#hokage

Gaara

"I will be home for dinner tonight. I promise you."

His voice echoed in your head over the steaming pot of miso you had just prepared. Gaara had kissed the crown of your head this morning, his hands lingering on your waist like he physically couldn't stand the thought of walking out the door. He meant it.

He always meant it.

But the clock on the wall ticked past ten. Then eleven.

The food went cold again.

It was a hushed tragedy played out on ceramic plates; it had become a habit by now. You could count on your fingers how many times a month Gaara made it home for dinner. But you always waited, and you always would.

For the life you had carved out together, the affection you had cultivated in the spaces between his duties.

You knew the weight of the Kazekage hat. Years had passed since he first took it, trading his youth for a village's fragile hope. Gaara had become a hardened leader now, carrying the exigency of Sunagakure on his shoulders. But that same demand pulled him away from your table every single night.

And you understood that.

You always did.

But understanding didn't fill the empty chair across the table.

Some days, the house felt too silent, too big, too much yours only. You missed the days when both of your laughter would fill the room, or just your comfortable silence stretching while each of you was focused on your own hobbies or activities.

"Fine, I guess I'll have to take matters into my own hands," you muttered to the empty kitchen, grabbing a wooden bento box from the top cabinet. If he wouldn't come to the dinner, the dinner would come to him.

You packed the rice, arranging the ingredients precisely, using shredded crab stick to mimic his messy red hair and sharp cuts of nori for his eyeliner. You finished it with a tiny slice of red umeboshi resting on the rice face forehead, forming his kanji. 

You let out a small giggle imagining Gaara's face when he'd open the bento box and see his face, or at least a “failed” attempt to make his face, in the food. Your heart beat a bit faster when his face crossed your mind. There was nothing in this world that you loved and treasured more than Gaara, more than your relationship.

You wrapped the box in a thick blue cloth, a stubborn smile tugging at your lips as you made your way out of the house with nothing but hopes of finally having a moment with him. He was going to scold you for walking alone so late, his lips pressing into a thin line before he inevitably pulled you into his lap and buried his face in your neck, his hands making their way around your body to hold you tight the way he always did. The reassurance he needed to feel, to know that you were still there with him. 

His and his only.

The village was a maze of expansion with new buildings and new infrastructures coming alive. Gaara was doing his best in his leadership position, ensuring the Sand Village would stand out, remain well-developed, and that he completely fulfilled his duty towards his people.

Deep aqueduct trenches cut through the market district. The wind howled through the alleyways, kicking up a blinding veil of grit. You pulled your scarf over your nose, hugging the bento tight to your chest. 

Just two more blocks and I get to see him.

You were so intensely focused on the image of him finally taking a break, finally looking up from those endless scrolls, that your foot stepped into nothingness.

The ground was simply gone. 

Gravity took you violently, snatching you out of the air.  

A jagged rod of rusted iron protruded from a broken concrete slab below. It caught the meat of your shoulder blade. Metal bit brutally into your flesh, carving a deep, diagonal wound down the length of your spine, severing muscle before your weight pulled you off the hook. You slammed into the packed earth of the trench floor; you had no time to scream, no time to cry for help.

The bento box splintered. The carefully crafted face scattered into the dirt, food spilled everywhere.

“Ga-Gaara,” was the only sound that left your throat before the darkness surrounded your eyes.

Your body turned to lead, flesh and pain being dragged into the depths of a soundless abyss. Air abandoned your lungs upon impact, and every desperate attempt to inhale brought only the metallic taste of blood and the suffocating dust of the trench. Above you, the sky of Sunagakure was a narrow, indifferent slit, framed by the same jagged edges of shattered concrete that had just taken you down.

The wind howled again high above, but down here, at the bottom where your body remained, silence was the only thing heard.

Your consciousness wavered. The pain in your shoulder and spine was a constant throb that numbed your extremities. You tried to move your fingers, wanting desperately to reach the grains of rice scattered in the mud—that little bento face you had made with such care to make him smile—but your arms would not obey, they went numb the moment you took the fall.

Shadows began to close in at the edges of your vision, a velvet shade of black promising relief. In the final second before total oblivion, the image of Gaara in the office light flashed through your mind once again. You wanted to tell him how sorry you were for not making it, that the dinner had gone cold, and it wasn’t his fault, it never was. That you loved him enough to walk across the entire desert just to see him for a minute.

Then, the white noise consumed everything.

Consciousness returned in uneven fragments. Searing lights piercing your exhausted eyelids. 

"Losing too much blood! Page the head medic NOW!" The stinging was burning into your arms, into your back. The smell of copper flooding your senses. A cacophony of panicked voices bled into white noise, pulling you back under the gloom.

Miles away but not so far from the accident area, the Kazekage’s brush paused over a trade agreement when his fingers twitched slightly.

A pressure clamped down on Gaara’s chest, an overwhelming feeling he couldn't explain, consuming him in that moment. The air in the office grew stale, and his heart stuttered against his ribs, a cold knot of nausea twisting in his stomach. He had survived far worse, but this feeling was foreign, like an innate alarm ringing in his blood.

He looked at the clock. 

11:42 PM.

You should have had dinner by now and be in bed. And maybe, just maybe, this was why Gaara was experiencing this gut-wrenching dread. Because he couldn't keep his promise to you once again, he failed you in a way that was hurting him, and probably even you, though you'd never admit it.

Yes, this was probably why he wasn't feeling good now.

But despite that, in the corner of the room, his gourd shuddered. The sand spilled over the rim, hissing as it hit the floorboards. It was agitated. 

Wild.

Too much.

Too aware.

He stood up, unable to control his shaky hands, pacing to the window. He stared out over the village, his hands clasped tightly behind his back, his left eye twitching a little. The dread sat dense in his throat.

Twenty agonizing minutes bled by before his office's walnut doors swung open. No knocks, no announcements, no nothing, just Kankuro and two jonin trailing behind him, all three breathless.

Kankuro stood in the doorway, his face drained of color. And for a moment, just a faint moment, Gaara knew deep down he was about to lose his ground regardless of what his older brother would say. 

"Gaara…" was the only echo he heard as Kankuro opened his mouth. Why was his brother muttering the words hospital, accident, and your name together?

The hospital smelled of a blend of antiseptic, bleach, and rubbing alcohol. A sterile aroma that now conveyed immediate unease to him.

Gaara didn't remember when he stopped listening to Kankuro's words. He didn't remember what happened after he pushed past his elder brother and the two guards, the less than fifteen-minute walk to the hospital feeling like forever. His intercostal muscles burned as they expanded his ribcage, his diaphragm fatigued to supply the oxygen he'd lost from how fast he ran.

Each and every second without seeing you was torture; he needed to know if you were okay, he needed to know if you would come back, if you would live. If he would see your face when he returned home, because he would come back to you. He promised he would. 

Please, whatever higher forces there are, let them come back to me, too!

Gaara wouldn't let his mind use your name and death in the same sentence. Ever! 

No!

His own death? That never frightened him. But yours? 

His deepest, greatest fear.

The only thing he remembered was the blinding fluorescent lights and the impenetrable wall of Temari’s arms pressing flat against his chest. The sudden bump made him come back to reality and realize he was this close to barging into the intensive care room you were in.

"Stop," she ordered, her voice firm as she used her body weight to shove him back from the doors. "Gaara, you have to let them work!"

"Move." He said in a voice that sounded too low, almost too dangerous to himself even. His fists clenched. 

"I won't," she snapped back, she was aware that both she and Kankuro needed to stand their ground in this moment. "The medics are stabilizing the injuries! If you go in there with your chakra spiraling like this, you will make it worse. Sit down! Please…" Her last word came out like a plea, because she knew that even if she wanted to, she couldn't fully stop Gaara.

The unspoken feelings lingering in the air, the tension that built up so fast, was enough to make him take a step back and allow the medical staff to perform their job.

Gaara didn't sit. 

How could he?

How could he allow himself to attempt to calm down when he didn't know whatever condition you were in that damn room right then?

He paced. He paced so much that his siblings thought he would open a hole in the floor with his feet.

He paced the corridor for what felt like a lifetime. Back and forth in an oppressive loop. His jaw muscles tensed so hard his teeth and head ached. The agonizing beep of the heart monitor bled through the thin walls, the sound a mocking metronome measuring the exact cost of his absence, the cost of how much your life was worth in that moment.

Gaara's mind never stopped. He was vibrating with the need for a target, for an explanation, for whatever it was. He was fully preparing to hear a name, any name —a rogue ninja, a displeased villager, an assassin—so he could unleash his desert of wrath upon them.

He had stopped being so aggressive long ago, but he would never falter to protect what was precious to him, what he treasured the most.

If blood needs to be spilled, let it be mine. Always mine! Not theirs.

Finally, footsteps echoed down the hall. Two chunin approached, bowing their heads a bit before handing a scroll to Kankuro. Gaara stopped pacing and the sand at his feet stilled completely. He turned his gaze to his elder brother, bracing himself for whatever would be inside that scroll.

Kankuro read the report, his shoulders dropping with a certain ease. Half glad, half still hurt for his brother. "It wasn't an attack, Gaara. It was the Sector 4 construction site."

Gaara raised his head properly and took the scroll with practically trembling hands. Practically. He wouldn't dare lose any more composure now, not in front of his subordinates. Kazekage Gaara needed to be in that hospital the moment your accident cause was revealed, and so he assumed his posture as a leader.

He looked behind him, staring at the door. No signs of anyone coming out of it, no other sounds other than the heart monitor that still beeped, making sure to let him know that you were still there, still fighting, still alive. 

But for how long? Were you stabilized? Were they doing everything they could to ensure you'd be fine? 

Temari stepped forward, placing a comforting hand on her brother's tense shoulder. "Go," she said as caring as she could. "Go see it. If anything changes here, you will be the first to know."

He looked at his sister, hesitated for a bit, but then took a deep breath and nodded. Gaara vanished in a swirl of sand.

When Kankuro arrived at the site moments later with others, Gaara was standing perfectly still at the bottom of the ditch. The wind whipped his crimson coat around his ankles while he stared at the dried blood staining the rusted rebar.

Your blood!

Gaara was so unnervingly still that in the space of a breath, a cold spike of fear hit Kankuro's chest. He worried that the broken boy from their childhood might snap back to the surface.

But there was no bloodlust in Gaara’s eyes. 

Only an ocean of grief.

He knelt in the dirt, reaching out with trembling fingers, brushing the splintered wood of the crushed bento box. He stared at the ruined food, the single red slice of umeboshi sinking into the mud.

His posture remained firm, a flawlessly sculpted monument of the Kazekage, but his physical tells betrayed the violent storm, the rage, the guilt beneath his skin. His jaw muscles tensed visibly for the hundredth time. His fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned stark white against the morning light that started to make its way to Sunagakure.

They were coming to me.

At the sight of where you were suffering just a few hours ago, something fundamental died inside of Gaara. Something he swore he would protect, but couldn't. How bad had he truly failed you this time?

You survived.

For whatever purpose you had left on this Earth, you survived.

The medics stitched the torn muscle.

At least 68 stitches on the upper back alone is what they said when the doctors came out of the room.

But the worst part of the damage was the violent, the harsh, the brutal scar carving down your back. The sign of a night full of hopes and dreams, turned into a nightmare. That wasn't you anymore; you did not recognize yourself in that skin.

You drifted in and out of consciousness for days. When you finally woke up properly, the buzz of the hospital room greeted you. Your back felt like it was on fire, held together by tight threads. Even the slightest movement hurt.

Through the haze of painkillers, muffled voices drifted from the cracked door.

"The aftercare will be demanding, Lord Kazekage," the head medic warned. "The muscle tissue was severely compromised. Constant assistance with dressing the wound, bathing, and for mobility will be required for the foreseeable future."

"I understand," Gaara replied with his familiar calm tone. "I will personally handle the aftercare."

I will personally handle the aftercare.

A knot of terror formed in your stomach, eclipsing the physical pain. You squeezed your eyes shut, tears burning your lashes. A silent scream trapped in your throat as anger filled your body. 

What had you done?

Gaara was already drowning under the demands of his entire village, working himself to the bone, missing dinners, special dates, and sleeping in his office.

And now, because you were careless, because you were so reckless for just wanting to just see him for a minute, you had doubled his workload. You were no longer a supportive partner but a casualty.

 A burden.

And you hated yourself for it, resentful of the skin you were now forced to inhabit for as long as you lived.

He would never get to rest now.

The discharge papers were soon signed. Gaara stood in the hospital corridor, bowing his head respectfully to the lead medic. His voice was full of gratitude for them saving your life, but his gaze never left your wheelchair. You sat there, sealed off in your own mind, numb to the world around you. You couldn't even bring yourself to look him in the eye.

The journey back to your shared house was painfully slow and quiet. You kept your eyes locked on your lap, barely meeting his gaze even once, ignoring the silent pleas hidden in his posture. Gaara knew better than to push someone out of their shells. He knew you'd need time, and he was willing to wait.

When you finally got home, the house was a tomb. The walls, once vibrating with the warmth of his new life, felt hollow.

The first few nights in your shared bed were a specific kind of hell. You lay rigid on the very edge of the mattress, too afraid to even fall asleep. 

Awake.

Aware.

Scarred.

If you turned your back, the sheets might slip. If the sheets slipped, he would see the ruin of your skin.

The scar felt like a violent brand, broadcasting your vulnerability to the man who was supposed to be your sanctuary. And the kind of shame you were feeling burned hotter than the healing tissue.

By the fourth day, you could not bear the proximity anymore. You gathered your pillows and moved to the spare bedroom.

Gaara didn't argue. He stood in the hallway, watching you close the door, nodding in a feigned understanding. But beneath his ribs, a helpless grief tore him apart. He couldn't fathom a world where you didn't want to be next to him.

This withdrawn ghost was not who you were, and the realization settled deep into his bones.

He had truly failed you, hadn't he? 

You spent your days hiding in the shadows of that spare room, feeling like a ghost haunting your own life. You only left the room to eat, but you didn't make it to every meal.

The only time you'd let someone see the damaged raw you was when Temari or another medical ninja would stop by to help you clean the wound. It was not about feeling ugly. It was the sensation of being trapped in someone else's skin.

The body you owned did not feel like yours anymore. It was a disgraceful landscape of pulling scars and pain. How could Gaara look at you with the same eyes? He probably wouldn't be ready to live with this new, damaged, wrecked you.

Gaara didn't know how to fix this. He was a skilled shinobi, the village's Kage, but fundamentally clumsy with emotional nuance. He was never trained for this type of damage. To see you in pain.

He tried silent support. He moved his endless stacks of paperwork from his office to the dining table at home, refusing to leave you alone. He left glasses of fresh water on your nightstand while you pretended to sleep. He knew you were far from being asleep by the way your chest heaved, the way the tears kept falling even when your face was turned to the opposite side.

He sat in the armchair across the room, watching the rise and fall of your chest, letting the heavy quietude speak for his devotion.

But the silence only fed your anxiety.

Weeks bled into each other. The tension stretched like a rubber band ready to snap. You kept distancing yourself, and it was killing him inside. He was lost, desperate for any signs that you would forgive him for not being there that night, or the countless times you needed his presence by your side, and he never came.

Until that night, when Gaara finally gathered the courage to enter the spare bedroom to lie down next to you. The mattress dipped under his weight, and you immediately shifted to the very edge, putting miles of cold sheets between you.

The rejection hung in the air.

Thick.

Loud.

Suffocating.

Gaara shifted closer, bridging the gap until the warmth of his chest, the warmth you craved every night, the one that made your heart flutter every time, radiated against your back. He didn't touch the scar; he wouldn't dare. He simply rested his hand flat against the mattress beside you, trying to show he had no intention of leaving you to yourself.

You flinched, quickly sitting up and pulling your knees to your chest.

"Stop!" you whispered, the word sharp and brittle in the dark, tears forming already in your eyes.

"But I—," the strain in his voice was obvious.

"You don't have to do this," you snapped. The emotional whiplash finally broke the dam. You glared at him, your chest heaving, tears blurring your vision. "You don't have to sleep in here. You don't have to stare at me like I'm a casualty you need to manage. Just go back to the office, Gaara. You don't have to pretend you want to be here right now. I-I don't want… I don't need you seeing this."

The air in the room dropped ten degrees. He froze.

"Pretend?" his voice dropped into a quiet register. "I'm not— How could I? I love you so much!” He sat up next to you. Not smooth, not suave. But eager to ask, plead, beg if necessary, for you to let him in again. 

He spent most of his life believing he was unlovable, and watching you push him away was tearing him apart from the inside out. You didn't deserve to feel this way, especially concerning him.

"I don't know how to be in this body anymore," you cried, the truth finally spilling over. "It feels wrong. I feel wrong. Look at m— Actually, I'd rather you didn't, Gaara! It’s ruined!"

Gaara stared at you, his chest rising and falling erratically with anxiety. He reached out, his fingers hovering inches from your tear-stained cheek, as if asking permission to touch you for the first time in weeks, before finally making contact. His thumb brushed away a tear, his touch light as a feather.

Silence took over the room again. Your muffled cry, Gaara's breathing, everything combining into that moment where you were crumbling apart in front of him.

"I know what it means to feel like your skin is a prison," he murmured, breaking the tense silence. "Do you…Do you know the violence it took for me to become this gentle?" he asked with a pain in his voice you hadn't heard in years. It wasn't a guilt trip. It was a quiet hope that you might understand he knew at least a fragment of the pain you were enduring.

Your breath caught under his touch.

He was talking about the blood on his hands. The monster that used to live under his skin. The years he spent feeling like a hostage in his own volatile body.

"I know the exact weight of feeling ruined. But you are not."

You squeezed your eyes shut, a sob catching in your throat. He was clumsy with his words, but the desperation in his voice kept you in the moment.

He shifted his weight, moving closer until his forehead gently rested against your uninjured shoulder. You flinched again, but didn't move away from his touch. Gaara only let out a trembling breath, his sand-roughened hand sliding from your cheek to cup the back of your neck, being careful not to touch your stitches and make you uncomfortable.

He was mapping the safe path of unbroken skin, keeping you in the present, in that room, in that vulnerable moment with him.

The respect, the care in his touch, was devastating.

It showed the desperate grip of a man holding onto his heart, proving that he was not afraid of the ruin, the damage, the pain, the darkness.

His thumb stroked a slow circle against your nape. "When they told me," he began, his voice in the stifling room. "When Kankuro burst through my office doors, my lungs stopped working, and my heart ached so much. I do not even remember the run there. I only remember the panic tearing through my chest."

He swallowed hard, the movement pressing against your collarbone. "When I stood in that corridor, fighting against Temari's hold just to get to those operating doors... listening to the monitor keeping your heart beating...not knowing if you…" His words suddenly trailed off.

Gaara pulled back just a fraction of an inch to look at you, his free hand lifting to hastily wipe a stray tear from his own cheek before it could fall. "If you would come back alive. And then I felt the sand turn to glass in my veins. I felt so many dark emotions I hadn't felt in years. I spent what felt like an eternity pacing that floor, waiting for a name so I could bury whoever did this to you under the desert."

His breath hitched, the ghost of that memory haunting his eyes. "But… But there was no enemy. When the messenger finally arrived and said it was the construction site, I vanished. I went straight to the bottom of that ditch. I needed— I needed to see it, to see where your body was lying down before someone found you…."

Gaara closed his eyes, his free hand finding yours resting on your lap. "Kankuro found me there moments later, but by then, I had already seen it. I saw the splintered wood.” A choked gasp escaped his throat. The stiff posture of the Kazekage, gone. He dropped forward, burying his face into the fabric of your pants as your legs stretched out flat beneath him. Broken sobs tore through his chest, vibrating against your thighs. “The food sinking in the mud," he wept into your lap. "And I realized the only person to blame, the one I was truly after, was myself."

"Gaara, no—" you tried to interrupt, but his grip found your fingers, tightening around them, silently pleading with you to let him finish.

"You fell in the dark because I chose my desk over our home," he whispered from the sheets, the self-loathing bleeding into every syllable. "I-I left you waiting. You can harbor resentment. You can hate me for the rest of our days, and I will sit in the other room and accept it."

He pulled back, his weight shifting on the mattress. You watched in stunned silence as Gaara folded his legs beneath him and lowered his upper body. He pressed his forehead to the blankets right beside your hip, taking a formal bow. “Forgive me, my love. Please forgive me for not being present when you were in pain, alone in that dark trench.”

He slowly raised his head, rising just enough to press his forehead against your shoulder. A shuddering breath escaped his lungs. It was Gaara's utter physical manifestation of guilt and devotion combined into one. The kind born from a man starving for a touch he believed he no longer deserved, practically begging you to let him stay within your orbit.

"But I need you to understand that I am extremely grateful you are still breathing," he confessed, his thumb finding and tracing the pulse point on your wrist like it was his only lifeline. "That you are alive, and here. Right here."

He finally pushed himself up from the mattress, shifting his legs to sit up fully. He moved close, sitting back on the bed so he could pull you gently toward him. He rested his forehead against yours, his breath uneven as it ghosted across your lips.

"I needed you to know that, even if it is the last thing you want to hear from my mouth. I need you to know how much I love you. Every single part of you." He took a ragged breath, tears still falling from his pale teal eyes. "I've lost so many people," he went on, softer now, more devastated. "But losing you would be different. You wouldn't be someone who left. You'd be the part of me that went with you. You'd be the light that never came back."

Gaara didn't know how to fix the physical pain, but he knew he could not survive the emotional distance. "So please, please don't make me brave enough to survive you," he begged quietly, his bare vulnerability tearing down every wall you tried to build in the past weeks. "I don't want to be strong if it means being without you."

The last of your defenses exploded like fragile glass. You let out a broken sob, your hands flying up to grip the fabric of his crimson cloak. You buried your face into his chest, uncaring about the tears soaking his clothes, the sting in your healing muscles, or the pain deep in your soul. He immediately caught your weight, his arms wrapping around your frame carefully to avoid hurting you, a protective warmth that you had starved yourself of for weeks.

"Gaara…I could never hate you," you cried against his collar, your voice muffled by his embrace. "I don't blame you, Gaara. I never blamed you. I was just so scared you would look at me and see a burden. A ruined thing. You already have your duties as the Kazekage. I couldn't bring myself to bother you with how careless I was."

"Never a burden, please don't ever say that again, my love," he whispered fiercely as if you had just insulted him by thinking so low of yourself, pressing his lips to your wet cheeks as another tear fell from your eyes. His hand rubbed soothing circles into your waist. "Never ruined. Never a bother. Mine," he pressed another kiss, now close to your mouth. “Mine to protect, mine to hold, mine to take care of. I promise… I really do.” Another kiss, now directly onto your lips. How much he missed those sweet lips of yours, your soothing touch, your presence around him. The silence was no longer a void, but a vessel. Gaara's presence flooded the space where the fear had been. 

Healing would be a nonlinear road, but within the safety of his embrace, the room no longer felt like a grave, losing its hollow, tomb-like chill completely. Your scars, once jagged reminders of the trench, now rendered soft and insignificant against Gaara's embrace.

As he held you, you realized that the only way to truly believe a vow is to watch a man stop running and finally stand his ground, choosing to stay. Gaara was no longer dealing in the currency of future promises.

He was refusing to abandon the present.

Kakashi

The recently discovered Otsutsuki shrine near the gorge was a collapsing graveyard of ancient secrets. The dense air surrounding it carried the scent of damp earth and rotting stone. As you brushed the dust from the central altar, your fingers traced the faint ciphers carved into the pedestal.

 You were the brightest mind in the Intelligence Division, and one of the only agents in the Leaf who could translate this forgotten dialect before the cavern completely caved in.

Your mission was simple: come in, decipher, take what needs to be taken, and get out before it's too late. You could do it like you had done so many times in the past, for years and years in the department.

Kakashi hated the idea. He already had a highly capable Jonin squad ready to dispatch, terrified of sending you anywhere near a crumbling hazard. Kakashi had hesitated, looking at Shikamaru for an excuse to keep you grounded, to refrain from letting you leave the village for this mission. But his advisor only sighed, stating that logic dictated your presence was the most efficient choice.

Nevertheless, Kakashi knew that he couldn't let his private affairs meddle with his role as Hokage.

That was the only reason he had stamped the mission approval. You could still picture the rigid set of his jaw this morning, his dark eyes clouded with reluctance as Shikamaru asked him to sign the parchment once and for all.

Before you left, he pulled you close and gave you that look you knew well, a silent plea to be careful out there without him.

He knew that you would. 

You were always careful, maybe even too excessively in certain situations.

Kakashi just had to make sure; he needed to tell you that, regardless of how many times he had already in the past.

But now, it was too late.

A violent tremor suddenly shook the cavern walls, the structural integrity of the ruin finally failing. The central limestone load-bearing pillars snapped under the shifting tectonic pressure, causing the cavern's keystone to fracture and trigger a cascading collapse of the upper terrace.

"Fall back now!" you shouted to your Jonin escort team, scrambling away from the altar.

But the warning came too late. The stone beneath your boots gave way faster than your feet could move.

Gravity snatched you into the pitch-black chasm below, plummeting you through the dark as the air abandoned your lungs. A jagged pillar of shattered masonry caught your fall, its sharp edge carving a deep laceration straight up your inner thigh. You groaned, tumbling off the pillar and slamming heavily onto the lower terrace.

A nonstop shower of sharp shrapnel rained from the ceiling, with slabs of debris slashing across your temple, tearing through your eyebrow, and biting fully into the center of your cheek.

But the most devastating blow came a second later when a massive chunk of the ruin's ceiling caved in, crashing directly into your shoulder blade and pinning your broken body against the cold rubble.

So this is how it ends…

The brute force of the impact felt as if your entire body was being crushed through a rusted grinder. The metallic taste of blood flooding your mouth, you coughed, almost choking on the liquid. You tried to push the stone off your shoulder, but your arms were completely unresponsive, just like most parts of your body. The hot sensation of your own blood pooling beneath your thigh and soaking your cheek was the only thing left to feel.

Kakashi is going to be so disappointed, was the last coherent thought that drifted through your fading mind. Shadows began to swallow your vision while the dust filled your throat. 

In the final second before total oblivion pulled you under, the dense debris shifted. A silhouette materialized in the gloom, and the striking, ethereal glow of a purple Rinnegan pierced through the dusk.

Sasuke.

The moment your brain registered his presence, it forcefully severed your consciousness. A rather necessary mercy. Your mind plunged into a protective void, completely sparing you from the torture, the painful sensation of the extraction. You wouldn't remember the agonizing feeling of being pulled from the crushing rubble, or the grueling, miles-long journey as he carried your broken body across the gorge. 

My squad. Where is my... squad?

The entire race back to the Hidden Leaf was swallowed by the dark.

Sasuke entered the trauma ward with an urgency that immediately shook the sterile calm of the hospital. He laid your half-scarred, half-unconscious form carefully onto the nearest gurney as the medics swarmed in.

He looked at the nurse, his tone clipped. "Make sure Sakura sees to these injuries immediately. The debris cut deep. Hurry!"

He didn't wait for her nod; he turned around and left the hospital. As soon as he stepped outside, an ANBU shinobi appeared in front of him, explaining that he was alerted by the gates’ guards of what had happened a few moments ago. 

"Take this to the Hokage," Sasuke asked handing his latest report to the ANBU. "I am heading back to the gorge with a Jonin squad to check on the scene. Make sure Kakashi is aware of this incident as soon as possible."

A few blocks away, the Hokage's office was stacked with piles and piles of endless paperwork. Kakashi was exhausted, running on nothing but tea and duty. He'd kill for your miso soup right now. Actually, he'd do anything to go back home and stay under the sheets with you, napping for a whole day.

The thought brought him back to the moment, as he had been on edge all day, his mind continuously drifting back to the argument you both had that morning. He was feeling as if he had let you go on a suicide mission, though he knew how capable you were and how this new finding would help the Leaf. 

Maybe he was worrying too much; there was no need for that.

The same ANBU that had just spoken to Sasuke materialized in the center of the office, dropping to one knee. He held out the smudged scroll Sasuke had given him a few seconds ago. Shikamaru stepped forward, taking the item and placing it directly onto the Hokage's desk.

"Lord Sixth," the operative began. "Sasuke Uchiha just delivered your Intelligence agent to the trauma ward. He returned to the incident area with another squad to further investigate and retrieve the rest of the team."

Kakashi was still in the middle of signing a document when his pen paused over the parchment, a drop of ink pooling into the paper.

He heard the words, but his exhausted brain processed them at a sickeningly slow pace.

Your Intelligence agent.

Incident.

Trauma ward.

He blinked once. Twice.

His dark eyes lifted to look at the ANBU kneeling in front of him.

"The Intelligence agent?" Kakashi asked, his voice sounding distant, as if the words were having trouble finding their way through the fog of his shock.

He turned his head slowly, locking eyes with his advisor. "Wait. Who? Did you just mention an incident?"

Shikamaru stiffened, his entire posture snapping to attention as the reality took hold. He knew Kakashi was trying to process the words in the calmest way known to a man. 

"Damn it," Shikamaru cursed under his breath, the color draining from his face.

The oxygen was instantly sucked out of the room while a deafening ring took over Kakashi's ears. His tongue tasted blood — blood that wasn't even there. The wraith pain of his own old scars flared to life beneath his Hokage robes. It felt as if his chest was tearing open all over again. 

He was paralyzed by the terror of his own curse. The curse that violently struck down the only people he ever allowed himself to love. It was his fault, once again. Entirely his fault.

He had authorized the mission. 

He had signed the paper. 

He had sent you right into the jaws of death.

"Lord Sixth!" Shikamaru barked, slamming a hand flat on the mahogany desk to break the trance. "You need to go to the hospital. Right now."

Kakashi dropped the pen, violently pushing his wooden chair against the floorboards, bolting through the doors of his office as if the village was going to war.

But the only war he had to endure now was the hell in his mind. The panic at the thought of losing you.

Kakashi took the tower stairs three at a time, bursting through the main doors and hitting the bustling streets below. He didn't break his stride; there was no time for it. He tore through the center of Konoha, his standard calm facade shattering into a hundred ragged pieces with every distressed step.

Villagers and market stalls blurred into meaningless streaks of color. The wind whipped against his face, carrying the stench of fresh copper—a sensory hallucination born purely from his spiraling trauma, stinging in his throat.

His lungs burned, scraping against his ribs as he forced his body to move faster than his chakra reserves comfortably allowed. Please. The silent plea cycled through his mind like a broken mantra, bouncing against the walls of his skull. Take my life. Take my eyes. Take whatever is left of my miserable soul. Don't die on me, please don't even dare to.

He had spent a lifetime burying the people he loved. He knew the exact weight of shoveling dirt over a casket. 

He had authorized this mission. Damn it, he had authorized it!

He had handed you the executioner's blade and told you to walk into the dark. 

His hands were itchy, and he felt the need to wash them as if your blood had stained them. But if he scrubbed them now, would it mean your life was being washed away?

Do not die on me, please!

The sliding doors of the Konoha trauma ward didn't open fast enough. Kakashi forced his broad shoulders through the narrowing gap, his boots squeaking harshly against the polished linoleum.

The scent of bleach, rubbing alcohol, and raw iron hit him like a punch straight to his face.

"Kakashi-sensei!" A pair of green-glowing hands pressed firmly against his chest before he could breach the curtain of bay 2. He came in so fast that she could barely stop her chakra from flowing from her hands before preventing him from taking one more step, before she could even process the appropriate title to call him.

Sakura. 

Her medical apron was speckled with drying crimson. The metallic tang in the air wasn't a hallucination anymore; it belonged to you.

Blood.

Your blood.

"Sakura, I need to come in," Kakashi rasped. His voice didn't boom or echo; it carried a tone that sounded dangerous to himself, to his sanity, to what he would do if the word combination of death + your name came out of anyone's mouth. 

Kakashi knew he was asking too much. But he would use his Hokage title, his privilege, to barge and break through any barrier that was between you and him. After all, you were out on a mission, official Leaf business, so he was going to check on you regardless.

"I need you to prepare yourself before you look," she warned, her grip on his flak jacket tightening. Her emerald eyes were clinical, but the way she bit her lower lip and held the action for two seconds too long betrayed her own stress. Kakashi would never be ready for whatever was behind those curtains. "Sasuke got them here just in time. We stabilized the hemorrhaging. The femoral artery was narrowly missed, but the structural damage is severe. Really severe…"

Kakashi didn't say anything; he couldn't. He couldn't even understand how this whole situation ended up happening. Or actually, he could.

Because he was the one who did this to you. He signed you up for this madness.

He looked behind Sakura, reached up, his fingers firmly prying his former student's hands away from his chest, and pushed past the curtain.

The floor completely dropped out from beneath his feet this time. 

You lay unconscious on the hospital mattress, your skin leached of all color under the harsh fluorescent lights. The medical team had already cut away the ruined fabric of your uniform, exposing the brutal geography of your injuries. 

That wasn't you. No.

It couldn't be you.

The body lying in that hospital bed was devoid of its usual smile, utterly stripped of its sunshine. It was far too still to be yours—the person, his person, who teased Kakashi, the one who lived to be playful, loving, and always loyal to him.

But look at what the loyalty to his duties did to you.

Kakashi’s breath hitched, dying in the back of his throat.

His eyes immediately caught the wound carved up your inner thigh. The jagged stone had severed the muscle fascia entirely, leaving a gaping laceration. A maze of countless black sutures and Sakura's residual medical chakra held the separated tissue together.

His gaze dragged upward, taking in the massive, violently colored hematoma swelling across your left shoulder blade. The skin there was an angry, mottled purple where the collapsing ceiling had crushed the scapula, splintering the bone beneath the flesh.

But it was your face that made his knees lock.

A harsh avulsion sliced diagonally across your temple. The gash tore straight through the arch of your eyebrow, biting so deeply into the center of your cheek that a secondary medic on the scene was actively using a micro-scalpel to repair the damaged nerve endings.

You looked like a porcelain doll dropped from a great height, stitched back together with fraying thread. As if your pieces needed to be glued together with so much care, or you'd be gone forever.

Kakashi couldn't speak. He couldn't breathe. Hell, he couldn't breathe at all.

The monitors beeped in a synthetic rhythm, confirming that your heart was still pumping blood through your veins, but the sound offered zero comfort. He stepped forward, his legs moving like lead weights, until his thighs hit the metal rail of the bed.

He didn't reach for your hand. He didn't dare touch the unbroken patches of your skin. He felt too filthy, too tainted by his own terrible decisions to lay his hands on the ruin he had caused. Because he was so sure that he was the one who caused your fall, your wounds.

He just stood there, his dark eyes wide and fixed on the steady rise and fall of your chest, letting this fresh acidic reality burn a hole straight through his ribs up to his heart.

The scent of the trauma ward clung to your skin long after Sakura finally signed your discharge papers five days later, and Kakashi picked you up from the hospital, as if you were a kid waiting for your parent to come get you after school. Not that he really left your side while you were recovering, though he sometimes would leave for a few minutes to sign a paper or two, or do something as fast as he could at his office. He was there, and for some reason, he seemed impatient, as if he needed your eyes to lock onto his to make sure you could see him. 

Fully.

By your side.

Always there.

Kakashi didn’t ask if you could walk, nor did he offer his shoulder for support. Therefore, the same second the medical staff left the room after checking on you one last time, he stepped up to the edge of the mattress and slid one secure arm beneath your knees, the other wrapping carefully around your uninjured back. 

He lifted you with that same fluid ease you were used to, but that now felt wrong. He angled your body precisely to ensure zero pressure was applied to the thick lattice of sutures holding your thigh together, the ones that would make you immobile for a few days, as Sakura had mentioned, or the shattered bone resting beneath your shoulder blade. 

You didn't protest. You had no strength to. Your mind was in chaos, sustaining scars worse than the ones outside. The structural failure of your own body was the new humiliating reality you were forced to swallow.

The humid air of Konoha at night hit your face as he carried you out of the hospital and into the quiet streets. The village was asleep, oblivious to the stretching silence between the two of you, as if it was creating this huge space between you and him.

Kakashi hadn't spoken more than a handful of clinical sentences since you woke up. His jaw was locked tight beneath his mask, his dark eyes fixed straight ahead. You pressed your uninjured cheek against the flak jacket covering his chest, feeling the palpitating thrum of his heartbeat.

Every beat felt like a damning reprimand.

He was right. The thought cycled through your exhausted brain, a venomous loop you couldn't shut off, not since you took the fall, not since you had woken up in that bright hospital room. 

He was absolutely right to try to keep you grounded. Kakashi was the Hokage after all; he knew better than you did, and you chose to almost sulk like a stupid kid over his first refusal to let you go.

You were supposed to be an asset. You had practically begged Shikamaru to push the mission through because you knew what those Otsutsuki ciphers meant for the Leaf. They were the key to securing the perimeter, the leverage the village needed to maintain the peace every shinobi had bled to secure.

Most importantly, they were supposed to lighten the stifling crown sitting on Kakashi’s head. You had marched into that gorge because you wanted to give the Hokage a break. You wanted to hand the man you loved a victory so he could finally rest for a few moments, at least.

Instead, you had handed him a nightmare.

You had become just another casualty he had to worry about. Another liability, draining the village's medical resources, at least that's what your anxious mind thought. You had looked at the man who had spent his entire life burying the people he loved, and you had selfishly forced him to say yes to a mission that nearly added your name to the Memorial Stone. 

How could you dare to almost put him through another situation like this?

You closed your eyes, squeezing them tight as a pathetic tear slipped into the dark fabric of his vest. You completely misread the rigid tension in his shoulders. You thought it was the cold weight of Kakashi's disappointment. You didn't realize it was the paralyzing terror of a man terrified he was going to drop you, lose you.

Kakashi climbed the stairs to your shared apartment as carefully and slowly as he could. He put you down for just a second to grab the keys and unlock the door, scooping you again as he unlatched it. The click of the lock tumbling open was the loudest sound in the world.

He stepped inside, the familiar fragrance of Yuzu, your favorite, it helps with the stress, you said in passing one day, and his favorite sencha tea offering no comfort to the guilt sitting on your chest. 

He bypassed the living room, carrying you straight down the hall and setting you down on the edge of the plush mattress in the bedroom with gentleness.

"We're home now, you can rest properly. I'll get your medications," Kakashi murmured, his voice carrying a rough gravel that barely broke the silence. He didn't look at your face, just turned toward the hallway and into the kitchen. 

You sat alone on the edge of the bed, the air of your home biting against your bare legs, while the hospital grime clung to your skin, making you feel overwhelmed. You needed to wash it off, needed to scrub the catastrophe out of your pores. Gathering every ounce of stubborn willpower you possessed, you forced yourself to stand. 

Your good leg took the brunt of your weight as you dragged yourself toward the bathroom, your fingers gripping the doorframe to keep the room from spinning as you crossed the threshold. That thigh scar hurting like a hundred kunai were being used to stab you right there and then.

You reached back blindly, pushing the wooden door shut behind you until it clicked into the frame. You took this opportunity to take the black robe behind the door and put it on as you shed your hospital gown since your clothes had all been destroyed in the fall and in the trauma ward.

You gripped the edges of the porcelain sink, forcing your head up to look into the vanity mirror.

But it wasn't just your face staring back.

The full-length mirror mounted on the back of the closed door caught your reflection, bouncing it directly back into the glass in front of you. It created this infinite hallway of your own doomed body.

You were trapped in a loop, forced to see every terrible, every cracked angle.

The angry, raised pink tissue mapping the brutal area of your trauma. The massive, twisted scar knotting your shoulder blade, reflected back at you in so many details. The uneven trench climbing your inner thigh was even worse than you wanted to believe it was.

Your hands trembled under the weight of that inescapable reflection. You reached blindly for a glass bottle of medicinal wash sitting on the edge of the sink, desperate to just start scrubbing.

But your fingers were completely senseless. The glass slipped from your grip, creating a deafening shatter that echoed against the ceramic tiles.

In the kitchen, the sudden sound of something breaking froze Kakashi down to his bones.

A shinobi must prioritize the mission above all else.

That was the foundational doctrine pounded into his skull since he was a child. The perfect shinobi did not hesitate, did not crumble, and certainly did not let personal attachments compromise their judgment. For decades, Kakashi Hatake was the pinnacle of that cold, calculated ideal. He had operated as the perfect weapon for the Leaf, or so he thought.

Yet, ever since he pulled back that hospital curtain, his immaculate indoctrination had ruptured.

He couldn't reconcile the Hokage—the man who cold-bloodedly authorized operations, sometimes lethal ones—with the man standing at the kitchen sink, stuck under the weight of his own penitence. Every time he looked at you, his tactical mindset short-circuited. He no longer viewed you as another capable Konoha agent; he only saw the damage he had caused. The perfect shinobi was dead, now a man terrified of his own ideals.

The sound of shattering glass was immediately followed by your breathless thud against the bathroom floorboards. Kakashi didn't hesitate. His reflexes hijacked his nervous system, and in a fraction of a second, he dropped your meds and the glass of water on the counter, bolted down the hallway, and shoved the bathroom door open, his heart slamming violently against his ribs.

You were collapsed on the cold ceramic tiles with the heavy jar splintered into a hundred jagged pieces around your knees. The thick cotton robe had slipped down your arms, leaving you completely exposed to the harsh overhead lighting and the unforgiving reflection of the full-length mirror.

You were staring at the inflamed tissue of your trauma, hyperventilating, your chest crammed as a full-blown panic attack took your figure. Your chin was tucked into your chest as if trying to shrink away from your own reflection. 

The bathroom atmosphere soured with a grief he couldn't deflect.

Kakashi dropped to his knees, pushing away the glass shards so they wouldn't dig through his uniform pants or hurt you even more. He pulled your shaking frame directly into his chest, wrapping his arms around you. Desperate. Scared. Terrified.

"I failed," you choked out, your voice laced with venomous shame, anger at yourself. "I failed so bad, Kakashi. Look at the mess I made in a simple task!"

"Don't say this," his voice cracked.

"But it's true!" you sobbed, pushing frantically against his chest. The tension in the room became unbearable as you desperately tried to hide the scars you were convinced made you unlovable. "I failed the mission! I failed your trust! I’m a disappointment!"

Your breathing turned ragged, panic swallowing any signs of your logic. "I feel disgusted at my own sight, Kakashi. These parts of me are doomed. What if it makes me incapable of ever being good enough for my job? Or even worse, for your job, I should be helping you, and—" He didn't let you finish.

His hands moved in a rush to grip your jaw, holding your tear-slicked face firmly. His eyes locked onto your agitated ones, refusing to let you look away. "Breathe," his thumbs brushed away your tears. "We’re not against each other."

The leadership in his voice, devoid of pride, forced the air back into your lungs. 

Healing something inside of you.

“Show me the parts you want to throw away," he continued, refusing to give your intrusive thoughts a single second to recover, to consume you again. "I want them. All of them. The parts you are now convinced I won’t want. I will kiss every single scar on your body and your soul. The ones that hurt, that burn like hellfire. Because I know they do, I know baby, I know." He pressed his forehead against yours, closing and pressing his eyes hard.

He barely took a breath before continuing. "I will remind you every day that this,” he gestured between both of you, “this love won’t hurt, never will.”

His honesty paralyzed you.

Kakashi released your jaw, distancing his face from yours, and reached for the hem of his black undershirt. With one swift motion, he pulled the fabric over his head and tossed it aside, leaving his torso bare in the clean bathroom light.

"You think you are the only one carrying mission scars?" 

He reached out, his fingers gently taking your trembling hand. He pressed your palm flat against the center of his abdomen. The skin there wasn't smooth, but marred by a thick ridge of pale tissue—the remnant of a rogue shinobi's sword that had nearly cleaved him in half during his ANBU days.

You knew every scarred part of his skin, of course you did. You loved it, you loved all of him so much.

He slowly dragged your hand upward, pressing your fingertips over his collarbone to trace a violent, starburst burn decorating his left shoulder.

"Every single one of these marks is a failure," Kakashi murmured, his chest rising and falling against your hand. "A mistake. A moment where I was not fast enough, or strong enough. But also a mark, a reminder that I tried, that I did not yield, I did not falter, just like you didn't."

Finally, he guided your hand up to his face, pressing your palm against his cheek. He allowed your thumb to trace the vertical groove splitting through his left eye. The biggest substantial proof of his deepest regret.

“So tell me," Kakashi breathed, leaning into your touch. His eyes held your gaze, burning into your skin with a vicious vulnerability. "Did any of my thorns ever stop you from loving me? Did you ever look at my scars and see disappointment?"

A fresh tear slipped down your cheek, the panicked shivering in your chest finally beginning to slow. You shook your head, your fingers curling gently against his scarred cheek.

How could you not love him?

"Never," you whispered, your voice still wrecked but honest. 

Kakashi let out a shaky exhale, resting his forehead against yours for the second time.

"Then don't insult me by thinking I would ever look at yours any differently. I am not going anywhere. You are exactly where you belong, where you need to be."

You let out another sob, both your hands finding their way to his shoulders. "I'm sorry," you whined. "I'm so sorry I made you worry. I'm sorry I put you through this for being reckless."

Kakashi's pulled you flush against his bare chest at once, removing any space left between your bodies, burying his face in your hair. "Don't apologize. Please, don't apologize. It's my fault. I signed the order. I sent you there."

"No," you insisted, shaking your head against his collarbone. "I begged you to. I wanted to help you. I would never blame you for this, Kakashi."

"So how could I ever blame you for surviving?" his arms tightened around you like a vice. "It's not your fault. It's no one's fault."

He held you on the bathroom floor until the shaking in your limbs finally melted away into exhaustion. When your tears finally stopped, Kakashi shifted his weight. He carefully scooped you back into his arms, always mindful of your injuries and the dangerous debris surrounding you both.

He carried you out of the bathroom and back into the soft haven of your bedroom, laying you gently onto the sheets. He didn't go back for the water or the meds. He just climbed into the bed beside you, pulling you against his chest, determined to spend the rest of the night by your side, holding you for as long as you needed, because you did the same for him when he still tasted of heartache and war.

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