Ikigai

Chapter 29: Her

It wasn't his story to tell, or maybe it was. 

Others had known them too. Aunts, uncles, parents, and everyone else in between with memories of their own. And in between, he felt disconnected as scenes played and replayed as they often did every time he came here.

What if's of another reality that would never exist for him or the people lying six feet underground all because of him and the decisions he had taken that day.

But the faint dust that seemed to coat the top of the stone slab as small words, names engraved in stiff precision reflected the missing past to him in white light and red blood seeming to say enough about the pathetic state he felt after all these years.

It had been a while since he'd last been here and a part of him thought he should have come back later, put this off until he was in a better frame of mind.

But it had already been a few hours since the sun had begun shining again and the spontaneous side of him had thought, why not?

It wasn't like he needed to see any of his students at the moment, not this early, and none of the usual tension of rivalry that he cared to deal with yet again crossed his mind.

No. Because his heart was beating to the sound of troubled thoughts and unspoken feelings as his mind repeated Kinstugi's own words in a fuddled loop of conflict.

The walk back to the lone hospital room didn't really help either as the faint wisp of wind only reminded him of the smoke that had come off her body in small waves of air, her face a picture of confusion and passing anxiety as she had fallen unconscious in his arms.

Today just seemed to remind him of her.

And even though these days he denied himself anything more than what passed as mild friendliness, he imagined a reality where he loved and where other people loved him.

But knowing love had made him feel lonely. 

Lonely because those that had given it to him, were no longer alive, and looking at Kintsugi reminded him of how fragile his emotions could still get, how fragile his thoughts became at the semblance of something more.

More so as he heard her utter that four-letter word to him. 

Whether out of exhaustion, smoke inhalation, or whether she truly meant it, he didn't know and his mind hurt to think of it as anything more than temporary deliria.

Deliria, because he felt himself crazy for thinking too much about what she had said, if she had really meant what she had said, or if he had imagined her saying those words to him further proving how pathetic he had become after all. 

And looking at the curve of her lips pulled into a tight line, his heart seemed to pull in a direction he wasn't sure bothered him all that much. 

"You should take it easy," he glanced down as his eyes moved across the expanse of her body in a gentle sweep.

"Mmmm, no, I think not," she groaned, finally awake as she tried to sit up before being stopped by a relatively firm hand on her shoulder. 

"Let me say that again...don't get up," Kakashi ordered, eyes scrunching in mild irritation as he watched her drop back onto the hospital bed in a huff. "I may have let the whole kid under the water thing slide more than I should have, but your whole house was on fire by the time the village shinobi got there...and you...you were passed out. If that's not a cause for concern, I don't know what is."

"Ugh, could you not? Like, not right now," she muttered dragging a hand across her tired face before smelling the faint scent of smoked ham and brown sugar, her stomach responding in an outspoken eagerness at the thought of food despite the overabundance of anything smoked for the past 24 hours.