Soldier On || Part 2 ||-•-Yamato-🍃-Kakashi-• ||

Chapter 7: 1 Day to the Wedding: Hypocrisy

The chirping echoed through the vast dark forest, dampening the drumming of his heart. Shadows flickered with flashes of the lightning coming off his hand, bouncing off the trees as he rushed past them. He mouthed to himself. I'm too late. I'm too late.

He grabbed his right wrist and raised his heavy arm when the forest opened into a wide battleground. It reeked of earth and blood. The familiarity of that sight, of that smell, made his heart slam against his ribs. It's coming, that dreaded moment. It happened every time. Over and over. Air spurt out of his lungs. What he was about to do,... if only he could put his arm down. If only he had listened. I can't... It was inevitable... I can't stop, someone, please...

But his body kept going. The chirping muffled by the brief moment his arm pierced through the frail figure before him. The deafening sound of her chest bones crushing. Her eyes widened. Kakashi. Blood gushed from her mouth with his name. Kakashi. Her insides ran between his fingers, dripping down his elbow. Her heart beat one last time against his arm.

The light in her vanished. The promise he made broken, like her body.

Kakashi...

Kakashi...

...

His eyes shot open and he sprang up on the bed, yanking the mask of his face, almost tearing it at the seams as he gasped for air. Just a dream, that dream. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his left hand; the right laid trembling on his lap. How long had it been since he woke up like this?

"Not now...," he said under quivering breath.

That dream haunted him every night, for years, then every other night. He learned to live with it until it stopped being so frequent, but it came back, every now and again. It would never go away for good. A punishment he had long accepted, so he wouldn't forget Rin. So he always remembered the heap of mistakes he had to atone for in his life before he could finally find peace.

He held his shaky hand and hesitated to closed his eyes, fearing he would see her again like he always did. But it was Tenzōs face that he saw.

'I would even die for you.'

His heart stopped for a second or two.

'I guess I love you.'

How could Tenzō say something like that so casually? To him, of all people. If he knew those words were coming, he would have stopped him, like he did Rin. She tried to tell him, but he already knew, so he didn't let her. Not because he was incapable of returning that sort of affection, maybe with time, but had it been up to him, he would have left her to die back then. Someone like that–like him–was undeserving of love.

It happened so long ago. Kakashi changed a lot, at least he liked to believe he had. He'd never been without emotion. He wasn't the cold-hearted killer others liked to think. Life would have been so much easier for him if he was, especially after Rin was gone, he wished he was and even tried to be. The reputation kept people and friends away, and it helped him shut them out. He'd rather hide behind his ANBU mask and go on assassination missions than sitting at a dango shop, chatting away.

Other people had the courage to declare their feelings for him in the past, but were all met with a blunt rejection and he went on about his day like nothing had happened. So him having that nightmare, forced to stare at the ceiling in the middle of the night could only be Tenzō's fault.

Kakashi pulled the mask over his face and laid down on the bed, rubbing the palm with his thumb.

'I would die for you... I love you.'