Chapter Text
Sakura takes a deep breath, and inhales mostly dirt. The hole she and Kakashi is in is cramped, damp and humid from the two of them breathing in such a small space. Her face, she knows, is smeared in dirt and blood in equal amount. Most of it is hers. There is an irony tang to the limited air between them, and she knows it's not from her. She feels it, more than sees how Kakashi is swaying in place, chakra barely wisps and a head wound in his hairline. Sakura can't heal him. She can't heal herself either; can't afford to.
Her hand comes up to her side, and comes back wet. A lucky shot, before the two of them escaped for long enough to hide in a hole hastily dug by doton jutsu.
She swallows around nothing, a lump in her throat and her tongue sticking to the dry surface of the roof of her mouth.
A scroll with a sealing array half unrolled sits between the minimal space between them.
A sealing array made in mind with a bijuu to fuel it. A sealing array made in mind with the rinnigan's precision.
Instead all they had was whatever chakra Sakura had left in her seal, and a singular mangekyo sharingan in the skull of a chakra deprived man.
She almost chokes on nothing, before forcing herself to be still. There is ash, staining her fingers. She rubs them together and feels how the fine soot grinds against her skin.
She can't tell if she wants to cry, with what little water is left in her body, or to scream and throw up and-
All that's left of her boys, and it's….
Kakashi isn't much better, Sakura knows, last time she saw him in full light, light gray ash had covered his front.
Prying open dry lips, Sakura speaks more like a frog than a girl.
She croaks, "Ready, Kakashi-sensei?" because it doesn't matter really, if this sealing array takes and takes until there is nothing left of both of them, because there is already nothing left. A shot in the dark. A desperate wish. Two powerful- but ultimately normal people praying to dying hope.
They are not gods.
It takes a minute for him to gather himself. She almost falls over him in her relief when he speaks.
His hand reaches for her head, fumbling briefly in her face before he manages to pat her on the head, "Don't worry, Sakura-chan, I can already hear the birds chirping."
She lifts the corners of her mouth, in a half hearted smile she knows he can see with the mangekyo, before she lets the thick dark lines of her yin seal paint itself over her skin. From the contact his hand has on her head, the same seal lines wrap around him too.
Sakura's sure her smile goes a little wobbly, a little teary, but she keeps her focus.
"See you…Kashi-sensei…don't be a stranger this time, okay?"
She thinks that he opens his mouth to say something, but she isn't sure what. The arry between them goes white with blinding light, and all she knows from then is nonexistence.
***********
Kakashi wakes up screaming.
He awakes to blinding, burning pain. For a moment, he can't see, or hear, or feel, or smell or-
He sucks in a breath, heart pounding in his chest, a small but rapid ba-dump ba-dump ba-dump.
The floor beneath Kakashi- and it must be a floor, insists his vertigo addled brain- is cool against his feverish, uncovered face. He makes an aborted motion to stand up, to check his surroundings— to do anything, but he falls back to the floor instead, a harsh thunk when his head hits the ground. His vision goes white, and he's left twitching against the ground.
When his vision clears again (minutes, it takes minutes, minutes he doesn't have—- where's Sakura?) he tries to circulate his chakra through his body but it is wrong wrong wrong- His chakra is sluggish in it's response, and oh so small. Smaller than he ever remembers. His body is wrong too. His fingers are small, his legs short, his arms are twigs and—
It's all wrong. When had Kakashi become so small? What jutsu was cast on him what-
Vaguely, he registers another sound past his rapid heart beat, a frantic knock, but it's fuzzy, and disorienting, and he doesn't know where it comes from.
Right now his world consists of the cool wooden floor beneath his cheek, the vertigo in his head and the nausea in his stomach.
He tries to circulate his chakra again; he doesn't know where he is, he's a sitting duck. He can't die yet, Sakura, she's all alone right now and she needs him. She's not here. She should be. She should be here, the last of his students. It's wrong, the world is still spinning and it's wrong because there should be a head of pink in his vision always. Without it— without Sakura.. there's nothing. There's nothing left of his pa-
Hands, warm and unfamiliar touch him. He jolts back, scrambling, swaying across the floor on all fours.
The only thing in his mind is to get away. He bumps into something hard enough that he can feel a bruise forming already. Hard wood digs into his side and Kakashi can feel the gap beneath whatever he hit. It's big enough for him and he tries to scramble under it but-
Hands; warm, warm in a way that almost burns touch him. They grab him, firm but gentle and no matter what he tries he can't twist away, can't kick hard enough to get them to let go, can't even bite.
His vision, still blurry, still recovering, takes in the face of a ghost when those warm hands flip him to face upwards.
His father stares back, brows furrowed, jaw set, and yet panic in his eyes.
The only thing Kakashi can really do is throw up, violently and aggressively.
He blacks out briefly, vision going dark once more. He wakes up only seconds after, mind still swaying as if it was a row boat on sea. His ears are still filled with cotton.
He whimpers, when his blurry vision locks back in on the vision of his father's ghost, who's pale face is twisted with shock and worry. The afterlife must truly be a cruel place. This isn't real. It can't be.
A few painful tears squeeze out of his eyes, as his body shutters. With all the grace of a newborn dog, he wobbles until he face-plants in his father's chest. The surface beneath him rumbles with Sakumo's speech, but Kakashi can't hear him through the cloudy haze in his head and the cotton in his ears. the vibrations jostle him lightly, and it makes him gag.
His father tenses, and stops speaking. He wraps his arms around him, and now Kakashi truly, surely knows this is not real.
More tears, hot and painful and few in-between sneak through his clenched eyes. His body hyperventilates, but Kakashi can barely register it against the horrible, burning warmth of his father's arms holding him flush against his torso.
He reaches with lose, shaking arms to wrap them around his fathers neck. He can barely keep his grip.
Kakashi can feel Sakumo speak again, but he still can barely register whats going on. So instead of responding to whatever he says, he simply calls his father something he hadn't in years.
With a dry, weak voice, Kakashi calls out for his Papa.
***********
When he comes to again, it is to a head no longer rocking, and a stomach no longer rioting with nausea.
When Kakashi comes to, slowly and warmly, it is to a chest firm with muscle, raising up and down in gentle huffs of breath.
There is a strong, healthy heart beneath his ear, and hair that is not his ticking his face. Sakumo lays beneath his son, warm and whole and healthy.
Kakashi can't help the strangled whimper that passes past his lips. He feels his father stir, and hides his face as far as he can into the body beneath him.
Sakumo does something terrible to Kakashi.
He speaks.
In a low voice, addled by exhaustion, Sakumo speaks, "Kakashi?"
Oh.
He hadn't realized he'd forgotten the sound of his father's voice, or how much he had missed it. His body hitches with a sob bigger than his body.
"Kakashi, son, what's wrong? Please…you-"
"I'm sorry", Is Kakashi's strangled voice, it's hard to get past the lump in his throat, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I love you, Papa, I love you. Please don't leave, don't leave."
Sakumo hushes him gently, "Kakashi…It's okay, I'm here, you don't need to cry, your papa is here. I'm not going anywhere, pup."
Kakashi, for the first time in twenty-six years, breathes in the scent of his father, and hears his voice.
For the first time in twenty-six years, some deeply guarded part of him uncurls it's fists.
Kakashi breathes.