Chapter Text
Kakashi knows before he steps into the room. He would recognize that chakra anywhere.
He shuts the door behind him, doesn’t turn on the light. The blue night sky through the window would be the only illuminator if he didn’t have his sharingan, and the red filter turns the room a shade of purple.
“Why are you here?” Kakashi asks.
His voice is cool and slated like metal when he replies. “I just came to say goodbye.”
Uchiha Itachi, family annihilator, stands over his little brother’s corpse.
Kakashi has ice in the pit of his stomach. But there’s no one to protect from Itachi now. Sasuke’s dead. Kakashi sits down in a small plastic chair and folds his hands. He allows an S-ranked criminal to remain in Konoha’s hospital. He allows a former friend to say goodbye to his dead brother.
And he watches, intently, as Itachi leans over the body. He watches as Itachi’s eyes scan his brother’s face, the sharp glow of red from his sharingan switching off after a few moments. His facial expression is unreadable.
Kakashi remembers an eleven-year-old version of him, smiling down at the sight of his little brother amongst the crowd of other Uchiha they monitored. He remembers walking Itachi home one day, at a time where distrust of the Uchiha clan was running high and strangers would give him dirty looks on the street, and a tiny Sasuke running into Itachi’s arms at first sight. He remembers a conversation he once had with Tenzo when the topic came up in casual talk: they had both been fascinated by the fact that someone like Itachi, so decisive and ruthless that he not only made it to ANBU at his age but thrived there, could also manage to be as kind and gentle and loving as he was. They wondered how ANBU didn’t break a person like that. They wondered how he could possibly balance both and not get them crossed up.
But well, he supposes it would be easy if it was all a facade.
Itachi is a criminal who wiped out a clan. A clan that consisted of his family and friends, allies, those that had raised him from birth, and Kakashi knew he had issues with them but never in all of his days did he expect that. At first, he went into denial, thought there is no way, Itachi was framed-- he had to have been-- and then he found out Sasuke was the only survivor, and it sunk in.
He never truly let go of the idea that Itachi cared about his brother. It was a fruitless notion, sure, and it didn’t matter anyway. But Kakashi couldn’t just buy into the idea that everything this boy ever showed him was a lie.
Regardless of whether or not his notion was right, Kakashi shoved it down with the rest of his trauma and never talked about it again. It wasn’t like it would change anything. Whatever his motive was, Itachi murdered his clan and left only his traumatized little brother alive. Debating minute technicalities was useless and even disrespectful in the face of such a horrifying tragedy, horrifying enough that the village was entirely silent about it. And Kakashi let himself fall into that silence as well.
So here, now, when Itachi reaches out a gentle hand and cups Sasuke’s cheek, Kakashi watches him like a hawk. Everything in his body stills, including his breath.
Itachi’s fingers trail up to Sasuke’s hairline, and he brushes loose bangs back. For a few moments, he freezes there like a statue, hardly blinking. Then he leans down and presses a kiss to Sasuke’s forehead.
His movements are so slow, so quiet and tender, that Kakashi almost believes he’s hallucinating him. But this isn’t a genjutsu. Kakashi would have recognized it by now if it were.
Itachi lowers his face to the sheeted table, right beside Sasuke’s head.
Completely letting his guard down.
He knows Kakashi won’t dare make a move on him now. Kakashi respects the sacrality of allowing family to say goodbye to their dead, enough to let him stay there, and if that wasn’t enough now, he has the bonus of Kakashi’s shock.
It comes cold, moving in like a glacier rather than a bolt of lightning. It is the cusp of realization and the weight of what it means sinking into his body.
“You loved him,” Kakashi says, suddenly.
Itachi looks away. Turns his head, lifting slightly, but stays hunched over the bed-table. His fingers leave Sasuke’s face.
“Why did you do it?” It’s a question Kakashi has been wanting to ask for years. Why? Why did you do it? Why did you annihilate them, leave this child to suffer behind you? Why didn’t you take him along? Why did you do it?
There’s a silence, a long silence, and it chokes the air.
“Itachi.”
Still no answer.
“You loved him,” Kakashi repeats— and it has more of an impact than the last time. Itachi’s shoulders jerk as if spooked. A small, nearly unnoticeable movement.
Then he takes a breath. A tiny wisp of air.
His hand goes to his mouth— he leans slightly forward, as if overcome by a wave of nausea— and sobs.
It’s a horrible, guttural noise, and Kakashi would have thought he really was retching if it weren’t for the sharp gasp and stuttered breath that followed it. Itachi inhales sharply one more time and takes his hand off his mouth, and Kakashi can see that his lips are pulled in a pained grimace.
Itachi straightens up from the bed and turns away and wanders towards the window. He sniffles and drags his hand over his face, rubbing his eyes.
With a brutal pulling on his broken heart, Kakashi thinks oh, no.
Oh, no. Oh, no.
Because it sinks in that he was right.
And there was something much deeper, much darker and more poisonous writhing behind the scenes on that night. The little boy, Kakashi’s student who is dead on the table in front of him, was spared once out of his brother’s love, but somehow all the love in the world couldn’t save him from this.
Kakashi, like a good shinobi, doesn’t let the information stall him. He absorbs it. He swallows it down.
“Kakashi-san,” Itachi says. His voice breaks the silence, softer than the drop of a pin. “Please leave me alone.”
Kakashi gets up. The plastic chair creaks. He turns, he leaves, and he lets the S-rank criminal be alone in the hospital. He lets a friend say goodbye to his brother.
***
Itachi brushes the hair off of Sasuke’s cold forehead. He smooths it back with gentle strokes, gazing at his little brother’s face.
His vision is in the first stages of failure. It’s not terribly deteriorated, but it makes it so that fine details blend into their surroundings, and with his sharingan off he can almost believe that Sasuke is asleep. He can see his pale skin, the hair-thin curves of his closed eyes, the shadow strings of dark hair on his forehead and spilled out on the pillow beneath.
It’s not a goodbye. Not one that does Sasuke justice, though he supposes it’s fitting for himself. Sasuke wouldn’t want him here anyway.
He wants to gather him up into his arms. He wants to hold him, hold Sasuke’s head to his chest, and just scream. He wants to wail over his little brother’s body like he remembers the mothers on the war-scarred battlefield, wailing over the corpses of their children. He doesn’t get to do that, though, not with his bloodstained hands, hands that did nothing but take away. If he could give for once, instead of taking, he wouldn’t hesitate to rip the life out of his own chest and give it to Sasuke.
Sasuke was supposed to be standing over his corpse, not the other way around. Itachi sits down on the floor, shaking, curls himself small, like an animal cowering in an earthquake. He sits and he bites his nails and he thinks well now I’ve lost everything.
The world is gray and bathed in blue-tinged light and he’s lost everything.
Kakashi comes back later and says, “You should go.”
Itachi agrees with him.
He uproots himself from the cold tile floor, wilted like a rotting tree.
“I still live in the same building,” Kakashi tells him. “You know where it is.”
Itachi nods.
He looks at his brother’s body one more time. Just a few seconds. If he looked longer, he knows he’ll be swept into the undercurrent and stay there all night until he drowns. If he squints again, then Sasuke’s only sleeping— and Itachi’s home late from a mission, and the floor under his feet is warm instead of cold, and he can climb into bed beside his brother and gently wake him and Sasuke’s cry of happiness and arms around his neck will be the only thing Itachi needs keep going. He can imagine it. The memory tastes like tears and bile. You’re back, nii-san!
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He feels like he’s swallowing needles.
Kakashi closes the door, the sliver of yellow light disappears. The room is dark and quiet again.
Itachi takes his brother’s ice cold hand in both of his own, stroking it with his thumbs as if to give warmth. He longs for Sasuke’s fingers to close around his. Or to yank away, or do anything, because Sasuke’s hatred was far better than this.
He never planned for this scenario.
He decided, on that night five years ago as he left the village forever, that Sasuke would hate him for the rest of their lives. Itachi could handle that. He could take Sasuke’s hatred as long as it meant he was alive and growing up to be strong against all adversaries and one day he could kill this evil caricature Itachi so carefully built up and that pressure would be over and Sasuke could move on, bury him in the past like a bad memory, and build himself a new family.
Itachi had been more than resigned to his role and never once wished for Sasuke to endure the pain of learning the truth.
Never once, until he is standing over his thirteen-year-old brother’s corpse, holding his hand, and choking on the knowledge that Sasuke didn’t know he loved him.
Itachi swallows down a sob. He closes his eyes, and he can feel his face wrenching, and seven years of emotional walls and ANBU training can’t steel over his reaction to this sickening grief.
Tears find their way down his cheeks. He hasn’t cried in so long. It feels foreign, having a liquid other than blood dripping from his eyes.
He lets Sasuke’s hand go. He rubs his face on his sleeve and forces back as much messy emotion as he can.
He moves and leans down and presses his forehead against his brother’s. Takes a shaky breath and says, “I love you.”
As if Sasuke can hear him. And he hopes, desperately, that Sasuke somehow can.
“I love you so much.”
It’s all he can do just to say it out loud.
There’s so much more. He could stay there all night, swept into the undercurrent. But Kakashi was right. He needs to go.
So he cups Sasuke’s face in his hands and presses one more kiss to his forehead, in the space between his eyebrows where he used to poke him. Sorry, Sasuke, maybe next time.
His voice splinters, barely a whisper. “Goodbye, otouto.”
He shunshins out of the room.
***
“I summoned him here,” the Sandiame says, his gnarled face outlined by moonlight.
“You what?” Kakashi falters.
“As soon as I heard of Sasuke’s death,” he takes a long drag from his pipe, “I recalled Itachi from his mission.”
Kakashi sits heavily down in the chair across from him, hands sinking in his lap. “Tell me everything.”
When Kakashi arrives home, Itachi is on his couch.
He’s lying down, facing away from the room. Kakashi knows better than to assume he’s sleeping. You don’t get to sleep after losing everything.
The weight of a thousand worlds hunches Kakashi’s shoulders. His grief is unimaginable-- and he’s lost people before, many people, but somehow this is the worst pain he’s ever felt.
Minato-Sensei, he thinks, I’m sorry I ever called you a bad teacher.
A bad teacher, an absent teacher; the fact that Minato was together enough to even continue training Rin and him after losing one student was more than impressive; because Kakashi doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to drag himself out of bed again. He lost a student.
That alone should revoke his right to be a jounin-sensei, he thinks, even though he knows the Sandaime Hokage will argue his case to keep the position. It was a slip-up, after all, not Kakashi’s fault if you just looked at it— but then again everything that happens to his genin team on his watch is his fault, really.
He can’t even begin to comprehend how Itachi must feel.
Kakashi knows the truth now, and his sorrow feels like rot in his bones.
It seems like the Uchina are cursed with tragedy. Kakashi is collateral damage along the way.
Part of him wants to be angry— how dare you come back after you took everything away from him? He suffered up until his last breath because of you and now he’ll never know. The very least Sasuke deserved was to know you loved him.
But Kakashi can’t manage that right now. All he feels is sadness— he feels grief, both for his lost student and for his former teammate; a child forced to sacrifice himself and destroy everything he ever loved under the guise of the greater good.
Itachi’s only eighteen.
It’s been five years since his mission began. This is probably the first time he’s rested, really rested, since then— and it’s anything but peaceful.
Itachi is as still as a corpse. His breathing is thin and quiet. There’s not much Kakashi can do for him now besides giving him a place to stay.
So he finds his way to the small linen closet near his bathroom, takes out a stack of blankets. They smell slightly of dust but he figures it’s better than anything Itachi is used to. He places them, very quietly, at the foot of the couch— just so that they’re in reach if he needs them. Then he leaves Itachi alone.
Sasuke is given a traditional Uchiha funeral.
He is the first Uchiha to be commemorated this way in a long time, as after the massacre, there were far too many bodies to send them all off individually. (Kakashi was on the second half of the cleanup patrol. They were all buried in a mass grave).
Sasuke’s body sits on a pyre on the lakeside. It’s wrapped in black cloth and a paper fan rests on top of him.
Normally, the next of kin would be the one to blow the fireball jutsu to set him free, but Itachi’s not allowed at the funeral. So Kakashi does it.
Naruto and Sakura are both crying beside him. Between intervals of sniffling, rubbing eyes, Kakashi hands a package of tissues to Sakura for the two of them to share. He struggles not to cry himself.
The body burns.
Itachi’s muted presence sits in a nearby tree.
Kakashi returns home late again and Itachi has locked himself in the bathroom.
He is coughing.
Kakashi tries to get Itachi to eat something.
He won’t.
Kakashi’s hardly eating either. He goes to visit Naruto and Sakura twice a day to make sure they’re alright. He brings them food and tea, sometimes talks, sometimes just sits there so they have his company.
They have two weeks off from training and missions. It’s not enough.
Three days and nights go by before Kakashi realizes that Itachi is sick.
It’s four in the morning and there is a crunching sound coming from somewhere in the house. Kakashi shakes the sleep out of his head— what the hell is that?— maybe one of the dogs showed up and got into something—Bisque has a habit of chewing up furniture—
No. Not that. After a few seconds he identifies the sound as a cough.
It’s not an ordinary cold cough, it’s the kind of cough you only hear on a battlefield; the sound of a wounded shinobi hacking up their own blood.
Kakashi runs to the bathroom and finds the door half-open. There is blood all over the floor, reflecting sharp yellow light, and Itachi’s kneeling in it.
For a terrifying moment, Kakashi thinks he has tried to kill himself.
His hands are clutched over his mouth and he’s hacking, a kind of desperate and crushing cough that leaves him gasping on the return, and every breath just causes him to inhale his own blood again. Kakashi recognizes it too well. This is what happens when a shinobi gets stabbed and the knife grazes the trachea, or hit with a blunt force or something like the Gentle Fist technique that ruptures the respiratory system— many options, none of them good. He pries Itachi’s hands away from his mouth.
“Let it come out,” he says loudly, over the coughing, “you’re just forcing yourself to swallow it.”
Itachi spits up a clot of blood onto the floor. Kakashi searches him for wounds, searches the floor and the counter for some kind of weapon, but finds nothing. Deciding it must not be self-inflicted, he lets out a breath in relief.
“Easy. Easy.”
Itachi’s body shakes with the effort. His face is screwed up into a pained expression, blood drips from his lips, teeth smeared pink.
“Lean forward more.” Kakashi holds his hair back. “Lean your head down and take small breaths.”
Itachi complies. He’s always been very obedient.
Eventually, the coughing slows down in severity and peters out. He keeps his eyes closed, still hunched over, allowing excess blood to fall out of his mouth and onto the floor.
They’re both kneeling in a puddle. This much blood, and Itachi must be dangerously close to passing out.
He takes slow, labored breaths as Kakashi rubs his back.
“How long were you planning to keep this a secret from me?” Kakashi asks.
A few beats pass before Itachi rasps in response. “Not important.”
“It is important.”
Itachi swallows and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “We’re not friends.”
“Careful,” Kakashi warns, “I’m the one keeping you in my house. If you want to stay in my good graces, I suggest letting me help you.”
Itachi doesn’t respond. He just looks over at him under hooded eyelids.
“Let’s get you out of all this blood before you pass out.” Kakashi winds Itachi’s arm over his shoulders and lifts him. Itachi slouches against him, stuttering to his feet, and together they walk over to the bathtub.
Kakashi lowers him down into it.
“Stay there,” he tells him. “If you start to cough again, just wash it down the drain.”
He leaves the bathroom to get a few things: a glass of water, a washcloth and a bunch of paper towels. When he comes back, he hands the glass and washcloth to Itachi and uses the towels to mop up the puddle of blood.
After a few moments, Itachi buckles forward and pukes.
Kakashi sighs, goes back over to him. “Okay, kid.” He rubs his back, and he can feel the divots of Itachi’s spine and ribs under his fingers. “Easy.”
He’s just puking up blood, he hasn’t consumed anything else substantial enough to make an appearance.
“Don’t be alarmed,” Kakashi continues, “it’s just the blood you swallowed. Seriously, you were an ANBU captain and an S-rank criminal, how do you not know how to avoid that?”
Itachi gives him a scorching look. Given his state, it’s more pathetic than threatening.
Until it reminds him, with a stab to the heart, of Sasuke.
They have the same eyes. And the same angry face, too— a concentration of dark murderous rage, but like the kind that would come from a cat. More endearing than anything else.
He only has a second to be stunned, though, because then Itachi’s eyes roll back and Kakashi has to catch him before he can hit his head on the tub.
Passed out completely.
It’s impressive that he’s made it this far, considering the blood loss and starvation.
If Kakashi has learned anything, it’s that Uchiha kids are shit at taking care of themselves.
His heart hurts. He wants to be taking care of Sasuke instead. He wants more than anything in the world for Sasuke to be alive. If he was, Kakashi would waste no more time before taking him under his wing. He’d even file for legal adoption if he had to— he just wants Sasuke to be in a household where he’s loved, wants to make sure he knows it. He wants to see Sasuke’s rare smile with Naruto and Sakura again— sickness twists his stomach when he realizes he can’t remember the last time he saw it.
Kakashi has a sharingan, for god’s sake! Why didn’t he use it properly, to record what really mattered?
He slumps against the side of the tub.
Why did you have to take him from me?
He thinks it at the surrounding universe. At the void, if you will. Unsurprisingly, the void doesn’t respond, just like it never did when he asked the same questions about Father, Obito, Rin, Kushina, Minato-Sensei. Why did you take them from me?
Kakashi sighs again, leans his head back, taking a few seconds of a break.
Then he gets back to work— because if he doesn’t, Itachi is going to die, and Kakashi’s not losing another damn Uchiha on his watch.
He turns on the faucet, washes the blood down the drain, wets the washcloth and wipes Itachi’s face. He situates him in a position where he won’t strain his neck. Then Kakashi removes the showerhead and runs a cold stream over him.
Blood gathers pink in the water, finding its way down the drain. Itachi’s clothes soak. The chill drags him into half-consciousness and he blinks hazily, looking around for answers.
The glass of water from earlier is sitting on the floor. Kakashi pushes it into his hands and shuts off the showerhead. “Drink.”
Itachi struggles to lift the glass to his lips with shaking hands and Kakashi helps him. He coughs more after taking a sip— but thankfully, there’s no blood this time.
He sucks in a rattling breath and says, “Why are you doing this?”
His voice sounds like Sasuke’s too. It’s a tone or two deeper but the notes are the same.
Kakashi thinks this is just ridiculous. “Doing what? Taking care of you?”
Itachi nods.
“Come on, Itachi. We worked together for two years, it’s not like we’re strangers. You know exactly why.”
Itachi is shivering. He makes no effort to cross his arms, keep himself warm at all. “Guilt is a pathetic motivator.”
“It’s not guilt.” Kakashi thinks of Obito.
“Are you so sure?” Itachi looks at him again— makes direct eye contact— and his eyes are Sasuke’s. It’s like a punch in the chest, and Kakashi knows he’s doing this on purpose.
“We’re shinobi, we don’t act on sure. ” He takes the glass from him. “We act on what we believe in— or what we’re convinced of.”
A few seconds of silence pass before Itachi says, “So that’s a no.”
“Does it matter? I’m not letting you die and that’s the end of it.”
Itachi doesn’t respond to that. He just sighs, leaning his head back and closing his eyes.
Kakashi tuts at him. “Nope, sorry. You don’t get to go back to sleep until you explain this to me.”
Itachi opens one eye, squinted in annoyance.
“Tell me what’s going on with you.” Kakashi rests his arm casually on the rim of the tub. “Are you injured?”
Itachi shakes his head. It’s a tight, feeble movement.
“Sick, then?”
He nods.
“For how long?”
“About a year.”
Kakashi makes a face at him— it consists of crinkled eyes and a scrunched brow.
Itachi continues. “I had medicine for it.”
“Had?”
“My supply ran out.”
They go back and forth for a bit. Kakashi tells him he’s not being helpful at all and Itachi makes very little effort to remedy that. His sentences have an average of three words.
“Okay,” Kakashi eventually says. “In the hope that you’ll be more responsive when you’re clean and warm, I’ll let you shower or bathe or whatever it is you do. Let me get you some clean clothes and then I’ll leave you alone.”
Itachi doesn’t complain, so Kakashi brings him the set of spare clothes and leaves.
***
His body is far too lean for Kakashi’s clothes to fit him properly, but after he washes off he finds the strength to stand and put them on anyway.
Getting dressed makes him lightheaded. He has to sit down on the floor afterwards. But he’d rather be there than standing, because Itachi has never been fond of mirrors.
It’s not that he hates his reflection, exactly— it’s just one of the things he chose to eliminate in order to keep his scarecrow shell stitched together. Looking himself in the eyes for too long feels like ghosts will leap out of them and pull him in. Too much of Mother, Father, Sasuke, and all the other Uchiha looking back at him— besides, he doesn’t need to feel attached to the body he lives in when he’s planning to let it die.
Kakashi knocks a few moments later. The door isn’t locked so he lets himself in.
Itachi knows he looks pathetic, sitting there shivering on the bathroom floor, but he lacks the energy to care at all. There is no pride left on his person.
Kakashi hands him a bowl. It’s warm and wooden and full of some kind of porridge. “Eat that,” he says, and sits down on the floor across from him.
Itachi just stares at it.
He hasn’t been able to eat for days. The thought makes him nauseous— the smell, even more so.
“You’ll feel better after you eat.”
Itachi doesn’t want to feel better. He wants to let himself rot into nothing. But, if it will get Kakashi off his ass…
He takes a bite.
It’s thick and starchy, and the texture is disgustingly similar to the blood he was just coughing up. He swallows with difficulty, trying to force his body not to reject it.
“Good job,” Kakashi offers, and Itachi is reminded with bitter nostalgia of their time on Team Ro when Kakashi’s praise meant a lot to him. Now, it’s just demeaning, but he can’t be bothered to feel annoyed about it.
A few seconds pass as he force-feeds himself another spoonful. Then he quietly asks, “Do you have sugar?”
Kakashi hums. “That’s right. You’re a sugar guy.” He grabs Itachi’s arm and pulls him up and helps him walk to the kitchen. Once he’s seated at the table, Kakashi brings him sugar in brown paper packets. Itachi manages to tear one open and mix it into the porridge.
It goes down easier now that it’s sweet.
But then his chest suddenly seizes with pain and he coughs involuntarily— harsh and scraping like it’s moving through sandpaper. He pitches forward over the table, clamping a hand on his mouth as stabbing coughs force more blood from his throat.
Gasping for breath, he ends up swallowing blood again. Kakashi is at his side instantly, prying his hands away from his mouth.
“You have to let it out!” Kakashi scolds. “Don’t force it back in. That’s the worst thing you can do.”
Uncouthly, Itachi coughs blood onto the kitchen table. Kakashi’s voice is somewhere by his ear telling him not to worry about it. He continues to cough for a little while longer, until his body finally decides it’s done, and he is left trembling and breathing as though there are holes in his throat.
Kakashi rubs his back again, palm making firm pressures on his shoulder blades. “Small breaths,” he reminds him.
Once Itachi’s breathing has fallen back into a decent rhythm, Kakashi lightens up on the pressure. He opts to glide his hand in circle motions, offering a pleasant sensation to distract from the pain.
“Tell me about the medicine you had,” he says. “Where would one go to get it?”
“Don’t bother.” Itachi’s voice is strained.
“Too late for that. I’m definitely bothering.”
Itachi swallows hard and it sounds like paper crunching. He nudges the bowl of porridge away with the back of his hand. His next sentence is mumbled, barely audible. “Hiruzen promised me he would be kept safe.”
Kakashi freezes.
Hiruzen did promise, but Itachi should have known better than to trust him. He swallows and there’s pain in his throat— not just from the coughing.
Sasuke’s safety was the whole point of it all.
Sacrifice to prevent a greater loss. Peace has been maintained in the village. Sasuke was safe from the threat of war. The village was safe. Sasuke was safe. Everyone is dead and the blood will never come off Itachi’s hands and it was all for nothing because now Sasuke is dead too.
He can hardly even think.
His body wants to pass out again and he wants to allow it. Being awake is painful in every possible way— his chest throbs, each heartbeat causes a needled spike of agony, and he’s alive and breathing in a world where Sasuke isn’t. It’s too much.
Kakashi does him the courtesy of saying nothing.
Itachi can feel tears pricking at his eyes, and he’s angry, so damn angry at himself. “It wasn’t supposed to go like this.”
Quietly, Kakashi goes to the sink and brings him a glass of water.
He drinks from it and washes down the iron taste.
The beginnings of sunrise glow grey through curtained windows.