Murmured Names
The house is dim when you return, as though it, too, has settled into silence to mourn something unnamed.
The sliding door welcomes your touch, yielding without resistance. You press your palm against its wooden frame, steadying yourself as you slip inside. The faint creak beneath your hand feels familiar now—an old friend in a strange land. You linger in the genkan, caught between the cold breath of the night curling at your back and the lingering warmth of home that drifts toward you like a memory.
It smells of chamomile and smoke, of simmering herbs left too long on the hearth. A lived-in scent. Safe, domestic, faintly sweet. It wraps around you, coaxing your bones to rest. But the tightness in your chest remains, untouched.
You step out of your sandals with care, half-expecting your legs to give under the weight of the night.
The living room is small, worn at the edges like an oft-read book. Hand-stitched cushions scatter across the floor, patterned in faded blues and warm browns. A little body lies curled under a frayed blanket near the hearth, small limbs tucked tightly in, his face soft with sleep.
Toma.
One arm clutches a stuffed tanuki to his chest. You don’t remember him carrying it before. His breathing is slow, deep, the kind that only comes when a child finally surrenders to exhaustion. There’s a damp patch near his cheek on the mat. A tear, or perhaps he drooled in his sleep.
Yui is beside him, legs tucked beneath her, a half-knitted scarf in her lap. Her needles rest idle. The glow from the hearth catches in her silver-streaked hair.
“He waited for you both,” she murmurs without looking up. Her voice is soft, worn around the edges like cloth faded from sun and time. “Said he’d stay awake until he saw your faces. But the day pulled more from him than he had to give.”
You don’t trust your voice, so you say nothing.
Yui doesn’t expect you to. Her eyes find yours in the low light. She sees something there—you know she does. Something raw and curled in on itself. And still, she says nothing more.
You cross the tatami slowly. Your knees bend as if remembering how to bend. The moment you settle beside her, your body seems to fold in on itself, like paper wilting in steam. No tears. Not yet. Just a hollow ache stretching across your ribs.
Yui’s hands move gently. No questions. No demands.
She brushes her fingers along the base of your neck and begins to remove the clips from your hair. One by one, the pins loosen. They fall into her palm with delicate clicks, tiny sounds swallowed by the hush of the room.
It feels like unraveling.
“Men,” she says eventually, her voice quiet, but not unkind. “They mean well. Most of them, at least.”
You stay silent. Let her untangle a knot behind your ear.
“They want to protect what they care for. But sometimes… their way of protecting only pushes people further from the warmth.”
You close your eyes. The words don’t ask anything of you. They settle into the air and stay there, like incense, not pressing for truth or denial.
You don’t tell her he’s not yours. Not really. Maybe not ever.
She removes the earrings next. Then the necklace you forgot you were wearing. Her fingers brush your collarbone as she works, never intrusive, always sure.
The kimono is half-loosened from your run, the bow at your back twisted. Yui unties it gently, reverent in her motions. When she speaks again, it’s barely above a breath.
“Go,” she says. “The bath is ready. Take the time you need.”
You nod. Rise on legs that feel heavier than they should. The hallway to the bathroom is dim and narrow, the wooden floor warm underfoot from the residual heat of the fire. You push the door open and are met with the soft scent of rosewater and jasmine.
The steam curls like silk in the air, blooming from the surface of a small wooden tub. One candle flickers in the corner, flame bending gently whenever you move.
You slip out of your clothes in silence, each layer falling to the floor like petals. The water welcomes you. Heat swells around your limbs, kissing the tight muscles in your shoulders, pulling breath from your lungs with a trembling exhale.
You sink in.
And for a moment, you let yourself drift. The warmth cocoons you, fills in the hollow spaces that had stretched inside your chest.
Then—like the tide—memories return.
His hand brushing yours under the paper lanterns. The glimmer of fireworks reflecting in his uncovered eye. The sound of his voice—lower, softer than usual—close enough to stir the air at your ear. You remember how his gaze felt, how he’d looked at you like you were something he hadn’t dared to hope for.
And then, just as clearly, the way the space beside you emptied.
Vanished.
Like he’d never been there at all.
Your body curls in on itself again, knees drawn to your chest beneath the water. Your chin rests atop them, and your eyes sting.
Why did he leave?
Was it you?
Was it always you?
Your mind scrambles to hold on to something else. Someone else. Gai, with his impossible enthusiasm and his louder-than-life proclamations. You huff—more of a breath than a laugh. Then Genma, cocky and quick, able to diffuse an argument with the arch of a brow and a smart remark.
And Tenzo.
Your breath catches. The warmth of the bath feels suddenly insufficient.
You haven’t seen him since the night you left him in the hospital. Since the whispered apology you murmured to his sleeping body, too afraid to face the hurt in his eyes when they were open. He’d been awake for a week before that. You’ve avoided him for just as long.
Coward.
The word burns. You whisper it into the water, lips barely moving.
Your reflection stares up from the surface, rippled and distorted.
You remember what Kakashi said—aliability. A weight he couldn’t afford. The words had come like a blade, sharp and fast.
Part of you still believes he didn’t mean them.
But another part—a quieter, crueler voice—whispers that maybe he did. Even if only a little.
Why else would he leave?
Maybe he thought you’d slow him down. That you’d compromise the mission. That you couldn’t be trusted to stand beside him when it counted.
Maybe you were foolish to believe things had changed. That he had changed.
Half a month in a strange world doesn’t erase years of old habits, old pain, old walls.
He’s still Konoha’s copy-ninja. Still Konoha’s Hound. Still Kakashi Hatake.
And maybe you were a fool—for hoping, even for a second, that he could be yours.
You let yourself sink deeper into the water, eyes closed, nose just above the surface. Breathing in the scent of roses, trying to hold yourself together in the steam.
Alone. Always alone.
The house is quiet when Kakashi returns—quiet in a way that presses into the skin, like the hush after a storm.
He doesn’t knock. Doesn’t even breathe too loudly. Just moves like mist over the rooftop, a shadow against starlight, slipping through the upper shoji panel with the same grace and silence that has kept him alive all these years. The wood doesn’t creak beneath his weight. His presence doesn’t stir the air. He is not meant to be noticed.
The hearth is lower now, embers dulled to a soft, pulsing glow. The scent of burnt herbs and extinguished candles lingers faintly in the air. Toma is asleep—he can feel the boy’s chakra, light and dreamy, curled like a cat near the fire. Yui’s is deeper, older, settled in the next room behind paper walls.
And then there’s yours.
A flickering pulse he could pick out blindfolded in a field of hundreds. Your chakra, usually so measured even in battle, is shuddering in its rhythm—unsteady, as if thrown from center and still fighting to find the axis again.
The floors murmur false promises as he navigates toward your shared bedroom.
The door gives a shy hiss when he slides it open and his gaze falls on you the instant he enters.
You’re curled in a futon near the far wall, bundled tightly as if it could protect you from what sleep has dredged up. One hand disappears beneath your cheek, your other arm folded beneath the blankets. Your brows twitch together even in unconsciousness, drawn into an expression of worry. Or pain.
He crouches beside you, slowly.
You don’t wake.
But he sees it.
The salt tracks dried and flaking across your cheek. The way your lips are parted in half-formed words. The tension in your shoulders. Your body jerks now and again—small, involuntary spasms that betray the unrest beneath the surface. You’re running from something in your dreams, and he can’t follow you there.
A nightmare.
His hand lifts before he realizes it. Pauses in the air between you like it’s asking permission. His fingers hover above your chest, hesitant. It’s not fear of touching you—it’s the fear of breaking whatever fragile thing is holding you together.
Still, he moves.
He places his hand gently at your sternum, just enough to feel the thump of your heart under your skin. Through the fabric. Through the bones.
Then he lets his chakra unfurl.
It’s a slow tide, warm and low, invisible to the world but made of everything he can’t say. It hums from his palm and slips into yours, careful not to overwhelm. Just enough to wrap around the jagged edges of your own and hold them close.
You sigh.
Your breath catches and releases all at once, and he feels it—the moment your body surrenders to the calm. The tremors ease. The spikes smooth. His chakra cradles yours, coaxes it into rhythm. Anchors you to this room, this body, this now.
You murmur something in your sleep. A whisper, barely sound.
His name, maybe.
He doesn’t answer.
Just watches.
His eye dull in the firelight, shadowed beneath the weight of everything he can’t undo.
You shouldn’t be here.
You shouldn’t have met Jiraiya. Shouldn’t have been shoved face-first into a history that was never yours. Shouldn’t have to carry the burden of a life you didn’t live.
This world is too heavy for someone like you.
And he knows what it can do—what it has done. The other you… Her absence haunts this place like fog. He sees it in the way people still at the sound of your name. In the way Jiraiya fell to his knees tonight like he’d seen a ghost, and in a way, he had.
But Kakashi’s fear is simpler.
He fears death.
Yours.
He’s seen what loss does. What it did to that other version of him—the man who somehow became Hokage, who stood at the helm of this village with his heart hollowed out and stitched together with duty.
He doesn’t want you to see that. Doesn’t want this world to gut you the way it did her. Doesn’t want you to understand the grief of watching someone you love die with your name still on their lips.
Not you. Not ever.
The night should have been something else. The festival, the hush of lanterns, your face lit by fireworks like something celestial. He remembers your laugh, the shape of it, how it felt to walk beside you like you might really belong to him.
It was almost perfect.
Almost.
But he left.
Because of something old and wrong in the forest. A scent he couldn’t place, something that brushed the edge of memory like a rusted blade—serpentine and sour. Orochimaru’s ghost, maybe. Or something worse.
He chased it.
Anonymous. Hidden beneath henge and silence.
But even as he moved through the trees, his thoughts spun back to you, again and again, like a needle dragged to the same groove on a record.
And when he felt your chakra spike—violent, startled, alone—he moved faster than instinct.
By the time he reached the edge of the village, logic was already scrambling to keep up. But it was too late.
He saw it all from the rooftops.
Jiraiya, sobbing. His face pressed against your legs like a man who had nothing left. And you—stiff, silent, trembling. Then breaking away. Running like the world was on fire and he was the spark that started it.
Kakashi didn’t show himself.
Couldn’t.
He didn’t know what to do if you looked up and wore that same expression for him—horror, hurt, disbelief. Like something inside you had cracked, and he was the reason it wouldn’t mend.
So he watched you go. Watched your retreating form disappear into the dark. And did nothing.
Now he sits beside you.
His hand rests on the floor, just inches from yours, but he doesn’t dare touch. His chakra remains tangled with yours, keeping you grounded. It’s all he can offer.
It’s the only thing he’s ever really known how to give.
And maybe, tonight, it’s the only thing keeping you from breaking.