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Sasuke + Kakashi - 'Hollow Eyes & Empty Words' (Naruto)
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[Sasuke, Kakashi. ‘Hollow Eyes & Empty Words’]
“…Does it ever get any easier?”
They are not the first people he’s lost--far from it--but he asks the question anyway. Whether he’s seeking comfort, some kind of reassurance, some scrap of hope, some shred of optimism, something, anything, even he doesn’t know: the words came out before he could stop them.
Kakashi’s single dark eye takes it all in--the slump-shouldered form of his former student kneeling on the ground, the drizzling rain, the muddy (bloody?) handprints on the memorial stone, Sasuke’s torn knuckles, all of it--and the softness in his gaze is understanding, perhaps sympathetic, but not pitying. His eyes fix on those two names--names he’d never wanted to be there before his own was added--both relatively new, one particularly so, and he breathes out a little heavier than usual, wanting more than anything to say that yes, the pain will dull and fade and life will go on and eventually new people will fill in the gaps, and someday he'll stop thinking he sees them moving through every crowd, someday he’ll be whole again.
But he can’t lie, not about this, no matter how much he wants to, and empathy is a poor second to reassurance, but it is the best he can manage.
“…No,” he says, so quietly that the steady hiss of the rain almost drowns him out. “It never does.”
-
Sasuke + Kakashi - We’re a matched set: both a little broken, both a little hollow.
[Sasuke, Kakashi. ‘Hollow Eyes & Empty Words’]
“…Does it ever get any easier?”
They are not the first people he’s lost--far from it--but he asks the question anyway. Whether he’s seeking comfort, some kind of reassurance, some scrap of hope, some shred of optimism, something, anything, even he doesn’t know: the words came out before he could stop them.
Kakashi’s single dark eye takes it all in--the slump-shouldered form of his former student kneeling on the ground, the drizzling rain, the muddy (bloody?) handprints on the memorial stone, Sasuke’s torn knuckles, all of it--and the softness in his gaze is understanding, perhaps sympathetic, but not pitying. His eyes fix on those two names--names he’d never wanted to be there before his own was added--both relatively new, one particularly so, and he breathes out a little heavier than usual, wanting more than anything to say that yes, the pain will dull and fade and life will go on and eventually new people will fill in the gaps, and someday he'll stop thinking he sees them moving through every crowd, someday he’ll be whole again.
But he can’t lie, not about this, no matter how much he wants to, and empathy is a poor second to reassurance, but it is the best he can manage.
“…No,” he says, so quietly that the steady hiss of the rain almost drowns him out. “It never does.”
-
Sasuke + Kakashi - We’re a matched set: both a little broken, both a little hollow.