In Another Life

The morning lay draped across the village like a silken shawl—cool, damp, and silver-soft. Mist curled through the narrow lanes and drifted lazily beneath the eaves of quiet homes, shrouding the world in a breathless hush. It clung to the shingles of rooftops, nestled in the hollows of garden stones, and silvered the edges of every leaf and blade of grass until the village seemed carved from glass and fog. The sky, pale and uncommitted to dawn or day, spread wide above you like wet rice paper.

It felt like the world was holding its breath.

You slid open the wooden panel leading into the main room and were immediately met with the scent of simmering broth and steamed rice—comforting and soft, like warm hands pressed over your ribs. The hearth was lit, though the flames were drowsy, casting a soft, amber glow over the room. It made the floorboards shine like polished chestnuts and painted the paper walls with shifting shadows. The space was small, but it felt whole. Anchored. Lived-in.

Yui stood near the fire, sleeves tied at her elbows, her hair swept up in a loose bun that had already begun to slip. She moved with quiet precision, ladling soup into wooden bowls and brushing away the steam with the back of her hand. The fragrance of seaweed, mushrooms, and ginger wafted through the room, wrapping around your senses like a blanket. There was no rush in her movements—just the steady rhythm of someone who knew that food could be a kind of protection, too.

Toma was curled on a floor cushion at her feet, blinking blearily at the tatami. One side of his hair was stuck up like a rooster’s tail, and the collar of his tunic had gone crooked in sleep. He rubbed at one eye with a balled fist, then looked up at you as you entered—but only for a moment. His gaze darted away, feigning sudden interest in the frayed hem of his sleeve.

“You’re leaving today,” he said. Not a question. Just a small, raw fact.

You crouched beside him, resting your elbows on your knees. “Yeah,” you said quietly. “We are.”

You tried to keep your voice light, but there was weight behind the words. A promise, unspoken. We’ll be back. We have to be.

He didn’t answer at first, just tightened his mouth into a flat line. His chin wobbled once, imperceptibly, before he stuffed his hand behind his back and pulled out something folded and slightly crumpled—a drawing, pressed into your hands without ceremony.

You unfolded it carefully. Three figures scrawled in bright wax crayon filled the page. Toma, grinning wide in the middle, you on one side with what he must’ve thought was a kunai—though it looked more like a spoon—and Kakashi on the other, unmistakable in his slouch and little black rectangle of a mask. The proportions were awkward, and one of your arms was definitely longer than it should be, but the feeling behind it was clear as day.

“I drew it so you don’t forget us,” Toma mumbled, suddenly intensely focused on a knot in the floor.

Something thick pressed up behind your ribs. You touched the edge of the paper like it might burn. “I love it,” you said, and you meant it more than he could ever understand. “It’s perfect. Thank you, Toma.”

You ruffled his hair gently, and he scowled, immediately trying to pat it back down with both hands. His ears flushed pink.

Yui stepped over then, hands full of a small bundle wrapped in cloth. She placed it in yours without flourish. It was warm through the wrapping.

“Dried rice cakes and salted plums,” she said. “They’ll keep longer than fresh, and they don’t take much space.”

You opened your mouth to thank her, but the words didn’t come. They swelled, caught somewhere behind your teeth, too heavy to lift. There was too much to say, and no time left to say it.

So you bowed, slow and deep, holding it longer than was polite. When you straightened, her eyes had gone a little soft around the edges—but she didn’t speak on it.

Instead, she walked with you out into the garden, her steps quiet on the damp stones. The mist had thickened, draping the crooked fence in ghostly ribbons. Kakashi was already there, standing near the edge of the path, a silent figure cloaked in gray and shadow. The fog licked at his ankles and softened the outline of his shoulders. He was looking out into the trees—past them, maybe—expression unreadable as always.

Yui approached him without hesitation. She reached up and gently adjusted the way his cloak sat on his shoulder, tugging it straight like a mother fixing a child’s scarf before school. He didn’t flinch or stop her. Just stood still, hands at his sides, letting her fuss.

“Keep each other safe,” she said. Her voice was calm but firm, like it had weight. “And come back with your heads high.”

Kakashi inclined his head. Not quite a bow. But enough.

Then Yui turned to you. Without warning, she reached for your hand and pressed something into your palm—a tiny bundle of cloth, tied tight with fraying red thread. You could feel the faint texture of dried leaves inside, and it smelled softly of cedar and smoke.

“For grounding,” she said quietly. “If things start slipping.”

You nodded once, but your throat burned.

At the edge of the porch, Toma stood with his fists balled at his sides, eyes huge and brimming. As you took your first step toward the path, he bolted forward and threw his arms around your waist, knocking the air out of you with the force of his hug. You could feel the effort it took him not to cry pressed into every inch of his trembling grip.

“I’ll wait right here!” he said, voice cracking. “Promise you’ll come back!”

You dropped to your knees, arms folding around him tight. “I promise.”

You held on a second longer than you should have, memorizing the weight of him, the way his small hands clutched at your clothes like he could anchor you in place.

And then—you stood.

You didn’t look back right away. You couldn’t. The ache was too fresh, and it sat too high in your chest. But several paces down the path, when you turned at last, you saw them: Toma waving with both arms like it might make you turn around, Yui beside him with one hand resting on his shoulder, the other raised in quiet farewell.

Kakashi walked beside you, the mist folding around his shoulders like another layer of cloth.

Neither of you said a word.

The fog thickened behind you, heavy and pale and endless. And then the little house disappeared from view.

The fog is heavier today.

It clings to the trees like gauze, threads itself between tall stalks of grass and the bends of low fences, turning the world quiet and dulled. Boots fall soft on the path, sound swallowed into mist. There’s no sun—only that pale, silver hush as though even the sky is holding its breath.

You and Kakashi haven’t spoken in over an hour.

You trail behind him by a few paces, watching the set of his shoulders. He’s relaxed in the way only seasoned shinobi can be—attuned and easy all at once. To anyone else, he’d look serene. Unbothered. But you’ve been reading him long enough to see the tension coiled in his neck, the quiet deliberation in every step.

It eats at you.

The silence. The unfinished edge of it. Like a string that keeps catching on the same old nail.

Eventually, it’s too loud in your chest to keep ignoring.

“So,” you call out, calm and casual and cutting all at once, “did your secret mission yesterday involve blowing up a rogue village, or just abandoning your post again mid-festival?”

Kakashi doesn’t break stride. “You make it sound so dramatic.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“I had something to check out.”

You hum, the sound sharp. “Must’ve been urgent. One minute we’re watching fireworks, next minute—poof. Like it never happened.”

He glances back, but briefly. “Didn’t realize I needed a signed leave of absence to step out.”

Your teeth click together. “Didn’t realize I needed to file one either. Funny how that wasn’t your tune when I disappeared for a couple hours.”

He slows—just enough to signal he’s listening now.

“Let me guess,” you go on. “It’s different when you do it.”

“I didn’t disappear,” he says. “I went scouting. You were asleep. You weren’t supposed to go anywhere.”

“I didn’t go anywhere,” you snap. “I got some air. Came back an hour or two later to you tearing the room apart like I’d been kidnapped.”

“Because you were gone.” His voice cuts in low, sudden. “I came back and the room was empty. What was I supposed to think?”

“I don’t know, maybe trust me not to wander off into a war zone?”

The silence that follows is sharper now, brittle and hot.

You shake your head. “This whole thing reeks of double standards. You vanish mid-festival—nothing. I step outside for air, and suddenly I’m irresponsible.”

He stops walking altogether. You almost bump into him.

When he turns, there’s a tightness to his eyes you don’t like. Not anger. Not exactly. Something more guarded.

“I didn’t think you were irresponsible,” he says. “I thought you were taken. Because that’s what happens when you don’t tell anyone where you’re going.”

You laugh, low and bitter. “So what is it then? You don’t trust me? Or you think I’m a liability?”

His expression darkens. “Don’t put words in my mouth.”

“No need,” you say, stepping closer. “You say plenty without speaking.”

He doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch. Just watches you.

Then he shifts a step closer now, voice tight. “I don’t think you’re a liability.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Then stop treating me like one.”

His silence is immediate. Loaded.

You take another step. You’re close now. Not quite touching, but you can see the pulse at his throat. The stiff set of his shoulders. The way his hands curl subtly at his sides.

You laugh, low. “You know what? Forget it. Maybe you were right before. Maybe we should both start skipping out without saying a damn thing. Saves the trouble.”

“No.” His voice snaps like a whip. “It’s not the same.”

“Why not?”

“Because you can’t just disappear.”

You stare at him. “Why not?”

He hesitates. There’s something raw behind his mask, just beneath the surface. Something that flickers like a warning.

“Because if something happens to you, I—” he stops short, jaw tight, gaze fixed somewhere past your shoulder.

You open your mouth, but the breath leaves you before anything can rise.

But before either of you can speak again—something shifts.

A flicker in the fog. A tremor in the trees.

Kakashi’s head lifts, body snapping to alert. You turn with him, kunai already sliding into your palm from muscle memory.

Too late.

Something crashes through the mist behind you.

The attack comes a heartbeat later.

Explosive tags rain from the canopy—fast, smart, meant to herd. You dive sideways, slipping between two tree trunks, hurling a kunai mid-fall that intercepts one tag in air and detonates it prematurely. Fire flares and chokes the air with ash.

Figures drop from above—four masked shinobi in cloaks of dark reed-green, not missing-nin but not allied. Independent, maybe. Mercenary.

One of them lunges. Fast. You parry with the flat of your blade, chakra humming through steel. The clash vibrates up your arm. He follows with a sweep of wind chakra, aimed at your knees, but you jump—pivot midair, twist, and slam a roundhouse into his mask. It cracks.

You land hard. Another comes in, kunai reversed, swinging for your side. You duck, catch his wrist, twist, and throw him over your shoulder into the underbrush.

A third tries to grab you from behind.

Big mistake.

Your elbow slams into his ribs, and you follow up with a palm strike straight to his solar plexus, a burst of chakra behind it. He crumples. Two more down. Three, maybe. But the others—

Where’s Kakashi?

You spin—then see him across the clearing. Flashes of silver and black, a blur of motion. He’s faster than them, always has been. They try to corner him, but he melts through their ranks like smoke.

But he’s drawing fire. Drawing too much fire.

“Damn it,” you hiss, hand flying into your pouch.

You form the seals quickly—Tiger, Boar, Horse, Ram.

“Suiton: Mizurappa!” you spit, and a pressurized stream of water bursts from your mouth, slicing into the space between Kakashi and two attackers just as they move to flank him. One catches the edge, knocked sideways into a tree trunk with a crunch of bark and bone.

Kakashi doesn’t look at you, but he shifts—slipping around the last enemy near him with a kunai already in hand. You watch the man go still.

That’s when the earth quivers.

Not chakra. Not jutsu.

A trap.

You barely move in time.

The ground explodes beneath you—runes flaring, igniting in a chain reaction that blasts you skyward. You twist in air, pain blooming along your side where shrapnel nicks flesh, and land in a skid ten meters away. Smoke fills your mouth. You cough, eyes burning.

“Kakashi!” you shout, trying to find him in the haze.

But no answer comes.

You feel it then—chakra, sharp and thick and wrong, coming from the other direction.

Your breath stalls.

They’ve split you.

Intentionally.

Panic tries to claw its way up your throat. But you shove it down.

You scan the treeline. Four more approaching. These ones different—dressed like bait, but chakra balanced, movements precise. Elite. They want to keep you occupied.

You draw both kunai, settle into a stance.

“If you think I’m the weaker one,” you mutter under your breath, “you’re about to be real disappointed.”

They come at you fast.

Your breath comes fast—sharp and tight in your chest. The world is too loud now. Screams of kunai slicing air, the grunt of bodies striking, the crunch of bone, the pulse of blood in your ears.

The forest lives and breathes with movement—branches shuddering, not from wind, but from bodies. Dozens. Closing in. Shadows with steel in their hands and killing intent in their eyes.

The first comes from above—silent, precise. A chakra-forged blade gleams in the haze of light through trees. You twist just before it carves your throat, sidestepping in a blur. Your kunai is already in hand, muscle memory so deep it feels like instinct. You drive it upward into ribs and twist. He exhales wet and drops with a thud.

No time to hesitate. No time to check your six.

You’re moving again.

Two more behind. Fast. You spin low, ducking under slashes, flinging smoke pellets and caltrops in a single practiced motion. One curses, losing his footing. The other emerges through the haze, sword sweeping.

He’s good. But you’re better.

You shift your weight, spin into him. Elbow to throat. He stumbles, choking, and you vault over his shoulders, midair spin tight and controlled. Your heel crashes into the other’s skull before he can recover. Bone cracks. They collapse, twitching.

This isn’t a scouting party.

This is a hit.

You reach for your mask. It’s not there. You haven’t worn it in weeks. It doesn’t matter. That part of you is never really gone.

Not when you’re covered in someone else’s blood, breathing smoke, already counting the number of targets left by the rhythm of their chakra.

Not when you’re ANBU.

The next is chakra-fast—silent and practiced. His tanto catches your forearm guard, sparks flying. You feel it through your bones. He’s strong. You’re stronger.

You twist into his space, drop, and sweep his legs. Before he hits the ground, a senbon is in your hand and under his jaw. The shudder in his limbs stops cold.

Another signature flares—sharp, high, and baiting. They’re pulling you away from where you lost him.

No names. No faces. Not here. Only targets.

You dart into the trees. Chakra on your soles, sliding across bark. Rain needles your face. The cold bites deeper.

A paper bomb flashes—

Boom.

You’re airborne, flung hard into a tree trunk. Pain rings in your ribs. You push off it anyway, teeth grit. Blood—maybe yours—sliding down your sleeve. It doesn’t matter.

You move again. Harder. Faster.

Shuriken sing past your ears, and you twist mid-leap, landing low in a clearing soaked in rain and smoke.

Three this time.

Two ground level. One crouched above, silhouetted against stormclouds. Swords drawn. Faces covered. Chakra simmering. Efficient. Coordinated.

“We only need one of you alive,” one of them says, voice muffled behind cloth. “Not picky which.”

You don’t speak.

You smile—thin and cold—and lunge.

The first rushes in: heavy steps, wild swing. You meet him in the middle, slide under his blade, and jam your kunai deep into his thigh. His scream cuts off when you slam your shoulder into his chest, toppling him.

Second moves in—chakra-laced strike toward your back.

You twist, grab his wrist, and slam your palm into his nose. Bone collapses with a wet snap. As he reels, you follow up with a clean slice across his throat.

You spin, already tracking the third.

He’s smart—uses ninjutsu. A jolt of lightning crackles in the air as he falls from the tree, hands already forming signs.

You dive, tumbling through mud. It cakes your skin. Doesn’t slow you.

Your own seals snap into place mid-roll.

Doton: Shinjū Zanshu no Jutsu.

The ground swallows him at the ankle. Before he can react, your hand erupts from the earth and drags him down—hard. His skull bounces against stone. He doesn’t rise again.

Silence creeps back.

Only your breath. The sting of your cuts. The copper in your mouth.

Then—chakra.

Not yours.

Not theirs.

His.

You feel it before you see it—surging like fire through the veins of the forest. Wild. Unfiltered. Furious.

Whatever they said to him… it struck something deep.

Damn it. 

You can't think. Can't breathe.

He doesn’t hear you anymore.

It’s instant, like a wire snapped in his chest. A wrongness so complete it stops the world.

One heartbeat, you’re there—just behind him, chakra flickering in tune with his like a matched rhythm. The next, it’s gone. No falter. No warning. Just… silence.

Too silent.

He lands on the forest floor harder than intended. Mud kicks up around his sandals. His breath clouds in the cool morning air, caught in his mask.

The fog thickens. The trees lean in, tall and mute. No birdsong. No footsteps. No presence.

No you.

His hand twitches toward his kunai out of instinct, but it’s not weapons he needs. It’s you.

“Where—”

He stops himself. The word curls in his throat, thick with dread. He doesn’t dare say your name. Not here. Not yet.

He pivots sharply, eyes scanning the canopy. He doubles back three steps, five. Scans the branches, the grooves in the bark. The faintest heatprint of your chakra where your foot landed seconds before.

Gone.

Not masked. Not suppressed. Gone.

His gut turns to stone.

He drops to a crouch beside the mossy trunk of a cedar, fingers brushing across disturbed soil. A scuffle. Blood smeared across a root—too little to be yours, he prays—but fresh.

It tells him enough.

Not vanished. Taken.

A silent snarl tears through his chest, barely contained behind his mask. He bolts forward, a blur between trees, every inch of him wired and alert, tuned to the faintest vibration.

Then—

Voices.

Low. Sloppy. Confident.

A rustle, then a chuckle. Close.

“They split like we thought. The girl took the bait.”

“She’s putting up a fight. But once she’s dead, the other won’t last long. Take them both. Drag their corpses back.”

Kakashi stops.

For a heartbeat, everything inside him stills. The forest draws a breath.

Then he moves.

A raw snap of chakra bursts up his spine, scorching and sharp, flooding his limbs with heat. It shatters the stillness like a scream.

The trees blur around him. Leaves flurry in his wake. The ground seems to tilt beneath his feet. His Sharingan flares to life, casting everything in shades of crimson.

Five heartbeats later, he finds them.

Four of them, half-circled around a clearing. One with a hand raised mid-gesture. Another laughing, blades casually drawn. None of them looking the right way.

He tears through the first without a word. A blur of silver and shadow. His kunai carves through windpipe and artery, and the man collapses like a puppet with cut strings.

The second spins—too slow. Kakashi shatters his elbow with a sharp twist of heel, and the scream barely begins before steel rips through his neck.

The third turns to flee.

Chidori.

Lightning erupts in Kakashi’s palm, violent and feral. It screeches through the air like a dragon’s cry, piercing the stillness. It slams into the man’s chest, detonating him backward into a broken heap of limbs and burning cloth.

Only one remains.

Young. Panicked. Frozen in place with a sick blade in his hands and fear rising off him like steam.

He tries to speak. Kakashi’s already on him.

He grabs him by the collar and slams him hard against the trunk of a tree. Bark splinters behind the boy’s head. His legs dangle.

“Where is she?” Kakashi’s voice is low. Unrecognizable. Barely human.

The boy gasps. “I—I don’t—”

“I won’t ask again.” The Sharingan spins, bright with promise.

The boy cracks.

“T-they dragged her east! Into the cliffs—past the gorge! She was fighting—she was still—please—she was still—!”

Kakashi drops him.

The boy collapses in a heap, gasping like he’s just escaped death.

He hasn’t.

But Kakashi’s already gone.

His chakra flares again, wilder this time. Thick and angry. It pulses through the clearing like thunder. The forest feels it—branches tremble, birds scatter, leaves tear loose from their stems. The very air recoils.

His heart is pounding. Not from the fight. From the echo of you. Your absence. His failure.

You’re not dead.

You can’t be.

Because if you are—

No. He won’t finish that thought.

You’re not just a partner. You’re ANBU. Trained. Lethal. His equal.

But still.

You're gone.

You're gone.

Like then. 

When you’d fallen asleep that night. Quiet, soft, unguarded in a way you never allowed yourself to be. For a few moments, it had felt almost like peace. Like something had begun to heal.

And then he’d slipped away.

Just for a patrol. Just to be cautious. Clear the perimeter.

And when he returned—

Gone.

Again.

He should’ve known. He should haveknown.

And now…

People want you both dead. People who don’t even know your names. Strangers in a world that doesn’t belong to them—yet somehow they’re hunting you like prey.

If they laid a hand on you—

If you’re hurt—

If your blood’s on their hands—

Lightning crackles again at his fingertips. Raw chakra writhes along his skin, sharp enough to singe bark as he passes.

He locks onto the distant chakra flares—chaotic, flickering with bursts of combat. Yours.

You’re still fighting.

And he’s coming.

They won't touch you.

Not without dying for it.

The gorge yawns open like a wound torn through the forest. Sheer cliffs rise sharp on either side, slick with moss, dripping quietly in the hush. Fog winds low and heavy, clinging to the earth like breath caught in the throat.

And through it—

He sees you.

You stand amid the wreckage of your fight. Four bodies lie scattered in the mud, steam curling up from cooling blood. The stink of ozone and iron clings to the air. There’s a split along your shoulder, crimson soaking through your sleeve. Dust smears across your jaw, and your blade hangs low in one hand, fingers twitching like they haven’t stopped moving yet.

But you’re standing.

Alive.

He doesn’t remember when he stopped running—just that he has. His heart is still charging forward, but his legs are frozen. Anchored.

You turn toward him. Eyes meet through the blur of fog.

For a heartbeat, something loosens between your brows. Something that looks like relief. Or disbelief. Maybe both.

Then movement snaps to your left—

Too fast.

Too close.

You don’t see it in time. Your stance shifts, but the angle’s wrong. You’re off balance. A breath late. 

But Kakashi’s already moving.

The air cracks with chakra.

Lightning bursts forward, raw and snarling. He’s a streak of silver in the fog, a scream of energy tearing straight into the attacker.

Chidori tears through the man’s chest in a flash of light and sound, cutting off his death cry before it starts. The body hits the ground hard—limp, burnt, lifeless.

Then silence.

Not the peaceful kind. The hollow kind. Like the world just exhaled and forgot how to breathe again.

You blink.

Your pulse hammers in your throat. You shift your grip on your weapon—more out of reflex than need. The danger’s gone. Kakashi made sure of that.

He turns to you

There’s blood on his mask, splattered across his sleeve. His chest is rising too fast, like he’s been running for miles and still hasn’t stopped. Lightning still coils faintly around his fingers, crackling soft and angry.

His eye—dark and real—is locked on you.

Like he doesn’t quite believe you’re real yet.

You offer a lopsided smile, faint and a little worn out. “Took your sweet time.”

It’s a joke. Kind of. But your voice is hoarse, and your smile doesn’t reach your eyes.

He doesn’t smile back.

“You okay?” he asks, low.

You glance down at your arm. The bleeding’s already slowing. You shrug one shoulder, wincing a little. “Could be worse.”

He takes a slow step forward, like he’s not sure if getting closer will break whatever fragile thing is holding this moment together.

“You found me fast,” you add, quieter now.

His eye narrows slightly. “Your chakra—it spiked hard. Then it dropped. Then came back.”

You nod. “They wouldn’t stop coming. Figured you’d be close, so I just kept holding ground.”

Another small silence.

Then you glance up at him again, something unreadable behind your gaze.

“You didn’t call out,” you say.

He looks at you for a moment, then shrugs. “Didn’t want to make it easy for them.”

“But still,” you murmur with a smirk. “Not even once?”

He’s quiet for a long beat.

Then, softly—“I didn’t need to.”

You exhale through your nose, glance away, teeth tugging at the inside of your cheek. You don’t know what answer you were hoping for—but it wasn’t that one. Or maybe it was.

Kakashi steps closer. The storm in his chakra has faded, but not gone. Not really. You can feel it rippling just beneath his skin.

His fingers lift, hesitate near your arm, then settle against your pulse point—two light touches, just enough to feel.

Your breath stutters.

His eye shuts for a moment.

Then, finally, a whisper—just for him.

“Still here.”

And you are.

Bruised. Bloodied. Barely standing.

But you’re here.

And for now, that’s enough.