#kashixkami

Kakashi had been deliberating how exactly to broach the subject of his mission, his run in with the wood style user and encountering her father. He wasn’t entirely sure if he should even tell her in the first place. After meeting the man he was surprised she wasn’t worse off. How she had the courage and strength to get away from him was astonishing. It was one thing to hear about Orochimaru’s atrocities, it was another to stare down those venomous eyes in the flesh. Kakashi had never been so terrified, so numb from fear. He heard that people usually reacted to pure horror in one of two ways, they called it fight or flight. In the moment it seemed neither option was viable, his brain shut down. He couldn’t move even if he wanted to.

Lying awake he thought of Akami cleaning his hands and decided it was better to remember if it meant not feeling all alone. 

“Hey, Kami?” He whispered hoping she was still awake. She hummed in question.

“Who’s Tenzo?” 

She shot upright.

Kakashi slowly sat up waiting for her to either verbally or physically throw him out.

Instead she pulled her lips together in restraint and gripped the edge of the blankets. 

When he wasn’t met with violence or harsh words he continued.

“I hear you say his name sometimes…in your sleep.”

Akami kept her head down, her relationship with Kakashi was weird. It was weird that she’d grown to trust him so much. At first she attributed it to necessity but she didn’t think that was the case anymore. She didn’t need his company, she wanted it.

“I think I might have met him today.” Kakashi said.

Akami searched for an answer in his mismatched eyes.

 Should she tell him? Though it seemed he already knew. Somehow he always knew, but Tenzo was dead and he couldn’t see in Kinoe what she did. 

“You couldn’t have Kakashi,” Akami finally spoke laying back down in bed and rolling to her side facing the wall. “Because I’m a friend killer too.” 

That title wasn’t something he ever wanted to share.

It made sense to him now why she could wash away the blood. Kakashi stared at the back of her head, admiring the shapes the moonlight cast on her mess of hair. He knew about the seal stamped on her tongue, he wondered how much she could tell him if she even wanted to. 

“He helped me, the Tenzo I know. I know he’s not the real one, but she saw it too; Yukimi.”

He felt Akami shift beside him. 

“She’s safe now, she’s going to travel, see the world. I thought you might want to know.” 

When Akami didn’t answer he knew she understood. He knew she was the little girl that Yukimi mentioned from all those years ago. Kakashi rolled over onto his back feeling as though a weight had been lifted. 

“And you know, I don’t really get it…the things people say…you’re nothing like him.” 

Akami’s eyes grew wide, there was only one person he could be talking about. 

“I’ll take the first watch..it’s the least I can do.” Kakashi suggested once her shoulder was bandaged and placed in a proper sling. No one objected, they were all exhausted. Kakashi only picked at his rations and offered the rest to Akami, she didn’t like handouts but she couldn’t bring herself to ever turn down food.

--

Akami’s shoulder ached no matter how she positioned herself. Her bed roll did nothing to soften the hard ground. When she finally accepted her fate she figured she would trade out with Kakashi. She got to her feet and looked around their campsite, only she didn’t see him. She looked up to the canopy of trees overhead, he wasn’t there either. She contemplated waking the others but then she heard his voice. 

“What the fuck is wrong with him? He’s supposed to be on watch?!” She grumbled to herself as she followed the sound. 

His body was curled in on itself where he kneeled by the water’s edge. 

“It won’t come off…It won’t come off…” He whimpered to the water. 

Akami was stupid not to have seen it sooner.

She read the report, Rin died at Kakashi’s hand–quite literally. Just like her he was forced to take the life of a friend. She knew what he saw when lightning flashed in his hand. Friend killer.  

The only difference was he was forced to wear that title like a scarlet letter, Rin’s blood branding him forever. Akami wanted to say something, to let him know that she was the same, that he wasn’t alone. She didn’t see him desperately scouring his hands, she saw herself huddled in bed, vehemently refusing to accept what she had done. Trying to drown herself in the sea of guilt and confusion. But no words could take it back.

Akami kneeled beside him at the river bank. If he noticed her presence he didn’t show it.

“It won’t come off.” The words spewed from his mouth in quick succession. Like he was speaking in tongues; possessed by her ghost. A fleeting look of panic and fear consumed his face, his whole being. Hands trembling as he scrubbed his skin raw with so much fervor as if this act alone could prevent the world from splitting in two to swallow him whole. 

Akami looked on with ravaged horror drawn to his destruction. As repulsed as she was, she was engulfed by an overwhelming sense of dread in the familiarity of it all.

She pulled her arm from its sling to plunge her hands into the frigid water. 

Kakashi flinched at the sudden contact as she cleaned his hands, pretending as best she could to rid him of his sins. The hands of a Shinobi would never be clean. 

“Rin'' he whispered, too quiet and broken to reach her ears. 

Why would someone want to touch these hands?   

His eyes bore into her as she pulled his hands from the water, safe within her grasp. 

His heart pounded erratically, echoing against his skull. He focused on the movement of her lips, forcing himself to take a ragged breath. 

“It’s gone. It’s all gone. See, look, nothing. It’s fine now.”  

The tone of her voice was one he’d heard only once before, when they spoke at Obito's grave. 

He hesitantly looked down at his hands, cradled inside hers and... there was no more blood. It was gone. It was really gone. 

Kakashi stared back up at Akami the devotion and disbelief in his eyes stung. As though she were incapable of being kind. Even if most people thought that, it hurt coming from someone she considered a friend. She pulled away from him and stood to return to camp. Kakashi desperately reached for her hand again and refused to let go. 

She looked down at him, still kneeling by the water’s edge. And for a second it was as though she were looking at herself, pleading for her friend to come back to her. Despair and regret reflected in her eyes through that sickly green tank. He must have seen it too as he gave her hand a grounding squeeze. 

A soft splash disrupted the calm river, they both snapped to attention. Akami drew a kunai and Kakashi was on his feet. 

It was only a pair of cranes gliding through the water.