Kakashi One Shots

Need You Now

Kakashi sat with his head in his hands, damn near tears, wondering why he had been such an idiot. Around him every picture he owned of you and him was scattered on the floor, some pulled out of picture frames and scrapbooks, others from a small box he kept in his closet. He looked at every single one, studying your face in fear that he would forget it at any minute. That he would forget the way you would run your hands through his hair. That he would forget the scent of your favorite body wash that he loved so much. That he would forget the way your eyes shined every time he took off his mask, no matter how many times you had seen it already. The way you would whisper to him as he fell asleep that you loved him. 

He was afraid.  

And he did not like it one bit. 

He saw the pictures from the first few months of his relationship with you. You always wanted pictures, no matter how uninterested he had always seemed on the outside. You always seemed to know that he wanted them just as much as you had and he just didn't have the strength to say it out loud. Even at the very beginning, you had known him so well. You had never let him push you away because you had already known that his heart was for you, and only you. 

He looked through the timeline of your relationship through the rest of the pictures. Now he was smiling, pulling his mask down to give you photos of him without it. Here he was kissing your cheek. In this one he started initiating the photos. Here you two had been so happy. So, so happy. So why did he have to go and mess it up? 

Why had he been such an idiot!? Why did he push you away? Why did you finally have to listen to him? Why was this the one time you had to do as he asked?

Kakashi knew the answer. He had done something that you would never forgive him for. He had broken your heart. 

He had told you to leave, to never come back, to just leave him alone. That he didn't need you and your problems on top of all his own. He had said that he never had and never could love you. 

And why?

Because he was afraid. He was afraid of losing you. Of hurting you. Of tainting your life with him, with all the things that followed him around like a second shadow. He was afraid that he was going to lose you at any moment to the curse that had haunted him his whole life. So instead he had taken matters into his own hands. In a moment of panic and fear he had told you those things. To just end it and get the pain out of the way now instead of later. To give you a chance at a life that didn't have him. 

He could still see your eyes as you stared at him, filling to the brim with tears. He knew you wouldn't cry in front of him, you wouldn't show him how much he had really hurt you. He had given you his harshest stare, hoping to taint every memory you had with him with that one look. He didn't want you to remember anything good with him. He wanted you to have every reason to hate him, to block him out, to erase him from every moment of your life. He had thought it was what was best for you. And for him. He could still see as you turned away, not bothering to take anything you owned and walked out the door, just like that. He could still hear his thoughts silently pleading for you to turn around. To not listen to him. To understand that he was broken, that he needed you, that this wasn't real. 

He wanted it to just be another bad dream and have you there when he woke up, whispering to him softly that you were there, that you were okay, and you wouldn't be going anywhere. To let him rest his head on your chest so he could fall asleep to your heartbeat. 

But now as he sat with every memory that he had hoped to taint surrounding him like he was at the eye of a storm, he didn't know how he could ever have thought that he could let you go. He didn't know how his brain could have thought that this was the way to go.