fwb | k. hatake x reader

chapter three | a new light

•"𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕙𝕠𝕝𝕖 𝕚𝕟 𝕠𝕟𝕖'𝕤 𝕙𝕖𝕒𝕣𝕥 𝕘𝕖𝕥𝕤 𝕗𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕖𝕕 𝕓𝕪 𝕠𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕣𝕤 𝕒𝕣𝕠𝕦𝕟𝕕 𝕪𝕠𝕦"•
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STOIC IS PROBABLY the perfect word to describe my best friend. I'll be the first to admit that he was a bit of a snobby, entitled child, but he wasn't always stoic. Even with his subtle sense of elitism, he possessed a twinkle of light behind his eyes, a sparkle that screamed determination and thriving self-worth prior to Sakumo's death. However, status post that tragic event, I quite literally saw that flicker get extinguished like a candle, taking with it the sounds of his laughter and his famous closed-eye smile for a long period of time. It took him a while to recover after that, which was not aided in the fact that we lost our closest comrades over the years of him trying his damnedest to heal.

I would catch glimpses of that sparkle every so often if we were having a particularly good night of jokes. Nights that would cause us to laugh so hard that no sound was coming out of our mouths at all. Nights in which laughter would reduce us to a breathless pile of tears, clutching our stomachs and punching the ground with our fists as a way to somehow regroup air back into our lungs. I love nights like those.

During those nights I could catch a flicker of that sparkle behind his eye, but not nearly as frequently as I do now that he has Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura in his life. It's rather...cute. It's endearing to see my best friend gain a new purpose in life. Seeing that twinkle return in his bored onyx eye put me a jovial mood and I rejoiced that he found his new light. Especially considering how long we had both lived our lives weighed down by an unbelievable mountain of regret.

Regret it an extraordinarily strong word, but it is a word I can say with confidence that both Kakashi and I could undoubtedly use to convey our feelings on life if one were to take nearly any snapshot of either of ours. It was like every action we took, every mistake we made, any wrong decision we came to led to us ticking another symbolic tally to mark another reason to regret our existence, making our scoresheet of regrets look similar to a rogue Amegakure forehead protector. We couldn't decide if it was healthy or not to harbor so much regret and guilt in our souls. Or if in fact it was healthy to acknowledge it and try to move on.

The moving on part we weren't so great at. There wasn't a day that went by that our thoughts lingered on the regrets of our past. Why did I freeze up when I should have grabbed Obito before the rock crushed him? Why did I think it was a good idea to split up with Kakashi and go in separate directions to rescue Rin from the Kirigakure ninja? Why did I put up with sitting on the sidelines during the Nine-tails attack?

Kakashi and I experienced this mutual hurt together and it was apparent when we both eventually had a psychotic break in our younger days.

"I can't live like this, y/n. But I don't want to do what my dad did." Kakashi told me after Rin died. To this day, my heart would sink into my stomach when I recall watching the terrifying decay of what was left of Kakashi's spirit after that fateful day. I had never known a human could travel to a place so grim, so much so that I was afraid I would knock on his door one day only to find it ajar and discover him on the floor in the same state he found his father.

We were only fucking thirteen at the time, but luckily growing up as an orphan myself had made me a rather self-sufficient child, a trait I came to appreciate when I forced myself into Kakashi's house to take care of him. I forced him to eat, shower, drink water. I fervently tried to comfort my best friend and last comrade through the horrendous night terrors he would have picturing his lightning-laced fist piercing Rin's heart.