Chapter Text
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Hatake Kakashi was a bad man.
He didn’t need anyone to tell him that. The verdict had been delivered years ago. He had seen and done too many ugly things throughout his life, things he wasn't proud of, things no amount of soap could ever wash away.
He killed. Not just enemies in the heat of the battle, but his own comrades, people he had failed to save. He was friend-killer Kakashi for a reason. He trained children to go to war (poorly, some might say. He was willing to be the first one to admit he was a horrible teacher)
He let his team fall apart. Twice. The first time Obito died for him, it was his own hand that killed Rin and he watched Minato die.
The second, with Team 7, felt like an agonizing replay of his mistakes. As if he hadn't learnt anything the first time.
Maybe he hadn't.
He let Sasuke go, he didn’t listen when he was told the Uchiha would desert. He neglected both Sakura and Naruto until the team fractured beyond repair. Naruto went on a journey to train with Jiraiya and Sakura became Tsunade's apprentice.
Good for them. They deserved better than whatever he could provide. If they had stayed under his responsibility, they would be dead by now too. At least he moved a few threads to convince the legendary sannin to train them. It was the single good thing he had done for them. Might some say it was irresponsible to let his genin wander seeking training from other people, but Kakashi knew better. They couldn’t stay with him.
Everyone he had ever sworn to protect had slipped through his fingers in the end.
He was a failure.
No one said it out loud. Perhaps they didn't notice because they couldn't see beneath his carefully constructed relaxed facade. Or perhaps they didn't care so long as the Copy Ninja remained useful. He was a valuable asset to the village after all. The most deadly weapon.
The only thing he had ever done well in his life was fight.
So, when Pain attacked the Leaf, he did the only thing he was good at. He fought. He threw himself into a battle against an enemy he could not defeat, burning through his already exhausted chakra reserves with reckless abandon. And even in that, in the only thing he was good at, Kakashi failed.
He died.
The world went dark, cold and utterly silent. It wasn't even that heroic, it was like a vacuum inside him drained his own life force due to the overuse of the Mangekyo Sharingan. He surrendered himself to the inevitable darkness, a grim, weary peace washed over him. It was over. At least he got to save Chouji and Chouza from Pain’s jaws.
Death wasn't that bad, he thought. He reunited with his father in the afterlife. He was given the chance to talk with him after all those years. Kakashi listened to him, talked to him, he got to learn things about Sakumo that he never even imagined. He was willing to forgive his father for leaving him alone at just 5 years old. He was finally able to get a little peace of mind.
And then he came back.
That wasn't something he thought he deserved or even wanted for that matter.
He thought he should've stayed dead, allowing his soul to drift in whatever fate awaited him. Maybe Kami would've been merciful enough to let him remain in the Pure Lands with his father, Obito, Rin and Minato. In a final, quiet reunion. Or maybe not, and he would've been doomed to wander around alone for the rest of eternity. But then again, it would have been fitting.
But life, in its cruel irony, had other plans. Instead of the quiet emptiness of the afterlife, he was dragged again to the land of the living amid the smell of ozone and the broken sound of Sakura's crying.
He felt her before he could see her. He immediately recognized Sakura's signature chakra invading his body. Too much of it, far too much.
Her chakra was pouring into his system like she was trying to pump life back directly into his deadened chakra network with sheer willpower. The waves of chakra were warm and desperate and restless as she was trying to force life into something that had already gone still.
Kakashi blinked drowsily. The sudden return to his body was agonizing. Everything hurt.
His head was both pounding and felt like it was stuffed with cotton, his limbs ached as if he'd been crushed beneath a giant rock. He supposed he had been. The last thing he remembered was debris and darkness before the inevitable drain of chakra from overusing Kamui.
Ah.
That explained the pain. And the crying.
“Sakura?” he asked in a hoarse voice, the sound barely a whisper.
Her head immediately snapped up at the sound of his voice, her eyes got wide. They were glistening with tears and shock. Another sob tore free, this time not out of grief but of pure relief.
“I t-thought I had lost you!” Sakura choked, “you were dead!”
He had been. He'd been completely, unequivocally dead for a while.
He just watched her. Her face was a mess of salt and dirt from the battle, her hands were still glowing with a flickering, exhausted green light. The proof of how hard she worked in a desperate attempt to reverse the irreversible.
She looked ravaged, like a woman who had tried to bargain with the reaper and refused to leave empty-handed. The tears did nothing to soften her, if anything, they sharpened her. She looked like a warrior, hardened and fierce, a far cry from the genin he had once trained. This was a seasoned kunoichi, a medic-nin worthy of being Tsunade's successor. He had seen her like that before, but that time they had been in Suna’s heat.
As a medic-nin of her caliber, Sakura would have known the signs. She would have felt the hollowness in his chakra network, the unmistakable absence where life should have been pulsing, she would have known chakra drain was clinically irreversible. She would have known there was nothing left to pull back.
And she tried anyway.
Kakashi felt his heart clench in his chest at the thought, a surprising pang of emotion. There was no way Sakura hadn't known, the physical signs of death and chakra depletion were too obvious for a medic, and yet she tried to save him nevertheless, burning through her reserves even though that energy should have been saved for healing the living, for the survivors that actually stood a chance. She must've known she was just pouring herself into a body that would not, could not answer.
He never thought someone cared about him that much. The Copy Ninja was valuable, yes, but Kakashi was an expendable asset.
He had long assumed that his eventual death would be nothing more than an inconvenience for Konoha (a loss of a loyal dog, but nothing more). The world moved on from men like him.
But there she was, crying over his corpse, spending her precious chakra reserves to bring him back even when her logical side knew it wouldn't work.
If it wasn't for Nagato's sacrifice, no matter how hard Sakura tried, he would've stayed dead. He didn't have the heart to tell her that he would have been perfectly content to stay that way.
“I'm here, Sakura,” he said instead. He lifted his hand, an effort that felt monumental, to cup her cheek and brush away stray tears with gentleness not even he knew he still possessed.
He would rather still be dead.
But he wasn't. And he'd be damned if he let this woman drop another tear for him. She was too good and too valuable to cry over someone like him. Sakura wasn't meant to waste her tears or her life force for him. In that moment, lying in the rubble, he promised himself he wouldn't let her cry for him anymore.
In retrospect that promise was his doom.
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Haruno Sakura was a weak kunoichi.
She had always been, always the dead last among her teammates.
The civilian-born girl standing beside the Nine-Tails jinchuriki, Uzumaki Naruto, with his immense chakra pool, and the last Uchiha, Sasuke, blessed with Sharingan eyes and a relentless ambition. And their sensei, Hatake Kakashi, who was a once-in-a-generation prodigy, a legend even among his jōnin peers, the only Sharingan bearer without Uchiha bloodline. Next to them, Sakura felt painfully ordinary.
Sakura's early talent for book smarts and perfect chakra control paled completely in comparison to their raw potential. She was weak, but that was until Senju Tsunade took her under her wing. The Fifth Hokage shaped her carefully, passing down everything she knew. Sakura was aware she was privileged, she was the only apprentice the greatest medic in the world had ever accepted.
For a short period she allowed herself to feel proud.
And then she realized that for every step she took forward, Naruto and Sasuke took two.
No matter how hard she trained, how much she studied, how relentlessly she pushed herself, she was the one struggling to keep up. She wasn’t good enough.
So, when Pain attacked Konoha she was genuinely surprised she was assigned to lead the medical division. She barked orders to medics twice her age. She tried not to hesitate, Sakura forced her voice to came out more confident than she felt in that moment.
She had to decided who was treated immediately and who had to wait. She had to amputate limbs. She had to decide who could still be saved and who could not. She lost three patients and she had deliberately let two more go. That was only in the tent. Hundreds had already died across the village.
The injured kept coming faster than she could stabilize them, faster than even she could triage.
She was doing everything she could.
For the first time in years she found herself praying. Not to be stronger, not to be better. But for Naruto to come back and save them all. She hated herself for it.
But he did.
As if hearing her prayers Naruto returned to the Leaf and so the balance shifted.
Her relief lasted only minutes. Then Chouji bursted into the makeshift medical tent and told them about Kakashi.
Her heart sank. She turned to Shizune, a silent plea in her eyes. The brunette met her gaze and nodded. Sakura didn’t hesitate. She ran. She ran past the wounded she was supposed to stabilize, past the dying she should be comforting.
Those who break the rules are scum, but those who abandon their friends are worse than scum.
Kakashi's leitmotiv echoed in her mind distantly. She wasn't sure it applied to this situation. She didn't care. She just knew she couldn’t let him die. Abandoning the others was wrong, but Kakashi was one of her closest friends, maybe the first person who had ever truly seen any worth in her. He was the one who insisted she pursue training with Tsunade after recognising her chakra control. The first who treated her like an adult after she made it to chūnin and was reassigned to Team Kakashi. He mattered.
He couldn’t die. Not him.
She kept running, her lungs burnt with the smell of the ozone and the dust, the air was thick with them, every breath scraped. She kept running nevertheless.
She found Kakashi buried beneath rubble, eyes closed, still. Too still. A pained gasp escaped her throat. In the next second she was on her knees beside him, tearing debris away with her bare hands.The rubble sliced into her skin but she didn’t slow, she kept throwing stones away until seh cleared enough space to drag him out of the shaft he was in.
Two fingers pressed immediately to his neck searching for his pulse. Nothing. That couldn’t be right, her hand dropped to his wrist to double-check. Still nothing
Sakura forced herself to breathe. She could panic later. She tried to focus even though her mind was reeling. Her hands began to glow green with iryo-ninjutsu as she pushed it through his body to make a quick assessment of his condition and then she felt it.
Emptiness.
She felt his chakra, or the lack of it. There was no chakra left to circulate, his reserves weren’t just low. They were gone.
His network was hollow.
Logically, she knew there was nothing left to do. She should leave him here and come back later to bury him properly. She should return to her post and save the ones who still could be saved.
This was the fifth time she’d had to make that choice today.
She didn’t leave. Instead she slammed her hands to his chest, her chakra flaring into a desperate, reckless tsunami. She ignored the rules of the triage, medical protocols she’d spent years studying, that could go all to hell. She also ignored that voice in her head that screamed that it wouldn’t work. She poured her chakra into his hollow network, trying to pump vital force into him with sheer willpower.
Her already spent reserves burned fast. Still she didn’t stop, not even when she felt that she was about to draw from the chakra she had been storing for her byakugou seal. The tears were running down her cheeks.She was prepared to drain herself dry, to undo years of meticulous storage if it meant his heart would give even one more thud.
And then the world glowed. A light that didn't belong to her - a miracle that made her own effort look like a flickering candle - swept through the crater. She felt his heart stutter, his network warmening once again, his chest slowly going up and down.
He said her name.
She sobbed violently at the sound of a voice she thought she'd never get to hear again. He was here, he was alive. She kept her hand on his chest just to feel it thudding again. He brushed her tears away tenderly.
It took them a while to gather enough strength to stand up, Sakura supported most of his weight, her arm tight around his waist as they slowly made their way back to the medical tent.
She looked around and realized Kakashi wasn’t the only one granted a second chance at life. Those who had fallen during the attack were breathing again.
When they approached the tent her stomach churned. Her steps faltered when she saw him, the civilian man who had come in with his right arm crushed beyond repair sitting upright near the tent. She had to amputate the limb before the infection spread to his bloodstream, she had to tie the tourniquet with hands that did not tremble. She had told him it was the only way to keep him alive. It was. But… If she had stepped away, if she had marked him beyond saving… this resurrection thing would have restored him whole. Both arms. Now his sleeve hung empty at his side.
And then she saw the others. The patients she had forced herself to let go were sitting on their cots. Breathing, speaking. Very much alive.
She couldn’t even meet their eyes. How could she? They knew. In their final moments, she had chosen to let them die.
Her eyes stung again, but she forced herself to keep walking into the tent. She helped Kakashi sit down before lowering herself beside him, her gaze fixed on the canvas wall of the tent, her expression carefully blank.
She noticed that outside the villagers were already beginning to cheer. Naruto’s name carried through the broken streets. Nagato’s sacrifice would be spoken of as redemption.
No one talked about the moments before the miracle, about the woman who was forced to call the shots, about the medics who spent all their chakra trying to keep the living alive.
Haruno Sakura was a weak kunoichi.
No one would call her a hero.