Atonement

Chapter 2

He felt heavy.

Why did he feel like that?

He was sure that he had ended his life and was meant to be dead. 

Was there a kind soul left in this horrid world that had saved him and at the same time took his chance of freedom and atonement away? 

Slowly, he opened his eyes only to see the grey ceiling of a room. 

Why was he in a room? He was pretty sure that every single building was destroyed during the war. However, Kakashi didn't care about his surroundings anymore when his memories came back full force. 

Tears started to fall and Kakashi made himself as small as possible while sobbing loudly.

"Naruto...Sasuke...Sakura..." crying, Kakashi muttered the names of his precious students. 

Suddenly the door was pushed open and a well-built man with long grey hair stormed inside. He looked frantically around but when his eyes landed on the small sobbing and crying ball that was Kakashi, he forgot about his surroundings and hastily walked towards him. 

"Hey, Kakashi...son...what's wrong?" 

When Kakashi heard the voice he immediately froze. He knew this voice like the back of his hand. He knew the person it belonged to. He knew it all but... it wasn't possible! He saw him die! For Kami's sake, HE was the one to find his corpse! There was no legal way for him to survive. Was it a reanimation jutsu? Had Orochimaru reanimated him? But wasn't he dead too? Was it a horrible genjutsu? Whatever it was it couldn't possibly be him. His father was DEAD! 

So Kakashi did the only reasonable thing and formed the hand signs. 

"Release." 

Nothing happened. The room was still the same and the man was still in front of him. 

"Release!" 

Nothing... 

"Release! Release! Release! Re..." 

"Kakashi, stop! What is going on?" Sakumo's firm voice interrupted his desperate chant. He was really worried about his son. Never before had he seen him like this: in tears, sobbing and frantically trying to release a genjutsu that wasn't there in the first place. It scared him to no end to see his brave son in this state. 

"What... is... going... on?", like in trance Kakashi repeated his father's question. If this wasn't a genjutsu, then what was it? 

Maybe he just didn't have enough chakra to break it so the only other way to break out of it would be... 

Slowly his gaze focused on his father's, or whoever it was, kunai holster. Faster than Sakumo could blink, Kakashi snatched a kunai and was holding it above his left wrist. In a quick motion, he let the blade sink into his flesh expecting his world to blur and return to the blood-drenched battlefield. Kakashi looked hysterically around when nothing happened other than that his blood was dripping on the floor. 

Deeply shocked, Sakumo did the first thing that came into his mind and knocked his hysteric son unconscious. Then he frantically searched for a couple of bandages before he took his patched up son to the hokage. 

It didn't matter to him that it was in the middle of the night or that other shinobi could see him. He didn't care if they would gossip about him, he just wanted to know what was going on with his son. He was his everything! 

Could it be that Kakashi was affected by all the gossip and blame he was getting because of that damned mission? Was Kakashi ashamed to have him as a father? Was it all his fault? But even if this was the case, it didn't explain why his son's eyes looked like he had lost everything in the entire world. Just what was going on?