#of humble origins and born of the cursed sex | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

anyon-else · 1 year ago

Text

Of Humble Origins and Born of the Cursed Sex (The Red Room pt.12) | After seven months, Kakashi and Naruto finally find you in an abandoned HYDRA outpost. However, you're not the same person that they remember. (Marvel AU) – spotify playlist | read on ao3

Pairings | Kakashi Hatake x Black Widow!Reader + Sakura Haruno, Sasuke Uchiha, Naruto Uzumaki, Ino Yamanaka, Orochimaru, Kabuto Yakushi

Warnings | female!reader, ANGST, brainwashing, torture, electrification, violence, weapons

Word count | 6.7k

(previous chapter) | (next chapter) | (series masterlist)

"I am someone who did not die when I should have died."

Anne Carson, Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides

Six months ago

My girls will change the world.

You're useless to me now.

Be proud to call yourself a Black Widow.

You're even useless as a lab rat.

You will build me an empire.

Killing you now would be too merciful.

I'll teach you how to kill. I'll teach you everything I know.

I'll teach you how to be human.

I will take care of you until you're no longer of use to me.

I can protect you both.

Don't fail me.

Don't do this.

"I'm sorry, Kakashi," you whispered, reaching out into a sea of memories and grasping at nothing but water that spilled between your fingers. Each of your memories felt impossibly far, and all you could do was watch helplessly as they fell away into a vast emptiness that was quickly consuming your mind. You saw flashes of pink and yellow and grey. You pictured smiles that appeared on ghosts and heard familiar laughter that echoed within your thoughts. You felt taunted by it.

But you were tired. Far too tired to do anything but watch as each of your most precious memories fell into oblivion. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I failed. I'm sorry."

Your mouth was moving without your permission, repeating words that you hoped would bring an end to the pain. Words that would make a difference if they were the ones he wanted to hear.

But he didn’t want apologies. He wanted submission.

He leaned over you, silver hair reflecting the light shining down on you. His eyes were harder than steel and his mouth was twisted into a grimace that you could clearly see through the thin black cloth of his mask. The expression looked wrong on him, and for a moment you remembered that this wasn't the true face of the man standing above you. It was a trick. Orochimaru...this was Orochimaru. He was tricking you—trying to confuse you. Kakashi wasn't here. He wasn't hurting you—he wouldn’t hurt you

But the thought slipped away as quickly as it had come, and after another shock of electricity made your limbs seize and your back arch against the unforgiving steel below you, it was Kakashi's face that you saw staring down at you.

You knew Kakashi. You held onto his memory like a vice. But as each day passed, you wondered why you were clinging so tightly to the memory of someone who was so cruel towards you.

It was his face you saw each time you felt that aching, raging pain in your head. It was his eyes that watched as the pain spread throughout the rest of your body. It was his smile that you stared at each day as hope drained from your limbs and left you a lifeless husk of a Widow.

Kakashi had betrayed you. And as each day passed with no respite or relief, you felt that betrayal turn into rage. Rage at the world. Rage at HYDRA.

Rage at Kakashi.

"Please..."

I'll teach you how to be human.

"Useless," Kakashi muttered, repeating the word that you'd heard countless times since this began and feeling it like a knife in your chest. The pain wouldn't stop. Not if you kept failing.

But he wouldn't tell you what he wanted. You would do anything he asked if he would only make this pain go away.

I can protect you.

"Again."

Electricity flooded you once more, and the silver hair taking up your field of vision blurred behind a blanket of tears.

You're not a lost cause

Words that you barely remembered now had been your anchor for so long, but you were starting to wonder why you were holding on so tightly. Maybe letting them slip through your fingers would be easier.

As the memories that you once considered the most precious ones you possessed floated into an abyss within your mind, you wondered why you had ever tried to hold onto them in the first place.

Don't do this.

Cold fingers gripped your face, and you looked at Kakashi's cruel eyes staring down at you. His fingers tightened on your cheeks

"Let me go," you mumbled, feeling a cold shock of fear as you looked into the steely face of your tormentor, "don't touch me."

Behind his mask, Kakashi's lips split into a grin, and you pressed yourself against the metal beneath you in an attempt to put distance between his unrelating grip and your face. His nails dug into your exposed skin, and you felt blood bloom through the cuts that formed as he gripped your face tighter and tighter.

Pain erupted in your chest once again. You closed your eyes and reached for an anchor and found nothing but darkness.

You wondered why you felt as if something was missing. You wondered why looking at Kakashi’s face above you each time the pain stopped felt so wrong.

But wondering was becoming exhausting. Instead of pondering on the answers, you let the questions slip far, far away.

Kakashi's circumstances had given him ample experience with suppressing his emotions.

It wasn't a skill he'd gained willingly. After so much loss and death, shutting out emotional responses to crises was almost instinctual. He felt that same instinct creeping towards him as he watched his bullet sliced through the air in near slow motion.

You didn't move. For a moment, he wondered if the world had frozen around him. Maybe it would give him a second chance and allow him to reach Naruto before the boy even found you.

Instead, the bullet continued on its path towards your hand, which moved only slightly, but not quick enough to be out of range. The movement gave Naruto enough time to dive to the ground, but neither he nor you had to worry about where the bullet would end up.

It hit the wrong target, lodging into the shoulder of a new figure that shot out in front of you.

Despite the force of the bullet entering her shoulder, Ino stood in front of you like a steel wall, blocking you from Kakashi's field of vision. Kakashi took in a deep, barely controlled breath and tried not to let his relief show on his face.

You and Ino both watched as Naruto scrambled to his feet and rushed towards Kakashi. The boy moved as fast as he could while running backwards and keeping his eyes locked on Ino and the gun that she was prying from your iron-tight grip.

Ino groaned, clutching her bleeding shoulder but remaining still and sturdy in front of you. Kakashi strained to get a glimpse of your face; any hint as to what you were thinking would satisfy him, but Ino let out a snarl when she realized what he was doing.

"You're so stupid," she growled, "why would you do that?"

Kakashi opened his mouth to respond—to tell her that you were very clearly bracing yourself to pull the trigger and kill Naruto, but the words got lodged in his throat when he heard a pained grunt come from behind the blonde girl's rigid body. Ino froze, attention shifting away from Kakashi immediately as she turned towards the source of the sound. The movement gave Kakashi enough of a glimpse to understand what had happened.

The bullet's trajectory had shifted. What was originally intended to hit your hand had changed its course through Ino's shoulder and ended up lodged in your chest.

"Ino," you muttered, emotionless and robotic. Ino cursed, removing her hands from her shoulder and letting them hover over your bloody shirt. Even from a distance, Kakashi could see that her fingers were beginning to tremble, "sorry, Ino. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize, idiot," Ino shook her head, though the words were muttered with little malice. Instead, Kakashi saw deep concern in Ino's furrowed brows and the gentle movement of her hands. She tore away your shirt to reveal your bloody hand covering the wound, both it and your chest already coated with blood.

Deja vu tore into Kakashi like a knife in his stomach, ripping away at him and punishing him for all of the people he had hurt. The seeds of sorrow and guilt that had taken root when he couldn't stop you from leaving began to climb between his ribs and up his throat. The vines and leaves choked him and the thorns slied him open from the inside and he had to fight to keep himself steady.

You looked completely void of any emotion. Like the body he was seeing was simply a vessel, and you were somewhere deep inside of it, protecting yourself from the rest of the world and allowing your limbs to move on autopilot.

"Hey," Ino snapped, glaring your bloody fingers and scowling at the lack of response she got. "Stop it. You're only going to make it worse."

Kakashi could see blood oozing between your fingers in a dark red stream. It took a few moments for him to realize why Ino was chastising you—you had begun digging your fingers into the broken flesh, and blood was gushing from the wound faster than Ino could manage.

She pried your tense fingers away from where they were clutching your bleeding chest, finally giving her a good view of the damage that the bullet had done.

Kakashi hoped that it looked worse than it actually was.

He saw Naruto flinch from the corner of his eye, and he could practically feel the anger radiating off of the boy.

"What is this?" Naruto rumbled, hands curled into fists at his sides as he stared at you and Ino, "what happened?"

Kakashi shook his head, watching helplessly as Ino lifted your shirt over your head and pressed it firmly against your chest. You raised a hand automatically to hold the bloody cloth to your wound, eyes still clouded and distant.

"I can't believe this," Ino was grumbling, shaking her head like a disappointed parent as she stood and wrapped her own shirt around her shoulder to try and stop her bleeding. Within a few moments, she was kneeling at your side again. "I spend all this time trying to convince her that—hey, hey! Stay with me."

Your head was lolling to the side, and Ino's stoic expression finally broke. Fear etched across her features as her frown deepened, eyes widening each time you almost lost consciousness.

"Shit," Ino snapped, tapping your cheek and cursing again when she got no response. Kakashi stepped forward, finally allowing himself to close the gap between you. "You have a hospital, right?"

Kakashi nodded.

"Good. We're going there."

Kakashi swallowed thickly, wide eyes watching you try not to pass out as Ino gently coached you. He could still feel Naruto at his back, silently seething at the state they'd found you in.

It had been so long. So long since he'd seen you. Since he'd even known whether you were alive.

He watched the rise and fall of your chest intently, counting your shallow breaths and holding his own after each of your unsteady exhales, afraid that you would stop moving altogether the second he looked away.

He had done this to you. If you didn't wake up, it wouldn't be because of Orochimaru or HYDRA or any other threats that he desperately wanted you to be free from.

It would be his fault. His hands that ended your life.

"Kakashi-sensei," Naruto said lowly, voice sounding far away in Kakashi's distraction, "we found her."

Kakashi froze, eyes on his student as he radiated silent, tense anger. That was anger for you. Naruto didn't fear you anymore—not like he did the first time you met. Now he knew your heart, and he knew that this was not the same person who had left to protect them all. Something had happened, and it was obvious that they were missing crucial pieces of the past six months.

But through the worry and the questions and the endless guilt that plagued him, one thought brought Kakashi enough relief to get him moving towards the jet.

Finally.

Sasuke could tell that something was off even before he entered the conference room with Sakura.

Kakashi had told them nothing about how he and Naruto's mission had gone. In fact, Sasuke hadn't seen either of them in the hours since they'd returned. All he and Sakura knew was that it hadn't gone as planned, that neither of them were hurt, and that Sasuke and Sakura needed to wait a few hours before they could hear about it.

The waiting gave Sasuke a lot of time to wonder what could have happened on such a routine mission to cause this kind of delay.

"Do you think...maybe they found–"

"Don't," Sakura held a hand up. The two were standing in front of the closed conference room door listening to the muffled voices coming from inside. Sasuke heard Kakashi's voice, low and monotone, and he steeled himself for a worst case scenario.

Missions like this never went wrong. He honestly felt that calling it a mission was too generous. It was more of a training exercise to get Naruto more familiar with field work that didn't involve fighting. Naruto was talented—something that had only recently gotten easier for Sasuke to admit—but stealth wasn't exactly his strongest trait. That was why Kakashi chose an abandoned HYDRA outpost—to give Naruto some low-intensity field training.

Sasuke had looked into location himself. It was used for research in the eighties, but it was abandoned only a decade after it was built because of a data leak and subsequent raid by SHIELD. It was the perfect place to teach Naruto the finer points of stealth missions.

So, taking all of that into account, Sasuke was having a hard time understanding what had gone wrong.

"You two can come in," Kakashi said, voice muffled through the door. He sounded exhausted.

Sakura didn't hesitate to push the door open, but she stopped the second she got a good look at the room.

Sasuke immediately tensed when he saw a stranger sitting casually across from Kakashi and Naruto. She didn't look hostile, but Sasuke knew from experience how deceiving looks could be.

But judging from Sakura's expression, she knew who this woman was.

"Ino?" Sakura croaked, taking a small step forward before thinking better of it and waiting where she had easy access to the doorway, "what....what are you doing here?"

"Sakura," the stranger—Ino—said with a nod and poorly hidden relief.

Sasuke could immediately tell how much Ino was hiding from Sakura.

"It has...I can't believe—I mean, you're here. How...not that I'm not happy to see you, but I–"

Ino stood when Sakura began rambling out questions, and by the time she had begun asking the third, Ino had wrapped her arms around the girl and pulled her into a tight hug. Sasuke tensed, but Kakashi shot him a sharp look that told him not to interfere.

Ino grunted when Sakura lifted her arms to reciprocate the affection, masking her pained expression with a smile. Sakura backed away and narrowed her eyes, giving Ino a long look before her eyes shifted to Ino's shoulder.

"What happened?"

"It's nothing to worry about," Ino shook her head, sitting back down across from Kakashi and rolling her shoulder back, "there are other things that we need to talk about first."

Sakura was spiraling. Sasuke could see how overwhelmed she was without even seeing her face, and he stepped beside her.

"What's this about, Kakashi-sensei?"

"You should both sit down."

"Who is that?"

"Sasuke, now's not the time–"

"We found Y/N!"

Silence fell over the room. Kakashi deflated, running a hand over his face and confirming Naruto's statement with a small nod.

Sasuke swallowed. His throat felt like sandpaper. He fought the urge to turn to Sakura.

It had been seven months. Seven months since they'd gotten any answers. Any hint of what had happened to you.

"Where?" Sakura asked, leaning forward with her hands on the table and her wide eyes trained on Ino. "Where is she?"

"She's in the infirmary, but–"

Sakura was already moving, one hand on the door handle by the time Kakashi and Ino reached her. Kakashi grabbed her arm to halt her movements while Ino kicked a heel in front of the opening door, forcing Sakura to still.

"You can't see her right now."

"Why not?" Sakura asked, deathly calm and steadier than Sasuke felt. However, upon closer inspection, Sasuke saw that she looked moments away from losing her composure. Sasuke chanced a glance at Naruto, but his friend just stared at Sakura, devastation clear in is expression.

"I'll explain why," Ino said pointedly, glancing between Sakura and an empty chair next to Kakashi, "but you need to calm down and listen."

Sakura was practically shaking, hands balled into fists and trembling like she was seconds away from punching through a wall to get past Ino. Sasuke was not unconvinced that she could manage it.

"Sit down, Sakura," Ino ordered, finally getting the girl to back into the chair that Kakashi was pulling out for her.

"I guess there's no point in trying to hide things now, "Ino swallowed. "I've been working for Orochimaru since he left HYDRA."

Sasuke only knew about Ino from Kakashi's explanation of what had happened on your mission. He had no reason to trust her, and he certainly wasn't going to start after hearing this.

Kakashi had likely accounted for that when he placed Sasuke next to Naruto. He had his hands on Sasuke's shoulders before he could even stand to leap for Ino. Sasuke was shoved back into his seat and given a hard pat on the shoulder. He stayed pinned there by Kakashi's glare and Sakura's shockingly unfazed expression.

"I shot Y/N under HYDRA's orders, but if I hadn't been working for him, I would've killed her. HYDRA wanted her dead. It was Orochimaru who told me to keep her alive."

"Why?" Sakura choked, "Ino, what happened?"

"I told her that the bullet I shot her with was poisoned, and that the syringe I gave her contained an antidote, but that was a lie. The 'antidote' was actually a tracker. That's how Orochimaru knew where Kakashi's house was."

Kakashi had apparently not been informed of that fact yet, and this time it was Sakura holding him in place. She was squeezing it far too tightly for it to possibly be comforting, but shockingly, she looked like the calmest one in the room.

Perhaps she understood Ino's actions better than they ever could. Sasuke wondered if she would've done the same if their positions had been reversed.

"Orochimaru's experiments were all too flawed to be applicable to actual field He could speak and act through them because he was connected directly to their minds, but his control slipped easily, and there was always a point where the subjects essentially became robotic. Orochimaru gave them a command and they carried it out, but they were sloppy. Their performance declined, and trying to give them complex orders was very taxing on Orocihimaru.

"And because he wasn't producing results that would be viable in the field, HYDRA decided that they would only continue to fund his projects if he applied the Winter Soldier program's memory suppressing machine to his experiments. It had already yielded results, and while it wasn't exactly what Orochimaru was working towards, they saw it as a fair compromise. Orochimaru did not.

"He continued the experiments without taking HYDRA's input into consideration. Then he kidnapped Sakura. He thought it would give HYDRA an advantage over someone as important as Kakashi, but all it did was put an unnecessary target on HYDRA's back. But HYDRA only found out about her and his unauthorized experimentation when she and Y/N escaped. Those were his three strikes."

"I knew that Orochimaru had the capability to kill Sakura, so I approached him and offered my services in exchange for her safety. I didn't think..."

Ino looked thoroughly uncomfortable now. They were all vaguely aware of why Orochimaru was removed from the Red Room. None of this was exactly surprising.

It was what came next that was still a mystery.

"I want you all to know that this wasn't what I intended when I made the decisions that I did. But after I started working for Orochimaru, there was nothing I could do. He could've gone to HYDRA and told them that I was a traitor whenever he wanted. I...it was selfish, but–"

"It's okay, Ino," Sakura smiled, though it was obviously forced. She knew better than any of them that Orochimaru was not an easy man to defy, and on top of that HYDRA was a far more terrifying beast when one was put in the position of a double agent.

"He wanted Y/N because, aside from Sakura, she was the only Widow that HYDRA didn't control. He could get to her without having to go through them. He thought that if he brought them a Widow who could be controlled using the memory suppression machine, that they'd give him his position back.

"Wishful thinking," Sasuke muttered. Ino huffed.

"Well," Ino said, "you know as well as I do that Orochimaru is nothing if not stubborn. And he was desperate. Y/N was the only option he had left, and he deluded himself into thinking that anything he tried would be enough. He was also under the impression that the Red Room would fail without him."

"Would it?" Sasuke asked quietly

"No," Ino responded at the same time that Sakura scoffed, "it would do just fine."

"So why did he do all of this if he knew that they might not let him back?"

"Because he's delusional," Sakura answered immediately, "and he thinks he's a God."

"And he never imagined that they wouldn't let him back," Ino added, "but the machine didn't work on Y/N. At least, not in the way it does on the Winter Soldiers.

"The reason that the machine was used in the first place was because the recruits for the Winter Soldier program needed to become blank slates, completely susceptible to suggestion. In simple terms, it uses an outdated form of electrotherapy to wipe the memory of the subject. But Widows are very different. We're taught to be able to withstand torture at the age when normal kids would be learning addition. That was part of the reason why Orochimaru didn't want to use that method in the first place."

"So he knew it wouldn't work?" Naruto asked.

"He had a feeling. At the very least, he knew it wouldn't have the same effect as it does on someone without the Red Room's training. But he hoped that it would...well, for lack of a better word, he hoped it would reprogram her. He saw her as broken because she was able to resist the Red Room's conditioning and escape. He thought that the machine could be a way to bring her back to a state where she would be more susceptible to suggestion. That way he could show HYDRA that he was able to recondition an escaped Widow."

"But it didn't work?" Naruto whispered.

"No," Ino swallowed, "it didn't."

Ino glanced at Kakashi, a nervousness in her expression that made Sasuke uncomfortable. He wasn't sure how much more of this he wanted to hear.

This was the same man who held Sakura hostage for four years. This was the monster that haunted both your and her nightmares.

Sasuke felt his hatred like it was another entity inside of him. He greeted it like an old friend.

"For the first two months, he did the same thing every day. He used the machine, then Orochimaru would ask her questions. About her loyalty, about what she remembered. A lot of the questions centered around Kakashi. He acted like...Kakashi had somehow replaced him."

Sakura shook her head, hands clenched into fists on top of the table. Her hands were trembling with barely suppressed rage, and Sasuke knew that she would be in the gym releasing some of that anger on some poor punching bag after this meeting ended.

Maybe it would do him some good to join her.

"It wasn't pretty. But it also wasn't working. I tried to tell her that...that letting go of you both would make it easier. That it would make the pain stop. But it was like some part of her refused to give in. Even as her memories became scrambled, she still knew that you meant something to her.

"Orochimaru decided to change tactics after he saw how little progress he was making. He figured that, if he wanted her to let go of her sentiments and fully submit, he'd have to make her fear the person she refused to let go of. So he disguised himself as Kakashi and let her see his face each time they used the machine."

Sasuke thought back to the first time he'd seen you, long before he became close to you and certainly before he began trusting you. It was one of the first things he'd heard you say, and it was a warning to Sakura about this very circumstance.

"This is a trick. They’re trying to test our loyalty by showing you someone you trust. They’ve used it on me countless times. You may think you know this man, but you don’t."

"But if it didn't work...why doesn't she recognize me?"

Sasuke flinched. This wasn't fair. None of this was fair.

He wished more than anything that he'd killed Orochimaru when he'd had the chance. The man had been right in front of him the day you left, but he'd been too worried about Sakura to pay attention to anything else.

Guilt consumed him. He couldn't even bring himself to look at Sakura

She must hate you, a voice in the back of his mind whispered, you're no better than–

"Just because it didn't do what Orochimaru hoped doesn't mean it didn't have a significant effect. There's a lot missing from her memory, including any real memories she had with all of you after she escaped. The only reason she remembers Kakashi at all is because she thinks he tortured her."

Kakashi winced, eyes falling shut in the first outward display of emotion that Sasuke had seen from the man since Ino had started talking.

"By the time six months had passed, it was clear that the machine had done more harm than good. She became...a shell of herself. She was no good to Orochimaru if she couldn't hold her own in a fight, and after six months, Orochimaru had lost his leverage and knew that you were going to start searching for him. So he abandoned the experiment and left.

"The outpost you found us at was where Orochimaru was doing the experiment. He left her there and told me that he didn't need me anymore, so I stayed with her to make sure she didn't die. The first week...well, I'll spare you the details, but it wasn't pretty. I forced her to eat, but she didn't sleep for five days."

The silence in the room felt thick enough to choke on. Sasuke felt something within him snap at the sight of his teacher with his head in his hands.

"I tried to convince her that you aren't her enemy," Ino said slowly, looking at Kakashi. He slowly lifted his head to look at her, and Sasuke was alarmed to see that his eyes were glazed over, "but that kind of fear doesn't just go away. I thought I was making at least a bit of progress, and then..."

"Then I shot her," Kakashi murmured. Sasuke watched as far too many emotions crossed over Sakura's face in the few seconds before she turned to look at Kakashi. Anger, grief, understanding, devastation...he wasn't sure which she was going to land on when she finally acknowledged the man sitting next to her, but when she finally looked at him, her face was blank.

"What?" she whispered.

"I..." Kakashi repeated, "I'm sorry, Sakura. I thought she was going to kill Naruto, and I—"

Sakura puts a hand on the man's shoulder, silencing him. Her eyes were wide, moving back and forth as if she was trying to put together this endless puzzle that was becoming more complex by the minute.

"It's okay," she choked, "It'll be okay."

Sasuke knew that neither of them fully believed that.

Sleepless nights were nothing new to Kakashi.

It wasn't insomnia. At least, Kakashi wasn't exactly thrilled with that label. It was more of a choice. Recently, he found that he preferred being tired all day to facing the things that awaited him in his nightmares.

But tonight felt far heavier. He couldn't use Icha Icha to distract himself from the fact that the sun had risen before he had even closed his eyes, and he couldn't bring himself to lift his head from his hands for long enough to focus on anything other than the crushing weight of his guilt.

It's not your fault, Sakura's voice whispered in his head, it'll be okay.

Then he remembered your eyes, wide and terrified and directed at him.

It felt like someone had reached into his chest and crushed his heart in their hands.

It was happening again. He had done nothing but hurt the people he wanted to protect. He had failed Obito and Rin. He'd failed Sakura. And now he was failing you.

And you were within reach now. He could walk across the compound and see you in seconds if he wanted to. And he did want to. More than he thought he'd ever wanted anything.

But you were terrified of him. So terrified that the only thing he could picture when he closed his eyes was your expression when you'd looked at him for the first time in a year.

Some cruel, distant part of him wished that Orochimaru had still been with you when he found you. Just so he could've had the chance to tear the snake apart with his own hands.

It was that thought that encouraged him to leave the solitude of his room and seek a different type of loneliness in the common area. At least there, his thoughts wouldn't be echoing off of the walls of his bedroom.

He glanced down the hall to the room where you were still recovering, sedated and restrained until he could decide how to even begin helping you recover. It was dark save for a dim glow lighting the path for people like him who decided to take late night strolls through the compound. He was quick to walk away from the temptation of visiting you, fighting the strong urge to see for himself that you were safe.

But that would likely lead to more harm than good. Ino kept telling him that you were physically fine and to stop worrying so much, but that felt like an unreasonable thing to ask of him.

What finally broke him out of his spiraling thoughts was a small, almost inaudible gasp that came from the direction of the kitchen.

He would've heard it if Naruto, Sasuke, or Sakura had left their rooms earlier in the night, and Ino was staying in the room across from Sakura's.

His head turned far slower than it would have if he hadn't already put the pieces together.

There was only one other person who had stayed at the compound over night.

You were frozen against the far wall of the kitchen like Kakashi had backed you into it, but you looked anything but frightened. Instead of the shocked, terrified expression that he'd seen before, all he saw now was steely determination.

Then you were on top of him, one hand gripping his wrists above his head while the other reached for something in your back pocket. You put a knee on his stomach to keep him pinned, but he was able to throw you off with a twist of his hips.

This barely phased you, and you were ruthless as you jumped at him again. You kicked at his shins to try and knock him off balance, but he jumped over the attack and dodged the kitchen knife that you were hurtling at him when his feet were back on the ground.

"Does this," Kakashi panted when you landed a jab to his throat, halting his words and his breath for a few moments, "feel familiar at all?"

Your answering snarl felt like a resounding no, so Kakashi kept his defenses up while wondering whether this would end with him incapacitated. He could've called for help from his students—should've, in fact—but he found himself staying silent when the thought crossed his mind.

You didn't show him any mercy, and he realized with a slight feeling of discomfort that you'd been holding back against him when you sparred before. And now, even injured, you had the upper hand. You must've trained extensively in fighting through pain like this—it seemed like something Orochimaru would make you do.

He was beginning to understand why the Widows were so terrifying.

He was also starting to realize you might actually kill him.

Call for help, his mind shouted at him, stop this before she kills you!

But his lips stayed sealed shut.

As far as skill went, you and Kakashi were fairly evenly matched. What gave you the edge over him now was probably pure terror and rage.

Your kicks were something lethal—especially the one you delivered to his stomach, knocking him off balance and landing him on his back.

You didn't waste any time pinning him down again and raising the knife above your head with one hand. The other fell to his throat and squeezed, unrelenting.

"You won't hurt me anymore," you muttered. "I'm going to kill you."

He gasped, choking on air that refused to flow into his lungs. You tightened your hold when you heard the sound, baring your teeth and raising the knife higher.

And higher. And higher.

Then it stopped.

Kakashi felt as if years were passing as he waited for you to kill him. His vision was becoming spotty, and he wondered if he preferred dying before or after he was unconscious.

His students would be well taken care of. He and Guy had given extensive thought to what would happen if either of them could no longer take care of their charges. And, all things considered, Guy was likely a better influence than he was.

He thought of you and hoped that you'd forget him completely. He didn't want you to feel guilty for this.

Each thought crossed his mind, one after another, and still the knife was raised high above your head.

He was so focused on the sharp blade pointed at his neck that it felt like a shock of lightening when a tear landed on his cheek. He thought he'd imagined it until another landed on his lip, and a third on his nose.

Then he looked at you.

Your mouth was set in a hard line, but your face was streaked with fresh tears that continued to fall on him. The knife raised above him was shaking, and your eyes were focused on the hand that you had wrapped around his throat.

Your grip loosened considerably, and he took in a gasping, aching breath.

"Your hand," you whispered, voice cracked and words practically crumbling from your lips like a falling building.

Your eyes were still on his throat. Your fingers were tense on his neck, and his hand was wrapped tightly around your wrist. He hadn't even realized he'd moved it in his desperation for air, but now he understood that it was his hand that you were staring at.

"It's...warm."

For seven months, your mind had been an echo-chamber.

You had a vague idea of the life you'd lived before you'd been strapped into that machine, but most of it felt like whispers from ghosts.

Familiarity redefined itself after you began losing your memories. It became the sudden, paralyzing feeling of electricity shocking you into painful submission. It became Kakashi Hatake's face hovering above you with hard, unforgiving eyes.

It became cold hands touching you. Kakashi's hands, always just as cold as the room you were trapped in.

Those were the familiarities that were trapped in your head. They were the only things that didn't slip away from you. Memories came and went in flashes of pink and yellow and blue. They came to you in kind words coming from a voice you didn't recognize and gentle touches from someone who's face you couldn't see, then fell between your fingers like sand the second you tried to wrap your arms around the memories and hold on as tight as possible.

Pain, cold, and Kakashi. Those were constants.

You grew to hate them. That hatred kept you sane.

It kept you alive.

Eventually, it was what you were forced to hold onto to keep you from slipping into a far-off world that promised protection and safety. You knew that place too well—you recognized it as a sanctuary that you'd been invited to before. But you rejected it, and some distant part of your mind told you that that was what you were supposed to do.

You'd been trained to reject weakness. And you'd rejected that quiet sanctuary in your mind many times before.

You fought hard to hold onto sanity, and your hatred acted as an anchor each time Kakashi's face appeared above you right before electricity ran rampant in your veins. You hated him. You hated him.

But as your tears landed on his face and you stared at the warm hand wrapped around your wrist, you felt your resolve falter. And when you looked in his eyes and saw that same warmth, it crumbled.

Kill him!

The words were rattling through your mind, stuck in an endless loop and trapped within the walls where only your rage existed. Nothing could get in and nothing could get out.

"Look at me."

The command was quiet, but there was force behind it. You found your eyes shifting up to meet his involuntarily, grip loosening on the knife in your hand.

He kept his hand on your wrist and lifted the other to your bicep. You stiffened, but waited until he had wrapped his hand around your arm and pressed his thumb against a scar that you'd forgotten was there.

"I stitched this," he said, shifting his thumb so that he could feel the ridges of the scar, "I was hoping it wouldn't scar as badly as it did. I didn't like seeing you hurt."

"Shut up," you snapped. Your head was aching. His hands were so warm. His eyes were kind.

The familiarity that you'd relied on to survive was gone. Pain had been replaced by gentle hands. Cold fingers were replaced by warm ones.

The only thing that remained was Kakashi, but...the man in front of you wasn't the same one you'd grown to hate. There was something different. His eyes, his hands, his voice...it was all different.

"I'm sorry," he muttered, choking on the words and letting his eyes fall shut. "I'm so sorry I let you go."

Your body was paralyzed. It wouldn't let you move your arm down to sink the knife into his chest. It kept you from ripping his hands off of you. It just kept you...frozen. Vulnerable. Weak

You hated it.

Your head was still pounding like a drumbeat, over and over until you wanted to curl into yourself and let your mind drift away.

"I never will again."

Kakashi's hand shifted away from your arm. It moved up, brushing your shoulder and grazing your jaw until it finally rested on your cheek. With a gentler touch than you'd thought was possible, he brushed a tear off of your skin. Your eyes were wide as he cupped your face in one hand. When he opened his eyes, they were soft and kind and clouded with tears.

They were warm.

Then, like a bullet shattering a sheet of glass, the echo-chamber within your mind shattered with one devastating feeling of familiarity.

You remembered this touch. You remembered this warmth.

The knife slipped from your hand and clattered to the floor.

(previous chapter) | (next chapter) | (series masterlist)

Author's note | FINALLY got this chapter out. thank you guys for waiting longer than usual, i started a study abroad program so the past few months have been very busy. because of that, i can't promise that i will keep to a regular updating schedule but i promise that i am still very invested in this fic and am still planning a sequel series!

this one gave me a run for my money, and it went through about four rewrites before i landed on how i wanted to write some of the scenes. overall though, i'm very happy with how it came out. i hope y'all like the changing perspectives, i literally don't know how to write any other way lmao

let me know what you guys think and please leave me some love if you enjoyed!

title is from "Brutus" by The Buttress

#kakashi #kakashi x reader #kakashi x you #kakashi x y/n #kakashi imagine #kakashi hatake #kakashi hatake x reader #kakashi hatake x you #kakashi hatake x y/n #kakashi hatake imagine #naruto #trr #emwrites

57 notes · View notes