In Another Life

Breakfast is quiet.

Not strained. Not hostile. Just… quiet in that tightly wound, delicate way that only surfaces after you’ve woken up tangled in limbs you shouldn’t have felt safe in. Limbs you didn’t pull away from. Limbs that didn’t pull away from you.

The inn is small—barely three rooms stacked above a narrow dining area that smells like toasted rice and damp firewood. A wind chime sings outside the door, soft and irregular, disturbed now and then by the wind filtering through the trees. A kettle whistles faintly in the background, steam curling toward the low ceiling like a ghost trying not to be seen.

The wood creaks beneath your knees as you sit, folded legs barely brushing against the edge of the lacquer. Your tea is still too hot to drink.

The inn is small, and the room they serve food in is smaller. A single table. Two chairs. The wood smells like old smoke and winter pine. Steam curls off mismatched ceramic bowls like the place itself is trying to pretend it doesn’t know who you are.

Kakashi sits across from you, silent behind his mask, as always. Damp hair pushed back from his face, wild and unruly from sleep. The faint shimmer of the transformation jutsu blurs the edges of him—softens the silver of his hair, muddies the stark shape of his jaw, reshapes the bridge of his nose into something more forgettable. But even like this—even hidden beneath chakra and pretense—he’s still him.

You don’t know why that detail sticks. Maybe because it makes the illusion feel too fragile.

You pick absently at your rice, legs folded beneath you, posture loose enough to look natural but still wired with the kind of tension only sleep in a shared bed with your complicated not-enemy-not-friend could create.

You’d woken first. Trapped.

His weight—his warmth—had been heavy and absolute. His arm still around your waist, hand curled like it had every right. His breath was steady. His chakra calmer than it had any business being. And his face—

Right there. Mask half slipped. Close enough that if you turned your head—

You hadn’t.

Not because you were scared. But because something about it had felt—

…Safe.

So you’d waited. Let the minutes bleed out like thread from a wound until his eye opened, lazy, confused, then shuttered in that quiet way he does when he’s already filed the feeling away and labeled it dangerous.

Neither of you said what you were thinking.

Now you’re here, still not saying it, eating miso and pretending like this morning hadn’t happened. Which, frankly, is easier than you thought it would be.

You set your bowl down, voice low. “I got something yesterday.”

Kakashi’s eye shifts to you immediately—sharp, alert. Not a flicker of surprise. Just full, immediate focus. You feel it like a pulse against your skin.

You glance toward the window, where the wind rattles the frame, then back to him. “After I left the village walls, I passed a group by the riverbank. Three shinobi, not from here. I couldn’t place the accents—probably borderland. Might’ve been Grass, maybe even Rain. They were camped out, rough, like they’d been on the road for days.”

His posture shifts subtly. He leans in just a little, hands still.

“They were talking about a woman,” you continue. “A seer, supposedly. One who doesn’t age. Hides in the old parts of the forest, where the trees still twist like they remember chakra. People say she can see between worlds. Knows when someone doesn’t belong.”

Kakashi exhales once, slow and soundless.

“They said she’s not always there,” you add. “But when she is… she answers questions. For a price.”

He tilts his head. “And you believe them?”

“No.” You pause. “But I believe they did. And I believe they were scared.”

That earns you a flicker of something. Not agreement—but interest. His thumb taps once against the lip of his tea bowl, then stills again.

“You think she might be able to send us back,” he says, more statement than question.

“I think,” you murmur, “she’s the only lead we have.”

The silence stretches, taut and thoughtful. He doesn’t argue.

“We’ll move after breakfast,” he says. “Scouting only. No contact unless necessary.”

“Wasn’t planning on knocking on her door with a katana.”

The corner of his eye lifts, almost like a smile. But it fades too quickly to linger.

You lift your tea to your lips, then glance over the rim. “You still have the transformation jutsu active?”

His eye slides to you again. “Obviously.”

“Hm,” you hum. “Your hair’s still too silver. You look like a disgraced daimyo’s ghost.”

“You still walk like ANBU,” he replies smoothly. “Your stance is too even. Civilians stumble more.”

You smirk, despite yourself. “Not all of us were born to slouch.”

“Tragic,” he murmurs.

It’s almost easy, this exchange. A rhythm you both know by heart. But beneath it is something quieter—something you don’t name. The rhythm of layered jutsu: chakra suppression woven tightly around your centers, low-grade Henge no Jutsu over your features. Your scent altered, your energy fragmented, voices modulated. Not just disguise. Erasure.

You’re ghosts in someone else’s world.

“We’ll use the ridge trail,” you say. “It skirts the valley from the east. If we’re fast, we can reach the ruins by nightfall.”

Kakashi hums his agreement, eye distant. “We split if spotted. Rendezvous at the outcrop with the pines.”

You nod.

Then pause. “You sure you’ll be able to let me out of your sight?”

That gets his attention. He looks at you, eye unreadable, then away. Down to his cup. Back again.

“I trust you,” he says.

And that—that lands too quietly to be harmless.

You stare at him a second too long. “Guess we’ll test your judgment then.”

You both stand, bowls left half-finished.

The morning outside is clean and cold, sunlight filtering through thin clouds like gauze. You roll your shoulders. He checks your straps. You check his pack. Neither of you comment on it.

And then you vanish—two shadows breaking against the treeline, flickers of chakra stitched together and hidden behind borrowed faces.

And just like that, the world shifts again.

Not just because of what’s ahead.

But because, for the first time since arriving here, the silence between you doesn’t feel quite so empty.

The road stretches beneath your feet like a worn thread unraveling from the edge of a world that no longer feels like your own.

It’s dirt, mostly. Hard-packed and sun-bleached, occasionally cut by wagon grooves or the split, crushed remnants of last season’s leaves. It weaves through wide, empty farmland and tall, whispering forest, interrupted only by the occasional roadside shrine or half-toppled milestone. The trees lean overhead in places, arching like the ribs of some great beast, their leaves fluttering in the lazy wind with the hush of distant breathing. Sunlight spills through the canopy in fractured gold, stirring motes of dust and pollen that cling to the air like half-spoken memories.

You walk in silence.

The last town is hours behind you now—just another nameless border village with squat clay buildings and slow-moving markets, the kind of place where time drips instead of flows. You’d stopped there briefly, long enough to refill your waterskins and avoid too many questions. Long enough for someone’s gaze to linger too long on the curve of your posture, the unusual color of your boots. Shinobi eyes. Civilian mouths. You’d kept your head low.

Now, the only sounds are your boots brushing through dead grass and the occasional clink of your pack’s straps against your armor.

You’re using a henge.

A subtle one. You know better than to try anything flashy. A faint change to your hair’s length, the slope of your jaw, the tilt of your eyes. Just enough to fool a passing glance, to break the mirror of your true self. Kakashi’s done the same, though his technique is layered—half chakra illusion, half physical alteration. He moves a few steps ahead, and even now, even after weeks together, your gaze sometimes slips over him like your eyes haven’t quite caught up to the reality of his presence.

This version of him has a traveler’s cloak, the hood tugged up to cast shadows over a different face. Stronger cheekbones. A thinner mouth.

The wind shifts, warm and dry, carrying with it the scent of clover and old ash, maybe from some distant fire. It rakes gently through the grasses and lifts the edge of Kakashi’s cloak like a breath against skin. You hear it then—the delicate, crystalline chime of something hanging in the trees ahead. A wind chime. Handmade. Glass or maybe tin, strung up from a crooked pole near a trail sign. It sings in the breeze like a forgotten lullaby.

Kakashi doesn’t speak. He hasn’t in a while. But you can tell from the slight lift of his shoulder that he hears it too.

Your pack feels light. Too light. You’d dumped half your rations when you fled Konoha, trusting speed over preparedness. There hadn’t been time. You remember the moonlight on the rooftops, the pulse pounding in your ears. The way Tenzo’s name had barely left your mouth as you turned your back on the only place you’ve ever called home.

You don’t regret it. But something inside you still tugs sideways when you think about it too long.

Your stomach growls. Loudly.

Ahead of you, Kakashi slows.

There’s a stall just off the path. A makeshift thing, assembled with mismatched wood and an old tarpaulin, wedged beneath the shade of a leaning willow. A little food cart sits beside it—nothing flashy, just a couple baskets of pickled vegetables and tightly wrapped rice balls. The kind of thing people carry on long journeys or chew slowly over conversations that stretch past sunset.

An old woman tends the cart, seated on a mat, her posture easy, but not slack. Her eyes lift when she sees you—bright, despite the webbed lines that gather at their corners. She smiles, a gap in her front teeth flashing like a secret.

Too kind, you think. Too soft.

Kakashi stops abruptly. You nearly walk into him, your hand instinctively brushing the hilt of your blade.

He speaks without turning. “Hungry?”

You narrow your eyes. “We shouldn’t draw attention.”

He doesn’t answer right away. Just tips his head, gaze tracking the sound of the wind chime again. A pause, then a slow, familiar cadence to his voice: “You say that, but your stomach’s been protesting since sunrise.”

You click your tongue. “So was yours yesterday.”

“True,” he says, and steps forward.

You hesitate, scanning the area. The woman’s hands are calloused, not from weapons but work. Her stance is unthreatening. No one else is nearby. Still, your chakra itches like a sixth sense. This world doesn’t belong to you. And yet it mirrors your own so closely you feel like you’re walking through a dream that’s borrowed your memories.

He exchanges coin with the vendor—silver, freshly polished. You wonder where he got it. You haven’t asked, not yet. She gives him a cloth pouch and two rice balls in return, smiling even more broadly as he leans down and murmurs something low, something that curls and twists in the air like a spell.

It’s a language you don’t recognize.

You narrow your eyes. “What did you just say?”

Kakashi turns slightly, offering you one of the rice balls. “I asked for the tea without ginger.”

“That wasn’t standard dialect.”

“It’s regional,” he says. “I picked it up.”

You lift an eyebrow. “You picked it up? From where?”

His eye meets yours for just a second too long. “I don’t know.”

You take the rice ball anyway. It’s warm in your hand, the paper slightly damp with steam. You chew slowly. It tastes like summer and seaweed and something else you can’t quite name—home, maybe, if you squint hard enough. He sips from the pouch, eyes on the road again, already pulling away.

The woman watches you both go, her expression unreadable now.

You travel in silence again for a while.

The fields change as the day burns onward. Wheat gives way to wild grass, and wild grass gives way to thorn bushes and stony paths. The road narrows, curls like a lazy snake through lower hills. At one point you cross a rickety bridge, the planks damp and blackened with age. You test your weight before stepping on each one, hyper-aware of how little chakra you’re letting yourself use. How much energy you’re conserving. It’s not safe to be flashy.

Kakashi moves like a ghost ahead of you—unbothered, loose, his hood still casting his face in shadow. You remember the real one, vividly, like a touch that lingers. And even now, seeing this stranger’s illusion instead, your thoughts drift back to the way he looked that night. The way his expression cracked open, just for a moment, and let you see what lay beneath all that practiced stillness.

You’re not sure if it was an accident. You’re not sure if you want it to happen again.

The wind picks up again. The grass hisses around your boots, and somewhere, far off in the woods, you hear the rustle of movement. Too heavy to be a deer. Too soft to be a threat.

You don’t speak. But your hand moves to your hip again, just in case.

Kakashi doesn’t turn, but you can feel the shift in his presence—his awareness stretching, narrowing. You wonder if he heard it too. Or if he just felt the sudden tightness in your shoulders.

You walk until the sun begins to dip, spilling amber across the trees.

When you stop for the night, it’s beneath a hollowed-out tree where the roots have created a dry alcove. The ground is covered in moss and fallen pine needles. It smells like damp bark and smoke from long-extinguished fires. You unroll your mat. Kakashi doesn’t speak, but he moves to set a perimeter seal with quiet efficiency. You catch him glancing toward the shadows more often than usual.

That’s when you say, “You’re worried.”

He doesn’t look at you. “I’m cautious.”

“Same thing.”

He exhales, long and low. “You’ve been quiet.”

“I always am.”

He hums like he doesn’t believe you. Like he knows you’re lying and doesn’t care enough to call you on it.

You look at the false face he’s wearing and feel something twist in your chest.

“You’re not him,” you say suddenly.

He turns, slow. “What?”

You nod toward his hood. “That face. I mean. You’re not him. The Kakashi in this world. I wonder what he’s like.”

For a heartbeat, the air between you is taut.

“Hopefully nothing like me,” he murmurs.

But the look in his eye says he doubts it.

And you?

You just chew the last bite of your rice ball and say nothing.

Because the truth is—you’re not her either.

And you don’t want to know what that means yet.

Night falls in pieces.

Not like it does in your world—sharp and sudden, with a snap of cold across the trees and the hush of cicadas dying into stillness. Here, it bleeds. Seeps. A sluggish dimming of the air, like dusk has forgotten how to end properly. The sky hangs heavy and low, awash in slow-turning rust and lavender, a bruise spreading across the heavens. Even the birds quiet differently here—first the crows, then the swallows, then something strange and shrill that’s never had a name in your vocabulary.

The road disappears behind you in a smudge of cracked earth and shadow.

You’re camped near a hollow tree off the main path, low enough that the firelight won’t carry, high enough that the wind moves sharp along your collarbones. Kakashi made sure of it—wordless, efficient, silent in the way only he can be. A snap of branches here. A glance at the skyline. And then a muttered, “Here,” and the two of you settled in like it was instinct.

The fire is small. Low and quiet, its flame barely more than a breath behind a ring of stones. But it throws light just enough to paint flickering shadows across the inside of the trunk, across the slope of your wrist, across the tilt of Kakashi’s mask.

He sits with his back against the bark, one knee drawn up loosely, the other stretched long toward the fire. Not relaxed, exactly. He’s never relaxed. Just still. Watchful. Like a thread pulled taut but not yet trembling.

You haven’t spoken in at least an hour.

There’s comfort in it, somehow.

Not closeness. Not warmth. But familiarity. A worn rhythm between two people who’ve fought side by side long enough to stop needing filler words. You don’t think he notices it—but you do. The way your silences match in tempo. The way your pauses line up. It’s not friendship. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But it’s not nothing.

You shift, pulling the blanket tighter across your shoulders, feeling the ache in your calves from the climb earlier. The smell of pine needles clings to your sleeves. Your body hasn’t fully adjusted to this world yet—gravity feels off, somehow. Like the air’s thicker. Like time doesn’t move cleanly here.

And then, without turning his head, Kakashi says, “You’re off rhythm.”

It takes a second for the words to land. “What?”

“You’re listening with your left ear more than your right. You do that when you’re uneasy.”

You scowl faintly. “That’s not a thing.”

“You also sleep on your left side when you expect to run.”

You don’t respond. It’s not worth it. He’s not wrong, and arguing only gives him room to catalog something else.

The silence returns. Sharper, now. Almost brittle.

You stare into the fire and let it burn into your vision, wondering if it’s possible to feel nostalgic for a place you never really liked. For home. For the solid, cracked stone of the Hokage monument. For the smell of ramen stalls and old ANBU steel and dried blood on your gloves.

And then, because you don’t want to spiral, you ask, “Do you think she’s real?”

There’s a pause, just long enough for you to think he won’t answer.

Then: “The seer?”

You nod.

His gaze doesn’t shift, but his posture does. Barely perceptible, but you know him well enough to see it—the slight draw inward, the ghost of a breath held just a second too long.

“I think she’s real enough to be dangerous.”

That lands wrong. You sit up slightly. “That’s not what I asked.”

“It’s the answer you needed.”

You frown, rubbing a thumb against your palm. “I’m not afraid of her.”

Kakashi’s voice is low, even. “No. You’re afraid of what she might tell you.”

The fire pops. A branch shifts. You don’t say anything.

He does, after a long stretch of quiet.

“You’re not the only one,” he says, voice barely audible over the crackle. “I don’t want to know what she’ll say either.”

You glance over at him. His face is turned slightly away from the light, but you can see the crease near his brow, the line of his jaw tight under the cloth. It’s not fear, exactly. But it’s close.

Maybe it’s recognition.

The kind that lives in the bones.

You swallow the question rising in your throat and ask another instead. “That dialect—back at the vendor’s cart. You said you didn’t know it.”

“I don’t.”

“But it came naturally.”

Kakashi’s eye flicks toward you, sharp. Focused. “You think I’m lying?”

“No.” You exhale. “I think something’s bleeding through.”

A pause. Then, almost reluctantly: “Yeah.”

The fire hisses low, a log collapsing in on itself.

“I dreamed something,” he says quietly.

You sit still.

“I was in a house. Wooden floors. Light through the windows. Boiling water on the stove. I could hear it. Not just see it. I could smell it—tea, maybe. Or soup. I don’t know. There was a voice.”

Your mouth is dry. “Whose?”

“I don’t know.”

He says it too carefully. Too fast. Like a practiced lie.

And for a second you think it’s someone you both know. A sly thought grazes, saying maybe it is yours. Another says maybe it isn’t. You don’t ask again.

Instead, you shift back, laying against the roots and staring up at the night sky as it unfolds above you. A patchwork of stars. The moon shrouded in wisps of something like smoke, like fog, like memory.

Stillness settles over the camp again. A strange, aching stillness.

And that’s when it happens.

Not a sound. Not a sight.

A feeling.

Like fingers brushing the edge of your thoughts. Soft at first, then pressing. Not quite invasive—but present. You go rigid. Not because you’re afraid. But because it recognizes you. It knows something about you that it shouldn’t.

That it has no right to.

You shut your eyes. Focus on grounding.

The fire’s warmth. The feel of dirt beneath your back. Kakashi’s chakra, steady and low in the space nearby.

“Come here.”

You blink.

His voice. Clipped. Controlled. But not cold.

You sit up. Kakashi’s looking at you properly now, his gaze flat and assessing. His brow creases.

“Your chakra’s off.”

You open your mouth. Close it again. You hadn’t noticed.

“It’s fine, it will go back in a few minutes.”

Kakashi exhales. Not frustrated—just resigned.

“It’s not. The way it’s spiking and dropping, you’ll draw attention if it keeps fluctuating like that.”

He shifts, slightly. Opens his cloak. There’s space beside him, barely large enough for both of you, but he offers it anyway. Without a word.

It’s not kindness. Not softness.

It’s necessity.

You hesitate before you slide over and let the cloak fall over your shoulders, feel his arm press against your spine—not pulling, just present.

The heat of him is startling. Real. And grounding.

Chakra bleeds outward from his palm. Subtle. Controlled. It slips into your system like a thread pulled taut—looping with yours, anchoring. Grounding. Your chakra fights it at first, uncooperative and frayed, but his is unyielding. It doesn’t dominate—it directs. Reins you in until the storm inside you quiets.

Kakashi doesn’t speak. Doesn’t move.

You listen to his breathing. Even. Measured. The kind of breathing you learn from years of being hunted.

You match it. Slowly.

You don’t breathe for a moment.

Then, quietly:

“I didn’t notice it was slipping.”

The fire crackles low.

He doesn’t look at you. But his voice, when it comes, is low.

“I don’t like this place.”

It’s not a confession. Not quite.

But it’s closer than you expected

You only hum and close your eyes.

Kakashi dreams, and it is not his dream.

It begins, as it always does now, without warning. One blink and he’s no longer beneath the pines, no longer propped against a crooked root with your chakra brushing uneven against his own. He’s standing on polished wood, barefoot, sunlight slanting across his legs in long, golden bars.

The silence is perfect. Not sterile. Not heavy. Settled.

His hands are bare. There’s no mask on his face.

He doesn’t question this.

There’s steam curling from a nearby teapot, its thin silver ribbons twisting upward toward a paper-screen window. The sound of distant running water blends with the low creak of wood adjusting to warmth. The room smells like something faintly floral—rice, maybe. Lemongrass. There’s no clutter. Just enough to say someone lives here, and lives simply.

It feels like home.

Not Konoha. Not the barracks. Not even that spare, silent apartment of his youth.

Something else.

There are slippers by the door, not his size. A folded towel slung over a screen. A robe he doesn’t recognize. And—

A voice. In the next room.

Soft. Familiar. Unmistakably yours.

He doesn’t remember walking. Only the shift of the floor beneath his feet as he crosses the threshold.

You’re there.

Not just a dream’s impression, not a ghost of your current, guarded self. This version of you is—whole. Lit by morning. Wearing something loose, unarmored. You’re moving without urgency, pouring tea with a hand that doesn’t tremble, humming a low, tuneless melody beneath your breath.

You don’t look up. You don’t need to.

“Sit down,” you say. “You’re late again.”

And he does. Without thinking.

He watches your hands pour tea. Watches your fingers stir the cup with that soft, absentminded rhythm that people do when they’ve done it a hundred times before. You speak again, but he doesn’t hear the words. Just your voice. Low. Comfortable. Like it belongs in the morning.

His chest hurts. The ache is sudden and vast. Not longing. Recognition.

This world isn’t his.

This you isn’t his.

But he knows you. Somehow.

He lifts the teacup. It burns his fingers.

The moment shifts.

Smoke. Stone. Silence.

A funeral.

No. Not a funeral. A memorial. Not crowded—private. Just one man standing before a gravestone. Straight-backed. A coat pulled against the wind. The red spiral of the Hokage crest stark against black fabric.

Kakashi knows the set of those shoulders. The tilt of that head. The way the weight is carried in the spine.

It’s him.

Not a reflection. Not a phantom.

The man who lives in the house with you. The one who wakes up late to your scolding. Who drinks your bitter tea.

The one who lost you.

Kakashi steps closer, drawn like metal to magnet.

And for one agonizing breath, the man at the shrine turns—and Kakashi sees himself. Not quite. Older. Harder. Haunted in a way that makes the weight behind the one visible eye look nearly inhuman.

And then—

The gravestone.

Your name, carved in kanji he knows too well. No title. No rank. Just the quiet finality of your given name and the date you vanished from this world.

Something tears in him.

And it isn’t his pain.

It’s the man he becomes here.

It belongs to this other Kakashi—the one who buried you. Who couldn’t save you.

The grief doesn’t match his own emotional architecture. It doesn’t fit. It’s too large, too raw, too known to someone who’s always kept himself just distant enough to survive the loss of anyone.

It burns.

It hollows.

It bleeds.

He wakes, breath caught low in his throat.

The cold bites first. Then the scent of ash. Pine. The dull pulse of your chakra close against his.

You’re still pressed against his side, back curled toward the fire. He can’t see your face. Only the edge of your hair, the shape of your shoulder, the soft rise and fall of sleep.

Kakashi stares at the embers. Listens to the wind push through the high canopy above.

The weight in his chest hasn’t eased. It’s coiled, aware. There’s a pressure behind the dream now, like it’s only the surface of something much deeper—something that doesn’t want to stay buried.

He knows what it means.

He’s Hokage here. Not in theory. Not as a possibility. As a truth.

He saw it, didn’t he? The way the coat hung from his alternate self’s shoulders. The authority in his stance. The Hokage crest.

He’s not just some distant figure. It’s him. 

He’s the one looking for you.

The realization lodges cold in his gut.

Part of him wants to be relieved. Who better to outmaneuver a Kage than himself? Who better to understand what he’ll do next? There’s a strange safety in it, like recognizing your own shadow in the dark.

But—

Kakashi doesn’t trust himself. Not entirely. He knows what he’s capable of when he’s desperate. He knows how tightly he can hold on to what he’s already lost.

And this other version of him… he’s grieving you.

Not you, not the one sleeping beside him now, but the version of you who belonged here. The one who died. The one he clearly never let go of.

If that man believes you’re a jutsu—some illusion, some perversion of memory—what happens then?

And worse, what if he doesn’t?

What if he believes you’re her? That you’ve returned to him somehow?

What if he’s convinced he’s been given a second chance, and he’s willing to keep it?

Even if it means ignoring the truth.

Even if it means treating you like a memory that doesn’t belong to him.

A low breath escapes Kakashi’s nose. His fingers twitch against the fabric of his blanket.

His pulse isn't calming.

That house wasn’t a dream.

That grief wasn’t imagined.

That life—wasn’t his.

And yet, somewhere inside him, the shape of it remains.

The sound of your voice saying you’re late again.

The smell of lemongrass.

The chill of the memorial stone beneath his hand.

Kakashi closes his eyes and tries to shake it loose.

He doesn’t believe in fate.

But something is reaching through him.

And it wants him to remember.