Kakashi holds the disinfectant and uses it to clean his wounds. It's alright; he's gotten used to this by now, even though he hasn't had to do it for himself in a long time. Minato-sensei always insisted on cleaning Kakashi's wounds for him.
He wipes the cotton ball over his stomach, trying to disinfect the long horizontal cut, but it’s useless anyway; the sword that stabbed him was poisoned.
After his futile attempts, calmly, he reaches for his left eye, flinching slightly from the pain as he moves his arm upward. He places his fingers on his eyelid, not even needing any ink... his own blood will do the job.
With his fingertips, he draws an imperfect seal—the best thing he managed to learn from Kushina-san before...
He draws randomly but doesn't care; all that matters is finishing before he passes out. His vision is already blurred, and the world sways left and right.
He’s on his knees, though he doesn’t know when he knelt. His initial idea was to remove Obito’s eye and crush it, but Obito’s gift must be handled with extreme care, so he prefers to write a protective seal on it to prevent it from being dislodged from his body.
Maybe Obito would be pleased with that; Kakashi cherishes the gift from Obito.
Kakashi doesn't know if he’s rambling, but he's certain Obito is in front of him, pressing their noses together. They rub their noses gently as though Kakashi were a small child.
Obito was kind to children. Perhaps Kakashi wouldn't mind being one for Obito.
Obito reaches out and touches Kakashi’s hair, teasing him before pulling his hand back, making Kakashi quickly tilt his head, trying to chase Obito’s hand in a way that doesn't suit him as an Anbu.
Perhaps Obito is proud of how Kakashi chose to protect Obito’s eye in his final moments rather than trying to do anything else.
Kakashi closes his eyes, seeing only Obito and Rin beside him, smelling nothing of himself except sweat and vomit.
Kakashi isn’t fully unconscious, but he isn’t truly conscious either. He’s just floating in a space of nothingness, spending a lot of time there.
Minato-sensei patted his head and called him a good boy. Kushina-san’s endless chatter filled his ears. Rin carefully held his hand, and Obito argued with him, but fondly.
It was beautiful—even the shadows from the past once calling him "Oto-san" as they carried him on their backs.
Kakashi doesn’t know whether that was an illusion, a dream, or another life.
But that doesn't last forever. In the end, Kakashi opens his eyes, still feeling Minato-sensei's hand on his hair, Kushina-san’s arms around him, Obito's chaotic hug, and... Rin’s loving gaze.
There’s no one else around him. Kakashi hasn’t died; the poison didn’t kill him. So here he is, alone in a trench on the border, wounded on the ground with makeshift bandages, drowning in his sweat and vomit, his guilt and regret.
His bleeding has stopped, but saliva drips from his mouth, and sweat covers him in a disgusting way.
Kakashi looks up, filled with disgust for himself, but it doesn't matter. The fourteen-year-old boy will eventually get up and return to his village, promising himself he’ll die in the next suicide mission.
Kakashi knows that if Minato-sensei saw him, he’d be disgusted and spit on him. How ungrateful was he, imagining him this way when he hadn’t even taken care of his own son?
Kakashi knows he's trash, scum. His life is meaningless, but that doesn’t matter to this young Anbu—he was never a child. He has a duty to Konoha and prays from the depths of his heart to burn out while fulfilling it.
He closes his eyes, knowing he’ll return eventually, but for now, he’ll allow himself the mercy of taking time to hate himself and be disgusted by every part of him. He prays an enemy finds him in this trench and kills him.
Alone, as he always has been, in an isolated trench, covered in mud, sweat, vomit, and saliva, a single tear falls from Kakashi's eye.