Heroism & Jasmine
You don’t stay long.
The cliff yawns behind you like a wound in the world, jagged and damp, bleeding fog. The bodies strewn in your wake are already beginning to settle into stillness, the kind that invites decay. Blood darkens the soil. One of them twitches—not from life, but from the first curious fly beginning its descent.
Kakashi sweeps the clearing with a sharp, practiced glance. It’s rote—his gaze slicing through the trees, up the ridgeline, back to you. The kind of scan he’s done a thousand times, in a thousand aftermaths. But this time, his eye lingers. Just a fraction longer than it should.
You can read the tension in the shape of him. The rigid line of his spine. The way his shoulders draw tight, as if something in him hasn’t fully stood down yet.
He doesn’t say it, but you hear it all the same.
We need to go. Now.
So you go.
The forest swallows you both. Fog curling at your ankles like cold breath, tree limbs shivering overhead. You follow him without a word. His pace is strange—not slow, exactly, but restrained. Each step measured. Controlled. He’s tracking the way he does when something isn’t sitting right in his gut.
Maybe that something is you.
You press a hand to your arm, where blood still seeps sluggishly through the cloth. The wound throbs with each movement. The last of the adrenaline is burning out of your system now, leaving fatigue in its place—heavy and dull in your bones. The air tastes of iron and damp moss. Every sound feels louder than it should. Your breathing. The crack of twigs beneath your boots. The soft hush of Kakashi’s movements just ahead.
Eventually, he stops.
A small hollow off the path, ringed by high ferns and gnarled roots, half-sheltered by a canopy of dense pine. No sign of recent passage. No flicker of chakra but yours.
“This’ll do,” he murmurs, barely above a breath.
He doesn’t look at you when he says it. Just drops his pack with a quiet exhale, the sound more tired than it ought to be. He clears a space in the earth with a sweep of his hand and a pulse of chakra, flattening it, anchoring a quiet perimeter seal. No flash, no flair. Just silence.
You kneel beside him, fingers fumbling at the soaked cloth around your shoulder. The wound stings when you tug at it, and you inhale sharply through your teeth.
“Let me.”
You pause.
He’s already crouched in front of you. No room for pride. No space for distance.
His fingers brush yours as he takes over.
He works in silence—removing the shredded cloth, dousing the wound with cool water from his canteen. You expect the sting. What you don’t expect is the way his touch lingers when he steadies your arm, the barest drag of his thumb against your skin, unthinking and careful. His eyes don’t leave the wound, but you feel the weight of them all the same.
The cut isn’t life-threatening. Just angry. Torn muscle and broken skin. It’ll scar, maybe. Most of them do.
He binds it with clean gauze from his pack, wrapping it snug and neat, like it matters. Like it’s not just another tally on the ledger of injuries you’ve both long stopped counting.
You watch him work. The curve of his brow. The tight set of his jaw. There’s dried blood in the silver of his hair. A smear along the edge of his mask, high on his cheekbone, already starting to crack. His Sharingan is shut. Spent.
“I wasn’t actually joking,” you say, voice scratchy. “Back there. I really was going to find you.”
His hands still. Just for a beat.
“I know.”
“They just kept coming,” you add, glancing down at your lap. “Didn’t want to risk pulling you in unless I had to.”
“You did.”
“Guess so.”
There’s a beat of silence. The air between you thickens, not with tension exactly—something quieter. Sadder. Unspoken.
Then, softly: “Just in time.”
Your lips twitch. A ghost of a smile.
“Typical. We’re always cutting it close.”
He doesn’t respond.
But when he finishes tying the bandage, his hand stays. Pressed lightly against your arm. Not for balance. Not for confirmation.
Just… staying.
You look up.
His gaze meets yours. Steady. Unflinching. Something flickers behind the mask—sharp and searching. As if he’s cataloging every inch of you, every wound, every breath. Like he’s checking that you’re still real.
“I shouldn’t have let this happen,” he says, voice low and raw.
“You didn’t,” you reply, just as quietly. “You're not omniscient.”
His eye narrows—not in suspicion, but pain.
“That’s not the point.”
You let out a breath, long and slow. “You came,” you say. “That is the point.”
He sits back slowly, legs folding beneath him. His hand leaves your arm, but his presence doesn’t. It hums—low and steady like static. His fingers brush absently over his knee, restless. He looks down, not at you. Like if he does, something in him might unravel.
“I thought they’d taken you,” he murmurs. “Or killed you.”
You nod, throat tight. “Yeah. I thought the same.”
And that quiets both of you.
You sit there for a while, the two of you bracketed by trees and silence. Fog curls low along the forest floor. A bird calls once in the distance, then goes still again. Your chakra’s finally settling, the sting in your shoulder a dull throb now. Your body aches, but it’s manageable. Survive-and-deal-with-it-later kind of pain.
You glance over.
He’s not looking at you—but he’s near enough that if you leaned just slightly, your shoulder would brush his.
You don’t.
Not yet.
But your hands rest on the ground between you, close enough for your pinkies to almost touch.
He hasn’t said your name. You haven’t said his.
But you’re both still breathing.
Still here.
For now.
And maybe, for tonight, that’s enough.
Night comes creeping, slow and deliberate.
The sky folds into itself in bruised hues, the last of the light swallowed by trees that crowd tighter and taller with every mile. Fog drapes low across the forest floor, coiling around your ankles, curling into your collar like cold breath. Even your footsteps feel quieter out here, muffled by moss and dusk and the heaviness that’s hung over you both since the ambush.
You don’t speak. Not when Kakashi crouches down and starts to clear a shallow pit. Not when he breaks apart dry branches and arranges them in tight, practiced layers. You help gather kindling without asking. He lets you. Doesn’t shoot you a look, doesn’t murmur a tired “I’ve got it.” Just works beside you in that familiar, efficient silence.
Maybe he’s too drained to argue.
Or maybe—just maybe—he’s learning.
When the fire finally takes, it does so shyly. A whisper of ember, a cautious lick of orange glow tucked low in the pit. It doesn’t crackle so much as exhale, the smallest flare of warmth pressed between you in the growing cold. You watch him sink beside it, his movements deliberate but stiff, like the effort costs him more than he’s willing to show.
It’s not until he shifts, pulling off his flak jacket with an audible breath through his teeth, that you notice the stain. Dark. Drying. Blooming slow from beneath his side like ink in cloth.
Your stomach twists.
He’s bleeding.
And he’s been hiding it.
Of course he has.
You move to him without a word. Kneel down, your thigh brushing against his as you gently push aside the fabric clinging to his side. He doesn’t stop you. Just watches, eyes unreadable behind his mask as you peel back the layers of bloodied cloth and take in the wound beneath.
It’s bad. Not as bad as it could be. Jagged, swollen, rimmed in a livid, angry bruise. You don’t speak right away. Just grab the canteen and a clean scrap of linen from your pouch, wetting it before carefully blotting at the blood. His breath hitches when the cold touches skin, but he doesn’t flinch.
You feel his gaze on you. Steady. Quiet.
“You know,” you murmur, keeping your eyes on the wound, “you’ve got a real problem.”
He doesn’t say anything. Just waits.
“You won’t ask for help. Hell, you barely let people offer it. You’ll get stabbed, or crushed, or dragged halfway across a battlefield, and the first words out of your mouth will still be ‘I’m fine.’”
You pause, glance up at him.
“It’s not fine.”
His brow twitches slightly. He opens his mouth—maybe to defend himself, maybe to change the subject—but you’re faster.
“Don’t,” you say sharply. “Don’t give me the usual lines. ‘I’ve had worse.’ ‘It’s just a scratch.’ ‘Part of the job.’” You shake your head, frustrated, the cloth now soaked with red. “You sound like a damn broken record.”
You press the bandage against his side, firm. He doesn’t make a sound, but the tension in his jaw speaks for him.
“You lose your mind if anyone else gets hurt,” you say, voice quieter now. “You tear yourself apart over it. But when it’s you? You act like it doesn’t matter. Like you’re somehow exempt.”
Your hand hovers for a second over the bandage. Then drops.
The air between you stills, heavy with words left unsaid. You could stay in it. You should. But you don’t.
Instead, you lean back on your heels and force a lopsided smile.
“You’d be a nightmare in a hospital,” you say lightly, tipping your head toward him. “I bet you’ve tried to escape before. Climbed out a window with the IV pole still attached.”
There’s a beat of silence.
Then, quietly—so dry you almost miss it—he says, “I’ve only done that twice.”
You let out a short laugh. “Only? Wow. Heroic.”
His shoulder lifts in a slow shrug, and it clearly costs him, but he plays it off like it’s nothing.
“You’d be worse,” he says after a moment.
You raise an eyebrow. “Me?”
He nods. “You’d set the nurse’s station on fire. Booby trap the halls. Poison the cafeteria food just because someone took your blood pressure without asking.”
You snort. “Please. Poison’s such an ugly word. I’d never poison anyone. Just… mildly incapacitate. Temporary paralysis at most.”
And there—just there—he laughs.
It’s low. Rough-edged. Half of it caught in his throat like it surprised even him. But it’s real. It breaks something loose in your chest, something tight and aching that you hadn’t noticed coiled there.
You smile. “See? There it is. My good deed for the day.”
He doesn’t say anything.
But he’s still looking at you.
And he doesn’t stop.
Even as the warmth lingers from that shared breath of laughter, his gaze doesn’t waver. It lingers like heat from the fire—soft, but impossible to ignore. Not intrusive. Just… focused. Like he’s trying to memorize the curve of your face in the low light. Like he’s reminding himself you’re still here. Still breathing. Still close.
It feels like gravity. Pulling, not pushing.
You pretend not to notice.
Instead, you toss a twig into the fire and say, mock-serious, “Alright. New survival rule: we carry a kettle from now on. Your emergency kits are suspiciously lacking in tea. It’s honestly a bit offensive.”
He huffs, eye narrowing slightly. “We’re in enemy territory.”
“And? That’s exactly why we need tea. It’s calming. Centering. Besides, what’s more dangerous—kunai to the throat, or caffeine withdrawal?”
“…You’re serious.”
“Deadly.”
He’s quiet for a second. Then:
“I like jasmine.”
You blink. Turn to stare at him.
He’s still not looking away.
“…You just gonna drop that on me like it’s not classified intel?”
A faint crease forms beside his visible eye. “Felt relevant.”
You laugh again, quieter this time. Softer.
“Noted,” you say. “Jasmine it is.”
The fire pops, sending a small spray of sparks into the darkness. The heat brushes your cheek. Somewhere in the woods, an owl calls—long and low.
Still, he doesn’t stop watching you.
Not once.