i will not speak of your sin

Summary: One way or another he is cursed to kill his tethers, cursed to outlive them all. All because Hatake Kakashi drank from the fountain of youth. (Five acts of Kakashi’s consequence to forever.)

• Rating: M
• Trigger Warning/s: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death/s
• Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Hatake Kakashi, Uchiha Sasuke/Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura & Uzumaki Naruto, Hatake Kakashi & Uzumaki Naruto, Team Kakashi Dynamics
• Characters: Hatake Kakashi, Haruno Sakura, Uzumaki Naruto, Uchiha Sasuke
• Additional Tags: Violence, Murder, Fountain of Youth, Immortality, Moral Ambiguity, Alternate Universe – Canon Divergence, Part 1 of an Incomplete Series
• Part 1 of “But the blood on my hands scares to me death” Series.
• Also on AO3 and FF.net.

Author’s Note: Please heed the warnings and tags. The fic and act titles are from the song Broken Crown by Mumford and Sons. This is a prologue of sorts, more a background, for part 2 of the series I am working on called “But the blood on my hands scares me to death” Series.

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i will not speak of your sin

Act 1: Kakashi + the pull on my flesh was just too strong

Echoes of his dragging feet are all that he could hear inside the cave. Not his ragged breathes nor the patter of his blood dripping on the smooth rock floor. This is normal. For him that is. Self-censoring of his wounds, and desensitization of his injuries are normal for Anbu Captain Hatake Kakashi.

This is his 113th scroll retrieval mission in his entire career since he was six. The 34th S-Rank mission since he was thirteen. And overall, his 886th mission done exactly on his 21st birthday.

Kakashi doesn’t celebrate it. Not when he is deep inside a cave that the light outside doesn’t reach him, and he is completely bathed in darkness and blood.

Enemy blood, his blood, it doesn’t matter. He only has basic healing skills he copied from field medics, not enough to completely close the bigger wounds. Not enough chakra for the smaller ones either.

Slumping on his back on a jutting rock, Kakashi removes his Anbu mask. He breathes but the air gets stuck in his throat when blood surges up from his wounded stomach. Coughing, he presses on the slash wound on his thigh, the spot where a major artery is. The blood is sluggish as it oozes out.

He truly is at his limit. Heaving himself up on his remaining strength, Kakashi trudges to the edge of the cave and discovers a fountain with a pool of freshwater.

He kneels just at the edge of the pool where he pulls down his mask, cups his palms to bring the liquid to his lips, and drinks. He drinks just one gulp because it is enough. The cool touch almost like a balm directly to his soul.

He begins to drift into unconsciousness when his wet fingers start to glow. He is too far gone to marvel at this strange sight, eyes sliding shut as the feeling of falling into the pool envelops him.

Kakashi sleeps.

He wakes up without a scratch and heads home to report his successful retrieval. He doesn’t mention the fountain in the cave. Not when the pool dried up and the cave collapsed the moment he stepped out of it.

There is no evidence of this miracle. He goes on with his life as if he didn’t drink from the fountain at all.

Act 2: Sakura and Kakashi + i’ll never be your chosen one

Sakura is deep in a nightmare and all Kakashi can see is her. Despite the battle raging behind them, all he can focus on is Sakura. Her face scrunched up in anguish even in her sleep. He can’t shake her out of it. Sasuke has buried her too deep in the genjutsu. All Kakashi can do is let it play out and promise himself to be there for her when she wakes up.

He gently brushes her dust riddled hair away from her face. Kakashi thinks it’s his fault she had to experience this, his fault that Sasuke and Naruto are at each other’s throats.

He hadn’t been a good sensei. Hadn’t been the ideal one from the beginning either, but he took them in. Saw their teamwork as something he can foster and grow. But somewhere along the way he fucked up. Somewhere along the way, he could have done something that didn’t rip his three students into this mess.

When the time comes, it will always be their blood on his hands even if he wasn’t the one to end them. 

Unlike how he ended Rin. The old blood that’s forever stuck on his palms.

Now out of chakra and physical strength completely used up, he can’t come between Sasuke and Naruto this time. They’ve surpassed him and this is how far he’ll go. He can do nothing more for them.

The sky lights up with Naruto’s rasengan and Sasuke’s chidori. Kakashi closes his eyes. It’s finally happening. He truly doesn’t know who will come out alive in this.

All he can do at the moment was listen to the sound of flesh and bone giving way to a thousand birds chirping.

Act 3: Sakura + cause when i open my body i breathe a lie

Kakashi tells her about Naruto fleeing from Sasuke’s body. He tells her that it was the retractable kunai from inside the orange jacket that finally ended Sasuke’s life.

Not the clones. Not the kyuubi. Especially not the rasengan. Never the rasengan.

He tells Sakura that Naruto doesn’t want to come home to Konoha anymore. Not when Sasuke had been his home, however fucked up their relationship had been.

Sakura only nods and stares at Sasuke’s bloody eye sockets, where the rinnegan and sharingan had once been.

Where a bloody kunai had once been.

She asks where Naruto could have gone. Kakashi answers with a shake of his head.

“He’s safer out there than in the village. No one in this world can defeat Uzumaki Naruto.” He tells her.

Kakashi watches her walk away from Sasuke’s body without a second glance.

Act 4: Naruto and Sasuke + i’ll be home safe and tucked away

He arrives at the cave behind the Valley of the End’s massive falls. Naruto heavy in his arms. He knows what he has to do. The fountain calls to him.

Kakashi travels through the dark cavern, trying desperately to ignore the hole in the blonde’s chest; where his heart is.

Where his heart isn’t; because only Kakashi knows what the hole means. What Sasuke did. Why Naruto let him.

The same with what Kakashi did. Why Rin let him.

No echoes of his dragging feet could be heard inside the cave. Only his imagination of Naruto’s ragged breathes, and the patter of the blonde’s pulsing blood dripping on the smooth rock floor.

This isn’t normal. For him that is. Imagination of Naruto’s still bleeding wounds, and fantasies of live injuries, aren’t normal for Jounin Sensei Hatake Kakashi.

But it is happening. Kakashi desperately wants it to happen because he can’t stand the feeling of Naruto’s cold unresponsive body weighing so much more in his arms.

If the fountain is calling to him the same way it did back then, then Naruto wasn’t meant to die. The fountain can still fix him.

Kakashi sees the same fountain and pool at the end of the cave. This time though, it glows and he hurriedly lays Naruto inside the pool. The water glows brighter and swallows him to the depths.

Kakashi waits.

And waits.

But Naruto doesn’t return.

The fountain dries up, and there isn’t a single strand of blonde hair on the empty cave floor.

Kakashi stands in the darkness for a long time. Soul completely betrayed.

That one gulp of water had a price.

It had only called him to settle his debt.

Naruto wasn’t meant to live afterall.

Kakashi leaves the cave, doesn’t look back as he hears it collapse. He comes back to Sasuke, only bruised not wounded, lying in a crater because Naruto could never ever kill him.

“Where is he?” Sasuke asks, staring at the sky with those eyes that can bring the world to its knees.

“Home,” Kakashi answers softly, approaching this lost boy and placing a hand on his shoulder. “You can come home too.”

“But Naruto’s not there.”

“No,” Kakashi sighs tiredly as he pulls a tale-old weight from his holster. “He isn’t.”

It’s a kunai that sends Sasuke home.

Kakashi wipes the weapon on his sleeve before holstering it in a practiced move. He hurries back to Sakura. He promised himself that when she wakes up he’ll be there afterall.

Act 5: Kakashi + but in this twilight our choices seal our fate

She says she can hear Naruto call her sometimes. Kakashi does too but he doesn’t tell her. There are so many things he doesn’t tell her now.

“He’s out there. Naruto is meant to live.” He tells her, and that’s the snap of the last of his tethers coming undone. She’s the last one. The last one who can pull him back.

She refuses to stay once Konoha is on her feet. Kakashi can’t blame her. This is another student who comes running out the gates for someone who’s not coming back. Because Sasuke never did in the end.

Naruto was what tied the four of them together. Kakashi wonders if anyone would be surprised that Minato’s son was the first to be cut off. Sasuke was to be expected. Nobody wanted him as much as Naruto. He was bound to drop with or without Naruto.

But Sakura, Sakura wasn’t meant to be chased away, and yet. . .

Kakashi understands why she’s leaving, but it’s irreconcilable with what he did, and what he wants to happen, and what should have been. He understands, despite it all; and so, he signs her passport and immunity papers.

He lets go of her too; because when the time comes, it will be her blood in his hands. Like with Sasuke’s eyes, and Naruto’s life. One way or another he is cursed to kill his tethers, cursed to outlive them all.

It’s something he will have to live with for the rest of eternity. Nowhere in the future will he speak of his sin.

Nowhere in the future will you see him buried.

All because Hatake Kakashi drank from the fountain of youth.