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The chipped, pale walls of the hospital room were a familiar incarceration to Kakashi, who despite his best efforts, frequented this haunted place like it was a favourite watering hole.
Oftentimes, a trip to the hospital was a one-way ticket. He’d seen it happen to friends, and mentors, and teammates. Wheeled in with false reassurances, never to be seen again, stealing another light from Kakashi’s life.
Kakashi was so wrapped up in the ghosts that tormented him, that he hadn’t stopped to consider that death wasn’t the ultimate end. He had been naive.
“I’m sorry,” Tsunade-sama said. Even this close, he could not make out the details of her outline backlit by the afternoon’s blazing sun. “It’s as we feared.”
“So I’m going blind,” Kakashi translated, voice monotonous.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“We can’t be sure. A few months, give or take.”
Kakashi swallowed tremulously. “And my … and my career …”
“I’m sorry,” Tsunade said again, so sincerely. “But you’re off duty effective immediately.”
Had he expected reassurances? What did he expect in the first place when for all intents and purposes, his life was over?
“Right,” he said hoarsely, finding his feet somehow. He swayed for a precarious moment before his knees locked in place. “I’ll be on my way then.”
“Kakashi,” her voice sounded distant over the loud gushing of blood in his ears. “Wait. Let’s talk about this—”
“Hokage-sama,” he responded faintly. “I’m going to go now. Please.”
She quieted.
Kakashi appreciated that. He had wasted what precious supply of oxygen his lungs retained. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t replace what was lost—soon wouldn’t be able to see.
He found himself committing her grave expression to memory before he turned to leave.
When his feet carried him away, Kakashi could barely say he was present save for each time he caught himself before his knees fully buckled beneath this new, devastating weight.
Kakashi went home.
He toppled on his bed and willed it to be a dream.
He never quite managed to leave its confines again.
Naruto broke into his apartment by the weekend, ocean eyes brimming and his lips wobbling. “Kakashi-sensei,” he managed steadily.
“Go away, Naruto.”
“But I—”
“Please. Just … just leave me alone.”
Genma broke one of his potted plants while slipping through his window just a few days later. “Whoops, my bad,” he staggered clumsily over broken shards to Kakashi’s bedside. “Just wanted to check up on those lazy bones. Are you rotting yet?”
“You tell me,” Kakashi said tiredly.
“Hmm, I smell dogs and despair—nothing a shower and a drink can’t cure, though. You getting up or am I kicking your butt to the shower?”
“I’m not in the mood, Genma,” Kakashi turned on his side and curled into his blanket.
Genma was only silent for a moment. “Come on, I’ll pay.”
“No,” Kakashi insisted. “Please leave.”
“Kakashi …”
“Please, Genma."
The news hadn’t truly sunk in, even when his every breath shuddered with it. Kakashi only realised this when Gai wandered into his living room two weeks after Tsunade’s damning diagnosis. Kakashi had known Gai for over thirty years.
But he had never seen him look this sombre in his life.
There were no youthful exclamations or exuberant declarations. This man was a poor caricature of Gai—serious lines carved into his face, eyes so grave and old.
He sat wordlessly on the floor by Kakashi’s couch.
“Kakashi,” Gai finally uttered, turning dark eyes towards him. Kakashi lost his breath.
Nothing seemed right with the world.
“Gai,” he echoed hollowly. “Since when do we do social calls?”
Gai clasped his hand in his. “Listen.”
Kakashi swallowed—his throat was so dry it scraped painfully. “What?”
“This … it’s just another end for a new beginning,” Gai said, staring resolutely at their clasped hands. “I can’t say I know what you’re going through. But if there’s one thing I know, it’s that Kakashi Hatake never gives up, no matter how much the odds suck. So by God, Kakashi, you’re going to figure this out.”
And Kakashi, in a culmination of depression, despair and frustration, burst into tears. It was not something he had ever done, and yet he found himself choking on air as he tried to swallow his heaving sobs.
Gai lurched forward to encircle him in a firm hug.
Kakashi wanted to push him away—to banish him so he could lick his wounds and shed his tears in privacy—but it was beyond him to do anything but curl into the solid warmth his closest friend provided.
Gai didn’t offer him false reassurances, didn’t hush his sobs. He bore them steadfastly until Kakashi felt as dry as a desert, spent and exhausted.
His eyes had gone blearier and there was fear there, he realised, fear that he’d suppressed as it was overshadowed by gloom. What would it be like to live in a world where he could not see his friends... his enemies?
Gai clasped his shoulders and shook him. “Look at me.”
Kakashi did, sad and tired, mostly numb now that he’d let it all out.
“Do you see me?”
“I do,” Kakashi whispered hoarsely. Gai was close enough that he could make out the seriousness of his gaze.
“I want you to commit this to memory,” Gai said unwaveringly. “It’s going to be okay. And you’re not alone.”
Kakashi clung to that.
Amidst the whirlwind of concerned friends was one missing person whose absence was felt sharply.
They were in a weird place between friends and more, him and Sakura. Kakashi was soothed by the easy companionship and the dearth of labels. With Sakura, he could just be. They were simply Sakura and Kakashi.
How was he going to tell her when he saw her again?
If he saw her again.
She was away on a mission; had been for the past three weeks. Kakashi missed her most in the late hours of the afternoon when they used to read together in comfortable silence.
Now there was a hollow space in his chest when he thought about how they’d never be able to do that again.
Kakashi, despite the crushing dejection of his latest diagnosis, came to realise one thing with crystal clarity.
He had limited days.
A moment could not be wasted. He needed to savour what he could while he was able to; every reflected light and vivacious colour.
In the following weeks, he’d work his way through every ‘Icha Icha’ book, memorise each of his friends’ faces, visit the Hokage mountain every day to bask in the unobstructed dips and valleys of his village.
He would marvel over every sunset, and discover every shade of green in the leaves of his hometown.
Kakashi would minimise the burning regret of having taken something, yet again, for granted.
The fuzzy edges of objects blurred. The strain hurt, it always did, but Tsunade cleared the chakra build-up in the capillaries of his eyes every other day.
They prescribed him glasses.
Three weeks later, he needed a new prescription.
And two weeks later, another.
By the end of the third month, Kakashi’s world was a defineless blur of colour. Even the glasses couldn’t morph them into shapes anymore.
They’d debated taking out the sharingan, but Tsunade explained that it was too late to undo the damage it wrecked on his other eye. It was irreversible. And yet, the option was revisited again in hopes of slowing down the deterioration of his eyes, no matter how unavoidable it was.
Kakashi was going to lose Obito too.
The thought left him sick.
In a world that no longer made sense, what else did he have left that was familiar and tangible but this reminder that he’d survived?
“No,” he told Tsunade somberly. “I’m keeping him.”
“But …”
“I am,” Kakashi insisted. “I’m not losing this too.”
When Sakura returned from her mission, Kakashi was past the point of recognising faces and entirely dependent on noise and colour.
He wouldn’t have mistaken the pink halo of her hair for anyone else.
“Sakura,” he said, worried and relieved at once.
“Kakashi,” her voice was wet. “Oh gods, Kakashi.”
He sensed more than saw the way her body sunk to the ground by his side. She clasped his scarred hands tightly in her shaking ones. “I’m so, so sorry I wasn’t there.”
“You couldn’t have known,” he said softly, words choked. He couldn’t see her.
Her grip on him was bruising as her forehead bowed against his knuckles. “I should’ve been here. I should’ve been here with you.”
Kakashi’s other hand petted her hair as he struggled to push down the sudden torrent of emotions clawing up his throat. “You’re here now, it’s okay.”
It took her a moment to compose herself. “Can you … can you see me?”
A lump formed in his throat as he shook his head. It took several breaths to find his voice. “Just the vague outline of your head. I can make out a swirl of pink, beige and red.”
Sakura didn’t start crying. He was grateful because his grip on himself was modest at best. Another emotional blow might prove crippling. He sensed the couch dip moments before her body heat washed over his side. “Do you want to talk about it?”
No. No he did not
Sakura accepted that easily. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Tell me about your mission,” he decided, and so she did.
Sakura came with her books in the late afternoons. Their traditions were sacred, she said. And Kakashi was flooded with longing, sadness, and affection.
“I’m sorry it’s not the same anymore,” he murmured. His eyes felt hot but the world was a swirl of colour regardless.
The palm of her hand on his cheek startled him. “No,” she said firmly yet gently, and sat beside him. “Don’t be. It could be better.”
His confusion must’ve shown for he felt her lean against his side and heard the rustle of a book. “May I read to you, Kakashi?”
His breath hitched, “What?”
The pat of her hand on his knee comforted him. “Let’s read together. This is still our thing.”
Sakura cleared her throat softly. “Chapter nine, ‘Icha Icha Paradise'. Junko had begun to doubt the odds of their mission. There were feelings now—unprofessional feelings—the very things her mentors cautioned her against…”
Too choked to say anything, Kakashi allowed his face to dip against the crown of her head and melted into the gentle cadence of her voice. Like a song, her voice crooned and soared, each vowel stretched melodically from beginning to end.
It reverberated through Kakashi like her warmth, ebbing waves that washed over him periodically. At some point, he reached with a big palm to cradle the side of her throat and felt every thrum of her vocal chords at his fingertips.
“Are you asleep?” she wondered hushedly, three chapters in.
He wasn’t. He was afloat amidst the waves of her presence, being carried to the shore, further and further from the dangerous depths of his grief-stricken mind.
“Keep reading,” he begged.
“Chapter twelve,” Sakura responded without a hitch. “The crowd was gone, leaving behind what at first glance appeared to be a mangled body…”
The world was awash with dull colours. Listless, they bled lifelessly through the drain of his eyes. But in the muted shades of Kakashi's new world, one colour burned bright and true.
Pink.
She was all he could make out in a sea of lost hues. Pink like the sakura petals, pink like her namesake, pink like the only hopeful ray Kakashi had left.
“You look sad again,” she said quietly. The heaviness in his heart twinged as he heard her own sadness laced in her voice. “What are you thinking?”
A thumb smoothed the faint wrinkles between his furrowed brows. “Talk to me. What’s on your mind?”
“You,” Kakashi leaned into her touch, throat raw with honesty. “Only you.”
“I make you sad?” the whisper ghosted his temple, a flutter of butterfly wings.
“Sometimes you keep it at bay.” The sudden weight of her hand in his was grounding yet unfamiliar.
“And sometimes?” she prodded, sensing a ‘but’.
“Sometimes, I lament the endless seconds I didn’t spend memorising your face.” It was as close to a confession as he would dare.
Once upon a time, he believed he stood a chance; but that was before he was twisted out of shape, a ruin more than a whole.
Her silence burned in his chest, digging between his ribs.
“Kakashi,” Sakura said at last. Her hand in his rose tentatively, guiding Kakashi’s fingertips to her moist cheeks.
He jolted at the whisper of her tears on the pads of his fingers. “Sakura—”
“Shh,” she reprimanded, pressing his hand firmly to her face. “Feel.”
Heart hammering, breaths short and rapid, Kakashi traced the high arch of her cheekbone to the edges of her mouth.
Soft, warm, bottled sunshine.
A brush across plush lips. Pillowy, dewy, and parted at the seams. Kakashi retraced them, a new burn in his chest.
Wavering breaths passed through the seams and they fluttered ever so gently in a barely-there kiss.
He swallowed desire and ache and found the gentle slope of her jaw, the hot pulse of her heartbeat in the nook beneath it. Worked his way back across a silken cheek to the button of her nose that wrinkled beneath his touch.
Eyelids that fluttered and eyelashes that tickled.
The image of her was burned behind his eyelids forever, laughing green eyes and pink lips. “I know,” his voice rasped, broken in strange places. “I know you. But I …”
“But nothing,” Sakura denied gently, chasing his touch. “I’m here, at your fingertips.”
And that was alright by Kakashi. The gift of her touch sprawled tendrils of light through the darkness inside him. Like cobwebs they hung in the corners of Kakashi’s dilapidated heart, tethered between the splinters but holding them together.
The shrinking of the distance between them was a phantom sensation, a shift and a hum in the air until Kakashi felt it like a physical weight against his skin.
“Kiss me,” she breathed.
Caught in a daze of reality, fantasy, and dream, and unable to tell which was which apart from the very real warmth under his fingertips—Kakashi could only lean in.
Fall in.
Tumble from the great heights of his feelings to the unknown.
He held her face between his palms and tasted her. Sampled the curve of her lower lip and the slick of her tongue as it glided into his mouth and his to hers. Sharing sweet and shuddering breaths that wouldn’t come fast enough.
It burned.
In his chest and his gut and in the cavern of his mouth.
“What are we doing?” the hoarse whisper was swallowed by her beseeching lips.
“Feeling,” she hummed, crowding closer to him.
Her lips drifted from his own to mark his face with her tender kisses.
“What are you feeling?” he strangled, overwhelmed.
“Love,” Sakura found his lips again. “Kakashi, I love you.”
“Oh my god,” he said faintly under the imploring dance of her tongue.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t know,” her fingers clasped his shoulders, locking him against her. “Not when I can barely hide it.”
He weaved his fingers through her silky hair and sighed longingly into her kiss. Something was rising inside him, swiftly and viciously, akin to a gasping breath before the inevitable drowning.
Kakashi tried not to choke on it as he toppled back with her in his arms to sprawl on his couch.
“Don’t hide it,” Kakashi begged, squeezing her against him until he felt her all over. “Please.”
“I love you,” she crooned so sweetly.
Surprised to note he could still feel hope, Kakashi’s fingertips pressed over the dips of her hips and felt her, really felt her, and emblazoned her with his touch.
At his fingertips, he marvelled dizzily. She was right at his fingertips.
“I love you,” he choked out to the blur of pink as it descended on his body.
“Say it again,” she said, warm palms under his shirt.
He did.
She did, too.
“Again.”
Again.
Until they were the truest words they’d ever spoken.