In Another Life

He still hasn't let go.

You don’t get the chance to snap.

No words. No fight. No breath.

Because the moment your eyes meet his—war-torn black locked with yours—Kakashi moves.

Fast and smooth, like a current pulling you under, like the ocean remembering the shape of a body it once tried to drown. And his hand closes around your wrist with a grip that brooks no argument.

You’re hauled upright before you can blink. Your balance stutters. Your knee almost buckles.

“Let go—” you snarl, twisting against him, your free hand already reaching for a kunai that isn’t there. Muscle memory, old as blood.

“Not here,” he says, and his voice is maddeningly even. “They’re close.”

You don’t need to ask who they are.

You feel it. The pressure. The crackling in the air. Like lightning wants to split the sky open and scream through the seams. The masked eyes scanning the street, voices clipped and code-like over the quiet hum of the crowd.

ANBU.

But not yours.

Not his.

Not right.

Your heart jumps so high in your throat you think you might choke on it. But he keeps moving, tugging you deeper into the crowd, and your feet—traitorous, shaking—follow.

He doesn’t look back. Doesn’t check to see if you’re keeping up. He just moves, slipping through the market like it’s muscle memory, like he belongs even when the world is bending wrong around him.

His grip is firm, not tight. Like he’s trying not to hurt you but won’t let you go. You could fight him. You could make a scene. Maybe you even want to.

But then the world presses in. The crush of voices. The flare of chakra behind you—sharp and searching, familiar and off in all the wrong ways.

They’re here.

They’re looking.

Your pulse slams in rhythm with the drag of your steps. His pace is smooth. Intentional. The kind of control that’s only earned after too many years of surviving things that should have killed you.

Fire-roasted meat. Steam off a noodle cart. Incense from a temple stall. River-wet stone. The scents are too much, too fast, too real.

You stumble.

He steadies you with a shift of his arm—barely a brush, just enough to keep you upright—and doesn’t even glance your way.

“You’re dragging me,” you mutter under your breath, just loud enough for him to hear.

“I am,” he replies, like it’s nothing. Like you hadn’t said it at all.

Your jaw clenches. Every muscle in your arm begs to wrench free from his. You nearly stop walking on purpose, just to prove a point. Just to be difficult.

But—

But the chakra behind you pulses again. Closer.

Familiar formation. But wrong rhythms. A world wearing your home’s face like a mask.

They’re hunting.

You.

You grit your teeth. Bite down hard enough to taste blood.

And you let him drag you.

Just this once.

The inn he chooses is tucked behind a teahouse that smells like old smoke and pickled plum. It’s weathered and unimpressive, with wood that’s warped from too many rainy seasons and a paper lantern hanging limp outside the entryway. A bored teenager manning the front desk barely glances up as you enter, chewing something with slow, open-mouthed indifference.

Kakashi handles it.

Just walks up, speaks low, slides over a few coins that don’t look like anything you’ve seen before—silver and stamped with a symbol that’s almost, almost familiar. You narrow your eyes at it, then at him.

He doesn’t react. Doesn’t even hesitate.

You hate how easily he slips into this world, how naturally he seems to carry himself through streets and systems that shouldn’t exist. As if the world may have shifted but he hasn’t. As if this version of him doesn’t flinch at the idea that none of this is real.

The room is upstairs. Quiet. Small.

A single futon, already laid out.

One lamp, its light flickering with the faint scent of oil.

A shuttered window.

It’s the kind of room meant for sleep and nothing else—no conversation, no confessions. A room where strangers pass the night and forget each other by morning.

You step in first. He closes the door behind you.

It clicks shut like a lock snapping into place.

The silence drops between you both like a drawn blade.

You turn on your heel before he can speak, folding your arms across your chest like armor. “I’m not sleeping.”

“You should,” he says simply.

His voice is quiet. Not soft—he’s never been soft—but tempered. Like steel left to cool in water.

“So should you,” you fire back. “And I don’t see you lying down.”

“I’ll take first watch.”

You scoff. Dry. Bitter. “Watch? You think I trust you to—”

“I don’t care if you trust me.”

That halts you. Like a kunai to the gut.

You stare at him. Hard. Trying to find something in his tone—sarcasm, anger, guilt, anything—but there’s nothing.

Just the flatness of truth.

He says it like it’s not even worth arguing over. Like it’s a given. Like trust was never on the table to begin with.

Your jaw tightens.

“…You really haven’t changed.”

He doesn’t answer.

He just moves to stand near the door, arms folded across his chest. Watching. Still. Unreadable.

But his eye tracks your every movement with that quiet intensity you remember too well—like he’s memorizing the way your shadow falls, like he’s waiting for you to vanish again and wants to hold on to the shape of you before you do.

You hate that you understand it.

You hate that a small, cracked part of you aches the same way.

With a frustrated exhale, you stomp over to the futon and drop down onto it like it’s a battlefield. Every movement sharp, performative. You throw the blanket over your legs, kicking one foot out in defiance.

“I’m not sleeping,” you mutter, daring him to argue.

“Fine,” he says.

No sarcasm. No smugness. Just that same maddening calm.

You roll onto your side, facing the wall. Curl your arms tight beneath your chest. The room is quiet except for the soft flicker of the lamp and the distant creak of floorboards beyond your door. You can feel him still standing there—solid and unmoved.

You stay still. Breathing slow. Muscles taut.

You’ll rest. You’ll wait. Just a few minutes. Just until—

You don’t remember falling asleep.

But you must have—because when your eyes crack open, the world’s changed.

The oil lamp has burned down to a soft ember-glow, casting lazy amber streaks across the paper walls. Outside, the noise of the village has dulled to a hush, broken only by the occasional creak of the inn settling into the bones of night.

And he’s still there.

Exactly where you left him.

Kakashi sits against the far wall, half in shadow, his arms looped loosely over his knees. His hitai-ate has shifted just slightly, his Sharingan dull with disuse but still alert, like a wolf watching from the tree line.

His eye finds yours the moment you stir.

You don’t speak. Neither does he.

The silence stretches between you, taut as wire, dense as fog. It should be suffocating. But it isn’t.

Not quite.

You blink slowly, adjusting to the dim, your body heavy and unfamiliar under the blanket. You shift, not out of discomfort, not out of wariness—but just to remind yourself that you’re real. That this is real. That the room hasn’t blinked out of existence like so many things before it.

His gaze doesn’t waver.

It doesn’t feel invasive. Not sharp or clinical like it used to on missions. It’s just… steady.

Watching.

Like he’s anchoring himself with you.

You almost want to break the silence. Ask him what he’s looking for. Ask him what the hell is going on.

But you don’t. Because if you speak now, something might break.

There’s something unspoken resting between you. Not a question, not an apology—but something softer. Something heavier. The ache of familiarity that shouldn’t be possible in a place like this.

Half a heartbeat. Half a world away.

You roll onto your back and look up at the ceiling, breathing in the stillness.

“I wasn’t supposed to fall asleep,” you murmur, voice rough with sleep.

“No,” he says, quiet. “You weren’t.”

“You didn’t either.”

“I didn’t want to.”

The answer doesn’t surprise you. It should. But it doesn’t.

You close your eyes again, not to sleep, but to give yourself a moment of stillness. You can still feel his gaze brushing your skin—gentler than it should be. Not cold. Not angry.

Just… tired.

So are you.

You open your eyes again and find him still watching.

“What?” you ask, dryly.

He doesn’t blink.

“…You’re still you,” he says finally. Barely audible.

You frown. “And you’re not sure if that’s a good thing?”

His lips twitch. Not quite a smile. More like a reflex. A habit, worn smooth by years.

“You weren’t real,” he says after a pause. “I thought you were. Then I thought you weren’t. Then I thought maybe I made you up entirely.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m watching you sleep just to prove I’m not dreaming.”

You stare at him.

It’s not romantic. Not comforting. Not safe.

But it is true.

And truth is rarer than kindness, these days.

You pull the blanket up over your shoulder and turn toward the wall again, hiding your face from the soft weight of his honesty.

“…Next time, let me know,” you mutter. “Before you pin me into the dirt of some sketchy alley.”

“I’ll try.”

You hear the scrape of his back against the wall as he shifts. The creak of wood beneath his weight.

But he doesn’t come closer.

He doesn’t sleep.

And he doesn’t stop watching.

Not even when your breath evens out again, soft and steady in the glow of the dying lamp.

You’re asleep.

He’s sure of it now.

For a while, he wasn’t. You’d shifted under the blanket, rolled to your side, curled in on yourself—not in fear, not in defense, but in that subconscious, animal way people do when their body senses it’s safe enough to let go.

Safe enough… with him.

And somehow, with everything broken and upside down, with the rules bent and identities warped and reality running off its rails, you trust him enough to sleep.

It should be a comfort.

It isn’t.

Not really.

Because Kakashi still isn’t entirely sure you’re real.

He’s seen too much not to ask the question. Experienced too many things—jutsu layered within jutsu, looping illusions, fractured timelines, chakra that seeps into the bones and never quite lets go. There were moments in his life where he’d bled and fought and screamed in a space that wasn’t real, only to wake in a world that was worse. Sometimes, you don’t know the difference until it’s already taken something from you.

So no—he’s not ready to believe this isn’t another trick.

He’s tried not to look at you. Not for too long. Not too closely. But now, in the dim amber flicker of the oil lamp, your breathing soft and even, your face finally unguarded, it’s harder to pretend he hasn’t been watching since the moment you passed out.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t lean in. But the urge is there—gnawing at him like a blade in the ribs—to reach out. Not to touch you in comfort. Not out of some fragile, frayed thread of longing.

Just to know.

To feel warmth. Pressure. Breath. To feel something that confirms this isn’t genjutsu residue or some warped afterimage of the mind. That you’re not a phantom conjured by chakra and trauma and the long, strange slide into whatever the hell this is.

But he doesn’t.

Because if he touches you and you vanish, he isn’t sure what will be left of him.

So instead, he stays in the shadowed corner of this unfamiliar, cramped room—an inn on the edge of a village with no name on the maps he remembers. A village just outside the Fire Country border, where everything’s almost normal.

Almost.

That’s what’s been gnawing at him since the moment he crossed into this place. Everything is just close enough to what he knows to feel like mockery. The architecture resembles that of small Fire Nation towns—sloped roofs, paper doors, narrow alleyways—but it’s all shifted. Slightly. The proportions are off. The chakra in the air has a bend to it, a pressure that curls behind the eyes if you focus too long.

And the ANBU…

They haven’t seen him yet. He’s sure of that. He’s been careful. Fast. Silent.

But he saw them. Heard them.

They moved like ANBU. Operated like ANBU. But they weren’t his.

Their masks were wrong. Their movement patterns, subtly altered. Their formation sloppy in ways it shouldn’t be. Not one of them hesitated when they spoke of you like you were something momentous. To be captured. Not Eliminated. Captured. Alive. 

That scared him more than he’s ready to admit.

Because ANBU doesn’t make that exception unless the order comes from high. Unless the target is known, important, personal.

So what the hell are you in this world?

More importantly—what is he?

He shuts his eyes for a second, just long enough to hear the wind shift outside, the faint sounds of the street filtering through thin walls. No obvious chakra signatures nearby. No movement on the roof. For now, they’re safe.

But it won’t last.

This isn’t a genjutsu. He’s been caught in those before. He knows how to test them—how to claw his way out of the cracks if he has to. It’s not time travel, either. No shifts in gravitational pull. No age discrepancies in his body. And he hasn’t been yanked through a basic summoning technique or a seal trap.

No—this feels older. Stranger.

Like something slipped loose from the margins of the world. Dimensional. Space-time. One of those whispered-of phenomena that leave scarred ground and haunted minds. Something with the fingerprints of old chakra—ancient chakra—pressed into the folds of it.

It doesn’t make sense.

He rubs the heel of his hand slowly along his thigh, grounding himself. The familiar brush of fabric, the dull stiffness in his joints, the ache in his back from crouching too long.

This is his body.

This is now.

And you…

You’re here. Breathing. Tangible. Alive.

Sleeping in the corner of a room that doesn’t belong to either of you, worn to the bone after being hunted by your own village—or a version of it.

You haven’t asked questions yet.

But you will.

And he won’t have answers. Just a growing tangle of impossibilities and a rising pressure in his chest he doesn’t have the language for.

He exhales slowly, tilting his head back against the wall. He should rest. He knows he should. But there’s no sleep waiting for him on the other side of stillness. There never has been.

So he looks at you again.

And it hits him—sudden, sharp, brutal—just how much you’re still you.

Even here. Even in whatever version of reality this is.

You still hold tension in your spine like a loaded spring. You still curl in on yourself when you’re hurting. Still breathe a little too quietly, like your body learned a long time ago that silence is the closest thing to safety.

You still…

Care.

Even when it costs you.

Even when it breaks you.

And now—

A sound. Small. Fragile.

A shift in your breathing.

He hears it instantly, like a kunai across stone.

“…don’t…”

Murmured. Half-melted against the pillow. A word lost to dreams.

“…don’t go…”

His chest tightens.

You shift again, fingers curling faintly near your cheek. No panic. No fear. Just… sleep-speak. The kind of words that leak from the heart when the mind is defenseless.

“…please…”

He’s already halfway across the room before he realizes it.

He doesn’t touch you. Doesn’t dare. Just crouches near, close enough to hear if you say anything else.

But you don’t.

You settle again. Sink deeper into sleep. And he’s left frozen, crouched beside you, watching the way your lashes fan across your cheek, the way your breath ghosts in and out.

You were talking to him.

Of course you were.

He wants—so badly—to reach out. To touch your hair, your cheek, your shoulder. Just to tell himself it’s alright. That you’re here. That you said please because some part of you still wants him to stay.

You’d never say that awake.

Not to him.

Not now. Not anymore.

But sleep steals the truth from guarded mouths.

And in that moment, hearing it—just those words, just that raw, quiet ache—something inside him shifts. Just a little.

Not enough to admit anything.

Not enough to fall.

But enough to fear what will happen if this world forces him to choose between what he knows and what he wants.

He swallows hard and rises, quietly returning to his corner. He doesn’t let himself think too much. Doesn’t name what he’s feeling. Never really did.

But this world—this wrong, fractured echo of home—it’s peeling things back he thought he’d buried for good.

When you wake tomorrow, he doesn’t know what you’ll remember. What you’ll say. What you’ll need.

But for tonight—

He keeps watch.

Because you’re still here.

And for now, that’s enough.

Even if the world you’re in is not.