empathy (rewritten 2019)

chapter eleven

There was a photo sitting on her dresser. Keiko remembered that they took that photo years ago, when Sakura was brighter than she was on her deathbed, after the pinkette came running to her, saying Tsunade had taken her as an apprentice. The photo was caught in the debris of the village and its frame had cracked during the chaos of the war. Sakura, upon rebuilding the village, found the frame and glued it back together.

The day after her talk with Kakashi, Keiko woke up and grabbed the frame, feeling the fissures within the glass. And then the back popped out, letting a loose shred of paper fall to the ground. She picked it up and looked it over.

It was a letter. Dear Keiko, it read in a curvy, slanted scrawl. Keiko could only manage the first line until there came a knock on her balcony door.

"Anbu. What do you want?" She said, sliding the door open.

"The Hokage requests your presence in this hour." The Anbu said and Keiko sighed. The Anbu nodded and jumped off the balcony, disappearing in the morning wisps of wind, as Keiko turned and dressed herself in her uniform. She put the letter in her pocket and climbed to the roof, following the rising sun to the Hokage Tower.

She let the cool wind wash the exhaustion from her face and she entered the office, bowing. "Hokage-sama, you wanted to see me?" She said, letting her face fall blank.

"Please, have a seat," the man said and she sat before him. The Uchiha stood beside him, staring down at the stranger. "I want to talk about," Naruto paused and took a breath, "Sakura."

Keiko nodded along, impatient to read the letter. "Yes. What about her?"

Naruto pursed his lips and mulled the thought over, looking for the right words to say. "Well, I--um, well, you remember, right? That day, you said we hurt her. Because we left. But I know Sakura and she never--she never told us about that. I just--we just want to know what you meant."

Keiko stared ahead at the man, blank, yet spoke so harshly. "What I meant?" She asked, those three words cutting the space between them. Naruto flinched.

"Look, we just--"

"I'm not going to waste time so I can explain this bit by bit for you to understand," Keiko said, standing with ease. She looked down upon him with her tired eyes. "You should have known what you did. And the fact that you don't know is what makes you unworthy of an explanation."

"Keiko, please--"

"No. I am tired," she crouched down to his level, her face still smooth and innocent and dead. "I am tired of everyone wondering why she died. They throw that question around and then brush it off and go on with their lives as though her death was nothing--so why can't you save me the trouble and do that too? You had no trouble brushing her off when she was alive--so why can't you just let her rest?"

And then she stood. And bowed. And left the office.

Sasuke looked at the blonde. "Pay her no mind. You have work to do."

...---...

Keiko, angry and impatient, made her way to the memorial. And, coincidentally, she found the same silver-headed jounin sitting as he did the other day.

He sensed her approaching and he turned, "What brings you here today?"

She sat down. "I was gonna visit later, but, I just needed to clear my head," she said. "I hate your student."

"Hate is a strong word."

"Weak is stronger." She said, leaning back on her arms. "Who are you here for? You come here every morning, even before she died. Who's on the stone?"

She watched him pause. "You don't have to answer if you don't want to," she said. "I'm just trying to make some conversation."

She turned her head back to the sky, watching the orange bleed to blue as the sun rose higher. And Kakashi, in her peripheral, groaned as he leaned back the same.

"My three teammates are on there," he said. "The first one on there died on a mission in Kusagakure, during the war. A boy named Obito. One of our teammates got captured, so me and him saved her, but there was a cave-in. And then he got caught under the debris, and he couldn't move, so he gave me his Sharingan. And we left. That was my first mission leading them as a jounin and I lost him. And--kami, I just--I should've--I, I don't know."

He rested a hand on his forehead and continued, "And then the second one, a girl, Rin, she died on another mission. She was used by Kirigakure nins to set the Sanbi loose on Konoha. When I rescued her, she begged me to kill her, but I just couldn't--so when I was about to kill one of the Kiri nin, she just--kami, she just jumped in the way."

Keiko saw his shoulders shake and she looked away. "And Obito--I thought he died when we left him, but he didn't--he saw Rin die, and that's why he didn't come back," he said, voice soft and choked. "It was all my fault. I never should have lead that mission. I never should have--but, they're on there now. And there's nothing I can do."

Keiko sat up. "H-Hey," she offered a hand and patted him on the shoulder. "It's okay to tell someone once in a while. We all have our regrets. But it's in the past. It's just...I don't know, best to leave it there. Let the dead rest. All your teammates need you to do is be happy."

"But I can't be," he said, swallowing hard. "I lost my teammates because of me. And now I lost Sakura because I just--I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to help. I just feel so miserable, so useless--"

"Kami, don't throw that around," Keiko said.

"But it's--"

"True? What, so when they told her that she was useless, was that true too?" Keiko said, biting her lip hard. "You can't keep blaming yourself, you know that? You think I don't feel so miserable without her here, knowing I could've done something to stop it? Without those teammates I lost during the Chunin Exams, when I could've saved them? And when my family told me to run, but I was too late? I didn't go through as much hell as you did, but, I--we should both know that we can't save everyone."

She sat back and looked at the sky once more. The letter, crushed and crumpled, shifted in her pocket as she curled her knees to her chest.

Kakashi raised his hand and let it fall to his side. "I just wished I could save her, out of all of them."

And Keiko couldn't say anything, because she knew well she wished the same.