Chapter Text
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Everything hurt. Everything burned.
And of course — of course — everything had gone wrong again.
Why would life ever give Hatake kakashi a win?
He staggered, breath hitching, metallic blood filling his mouth as he dragged in air that refused to stay in his lungs. An S-rank ANBU mission, and he wasn’t supposed to mess it up. He wasn’t supposed to let anyone die. He wasn’t supposed to fail.
I always fail.
The clearing was silent except for the drip-drip-drip of blood. His team, kids just a year or two older than him, lay around him like broken dolls, their bodies cooling, eyes staring at nothing. Crimson spread over the dirt, soaking into the soil.
Kakashi, like every damned time, was the last one still standing.
Barely.
His knees trembled. His vision ghosted in and out, the world tilting and doubling. His chakra reserves were beyond empty, hollowed out, scraped clean. His Sharingan flickered helplessly, nothing more than a dim, aching ember behind his mask.
He clutched the scroll in his remaining hand so tightly it dug into his skin. Surrounded. Outnumbered. Out of chakra. No escape routes left.
Not that he cared about living.
He just… couldn’t let the mission fail. Not when his team had died for it.
Not when he carried a name already smeared with disappointment.
Not when he’d sworn he’d never be like his father.
“Hatake fucking Kakashi,” a voice drawled, snapping the thin thread of silence.
“Copy Ninja of Konohagakure no sato… who would’ve thought I’d get the privilege of killing you? Guess the gods really do favor me.”
The Iwagakure squad leader stepped forward, grinning, certain of victory. Certain Kakashi was finished.
Maybe he was.
But Kakashi would never…never, let someone like this peace of shit, reach Konoha’s intel.
Over my corpse, he thought. Which was convenient, because he was already halfway there.
Slowly, deliberately, he shoved the scroll beneath his flak vest. His fingers slipped on his sword hilt from blood, but he tightened his grip and drew it, the blade whispering free.
His ANBU mask glinted under the unstable moonlight. His Sharingan flared weakly, straining, desperate, refusing to give up even as Kakashi’s body begged to collapse…
They clashed in less than a heartbeat.
Steel against steel, fast, vicious, echoing in the blood-soaked clearing. The Iwa-nin wasn’t stupid. He didn’t underestimate Kakashi for a second. He attacked with everything he had.
Too bad everything he had was nothing compared to what Kakashi could’ve done on a full night’s sleep. With chakra. With strength. With anything besides this shaking, half-dead shell of a body.
When was the last time I slept? Four days? Five? Doesn’t matter.
Just finish this. Then you can die.
Kakashi slipped under the enemy’s blade, pivoted, and drove a brutal kick into the man’s gut, sending him crashing backward, skidding through dirt and broken stone.
Another shadow moved. Kakashi spun, too slow, and only barely dodged the next strike, the blade whistling past his cheek. He retaliated on instinct, sword flashing. A clean arc. A head hit the ground before the body did.
But he didn’t turn fast enough.
Pain exploded through his gut as a sword buried itself deep into him, metal grinding against bone.
He hissed through gritted teeth, swallowing the blood rising in his throat.
He twisted the sword in his grip, reversed it, and drove the blade into the attacker’s throat before the man could retreat. Warm blood sprayed across his mask.
Two down.
Three left.
He didn’t even have time to think about the steel still lodged in his abdomen before a wall of earth roared toward him and a second opponent lunged with kunai drawn.
Kakashi moved on instinct, body screaming, vision tunneling, and rushed straight toward the jutsu user. Ninjutsu specialists were always weaker in close combat. And this one clearly hadn’t expected someone so broken to charge him head-on.
One strike. One heartbeat. One kill.
The man collapsed, lifeless.
Two left.
Kakashi staggered, breath ragged. His vision pulsed and blurred. His knees trembled.
Hot blood soaked his stomach, trickling down his leg in thick, sickening warmth.
I can do this. Just a little longer.
His Sharingan caught the next attack, a blade arcing toward his ribs, but his body was too slow. Too heavy. Too broken.
The sword drove into his chest.
His vision went white.
Two fucking swords. In him.
He choked on blood, stumbled back, but somehow—somehow—killed the attacker before the man could yank the blade free.
One left.
Why am I still alive? Why am I still breathing? Just fall. Just stop.
But his body dragged itself forward anyway. Some stupid, stubborn instinct refusing to die until the mission was done.
The last man, the one Kakashi had kicked earlier, charged.
Kakashi raised his sword to block.
His hand trembled, too tired to move fast enough.
With a single brutal swing, the enemy sliced clean through his right arm.
For a split second, there was no sound.
Then…
A wet, sickening thud.
Blood pattering onto dirt.
His own severed arm hitting the ground.
A strangled scream clawed up his throat, but he bit it down, bit it bloody. He stumbled backward, dizzy, vision flickering.
He could hear his own blood dripping. Steady. Rhythmic.
It made him sick.
“Well now,” the Iwa-nin sneered, overconfident, relaxed. “Impressive. Truly. You lived up to your reputation, Hatake. But this is where it ends.”
He charged carelessly, too sure of his victory.
Kakashi didn’t know how he did it.
He had no idea how he was still on his feet. How a sixteen-year-old boy with his right arm severed, swords jutting from his gut and chest, chakra scraped down to nothing, and blood flooding his lungs could still move, could still think, could still fight. He should’ve collapsed.
He should’ve died minutes ago. And yet his left hand rose, trembling violently, fingers curling as lightning flickered to life in his palm. No seals. No preparation. Just raw instinct.
Maybe it was adrenaline. Maybe the brain’s final, frantic gasp for survival. Or maybe—just maybe—it was the last burning drop of the Will of Fire, refusing to let him fall before the mission was done. Before he took revenge of his teammates.
Whatever it was, it dragged Chidori into existence, wild and furious, turning a dying boy into a weapon one final time.
Kakashi surged forward with a broken, desperate roar.
And in the final second, before his legs gave out, before darkness swallowed him…
his hand punched through the man’s chest.
He felt the enemy’s heart crush between his fingers.
And then…
Silence.
Kakashi stood swaying over the corpses, some wearing Konoha’s symbol, some Iwa’s. He could feel warm blood dripping off him, couldn’t tell whose it was.
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
There was no version of this where he survived.
Not with two swords buried in his torso.
Not with his right hand severed somewhere behind him.
Not with his chakra gone.
And honestly?
Good.
He’d bought enough time. Reinforcements would find the scroll. The mission would succeed. For once, he hadn’t failed someone.
So he could finally…
Finally…
Stop.
Maybe I’ll see you, Obito, he thought, numb and strangely relieved. You better punch me for taking so long.
A hollow laugh scraped past his throat as he collapsed forward, the swords inside him driving deeper. He didn’t feel a thing. His body was beyond pain.
He closed his eye.
And for the first time in two years… for the first time since Namikaze Minato’s blood stained the ground…
Hatake Kakashi let go.
A filthy death, surrounded by the bodies of his comrades and enemies alike.
Exactly the kind of ending a boy like him deserved.
———
Pain.
God, the pain.
It tore through him like fire licking up dry kindling, greedy and merciless. Every nerve in Kakashi’s body screamed, as if someone had peeled his chest open and left the wound to burn in open air.
He tried to breathe, failed, and the next inhale raked through him like claws. His lungs spasmed, wet and useless, and a raw cough ripped out of his throat, spraying blood over his own chin.
I can’t… breathe…
Black dots pulsed, blooming at the edges.
His whole body shivered violently. He was freezing. His fingers tingled, numb and distant, as if they didn’t belong to him anymore. Everything below his waist felt… gone. Hollow. Dead weight.
So this is it. Finally… dying.
A bitter, weak laugh bubbled in his chest but never made it past his lips.
He always thought he could handle pain, he’d been trained to, raised on it, lived with it like a second skin. But this? This was worse. So much worse. It hurt so much he couldn’t even think straight; he just wanted it to stop. Wanted the world to go dark already.
But something was wrong.
He could still feel someone’s chakra pressed warm against his skin. Steady, familiar, heartbreakingly gentle.
A healer?
Why?
Why are they trying to save me? Just… let me go.
Noise blurred together around him. Voices, footsteps, shouting. Everything sounded far away, as if he were underwater. Maybe it was the blood ringing in his ears. Maybe it was because he was screaming too, though he didn’t remember opening his mouth.
“….losing him!”
“Water! He’s bleeding out…”
“Anija, please save him…”
He tried to force his eyes open. Only one obeyed. The other, someone was pressing something hard against his left eye. His vision swam, doubled, fractured.
And…fuck…
He was crying.
Hot tears blurred what little he could see, rolling down his temples. Disgust twisted in his stomach.
Pathetic. Dying and crying like a child. Good job, Kakashi. Real ANBU material.
He tried lifting his hand, nothing. His arm felt like stone, heavy and distant. But whoever hovered above him noticed and caught his limp fingers in both of their hands.
Warm hands.
Bigger than his.
Gentle in a way nobody ever was with him.
His breath hitched.
Wait. My right hand…?
Reality slipped. Melted. Reformed wrong.
“Nii…san…” Kakashi slurred, the word barely escaping between blood-choked breaths.
Nii-san? Brother?
He didn’t have a brother.
So why did the word feel right?
Someone cupped his face, thumb brushing away his tears with heartbreaking softness.
“Please… please, Himura, stay with us,” a shaking voice begged.
Himura?
Kakashi tried to focus, but the world spun violently. His body was giving up, limbs cold, heartbeat stumbling, ears drowning in a high-pitched ringing.
Warmth seeped out of him with every passing second.
The last thing he saw before the world finally collapsed into itself was the terrified face of a boy, snow-white hair, red eyes shining with panic, leaning over him.
“Himura!”
And then Kakashi finally slipped under.
Finally died.
Or at least… that’s what he thought.
———
His mind was in ruins.
Images—no, memories—flashed and shattered and reformed too fast to grasp, a violent carousel spinning behind his eyes. Kakashi couldn’t focus on a single one before it tore away, replaced by another. Faces. Screams. Blood. Snow. A child’s voice. A child’s fear.
Memories that weren’t his.
Memories of a boy.
A terrified, hurting boy.
Senju Himura.
A child thrown out of his own home. A child forced to serve his own family like a nameless servant because he couldn’t mold chakra like the others. A child erased from history despite being the brother, blood brother, of the First and Second Hokage.
And then…
The last memory.
The worst one.
Fire. Smoke. A battlefield ripped apart by the three different clans. Bodies everywhere. And Himura, shaking so violently his teeth clattered, charging into the chaos even though he didn’t know how to fight. Even though he had never been trained. Even though he was already halfway broken.
Three attackers closing in on Tobirama’s unguarded back.
And Himura, tiny, terrified, useless Himura, throwing himself in front of them.
Why?
Because Tobirama’s life was worth a hundred, a thousand times more. Because Tobirama was his brother. Because he was the other half of him.
And then…
Death.
A scream. A blade. A flash of white hair and red eyes.
Then nothing.
⸻
Kakashi jerked awake with a ragged gasp, chest heaving, sweat dripping down his face.
He forced himself upright with a groan, pain tearing through his stomach like a hot knife. His hand flew instinctively to the wound, and landed on thick bandages. A damp cloth slid off his forehead and dropped onto his lap.
Blinking hard, he looked around. His left eye burned as he struggled to focus… and that’s when he realized the left side of his face was wrapped tight. Bandaged. Covered.
He didn’t need a mirror to know what that meant.
His Sharingan was gone.
And without his mask, his face felt naked. Exposed. Wrong.
For a few stunned seconds he simply stared at his hands, at the blanket over his legs, trying to ignore the pounding, skull-splitting headache threatening to hollow him out from the inside.
When he finally lifted his gaze, he noticed the room was nearly empty. A high window spilled pale light across tatami flooring. Beside him sat a bucket of water and a box filled with bloody bandages.
Pain stabbed deeper in his gut, and he sucked in a sharp breath, then slowly lowered himself back down.
Where was he?
How was he alive?
And… his right arm.
The arm that had been severed.
It moved. Smoothly. Effortlessly. No scars. No pain. As if it had never been cut at all.
Not even the legendary Tsunade could have reattached a limb this perfectly.
His stomach twisted.
He tried to reach for chakra…
just a small flare, a pulse, anything…
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
All he could sense was a pathetic flicker, barely enough to stand on water, let alone fight. It felt like someone had ripped the core out of him and left a hollow shell behind.
Maybe the Iwa-nin had gotten to him first. Maybe they’d sealed his chakra. But there were no sealing marks anywhere on his body. And no captor in their right mind would leave a prisoner like him unattended in an unlocked room.
And his body…
It didn’t feel like his.
Too whole. Too unscarred. Too wrong.
Footsteps echoed outside the sliding door, and Kakashi’s body tensed automatically. Training took over. Panic sharpened.
His hand shot toward his leg, reaching for a kunai that wasn’t there.
Of course it wasn’t.
Even if it had been, he was so weak that a toddler could probably finish him right now.
“Do you think he’s awake?” a woman’s voice whispered.
“I doubt it. But gods, I hope he wakes up soon. Butsuma-sama can’t handle having him in the house any longer. Ever since the incident, the main household’s been in constant chaos.”
Kakashi’s brow twitched.
Were they talking about him?
The door slid open, and two women in simple clothing stepped inside. They froze mid-breath, eyes widening as if they’d seen a ghost.
“Himura-sama! You’re awake!”
Kakashi blinked at them.
“Hurry! Someone go inform Hashirama-sama!”
His blood ran ice cold.
Hashirama?
Senju Hashirama?
Like… The First Hokage? The god of shinobi?
And then the memories slammed back into him all at once, violent, crushing, suffocating.
Faces that weren’t his.
A name that wasn’t his.
A death that wasn’t his.
Himura.
Oh god.
No.
No no no no…