racing now. Each one faster than the last.
If it’s a genjutsu, it’s not conventional.
If it’s chakra-based, it’s older than anything he’s studied.
If it’s a presence—if it’s sentient—
He doesn’t let himself finish that one either.
“Pakkun,” he says suddenly. “When she passed by—what was her scent like?”
The ninken tilts his head, sniffing the air again. “Faint. Not just distance-faint. Thin. Like the forest is trying to scrub her out.”
Kakashi’s chest tightens.
It wants you.
It’s keeping you.
“She’s ANBU,” he says again, quieter now.
“She’s strong.”
“She’s also human,” Pakkun replies. “And she doesn’t want to be found.”
He stops. Just for a moment. Looks up at the trees overhead — the ones that bend a little too far. That look more like claws than branches now.
He wonders if it’s already too late.
Then keeps running.
Because if you’re still alive, if you’re still you, there’s still a chance.
And he will not lose you.
Not like this.
Not again.