A/N: Warnings include depictions and discussions of suicide from Sakumo's POV, canon-typical violence and related gore. Much Kakashi-centric angst. Sakumo has his reasons, but they are not always correct or make perfect logical sense.

Sakumo presses his cheek against weave of the tatami, too weak to even pant for breath. The pain is unbearable; but not as unbearable as living with the crushing weight of his shame. Closing his eyes against dimming vision, he musters the last of his energy to uncurl his stiffening fingers from the hilt of his tanto. He's cold – not even the hot stickiness of his own blood spreading from his body warms him.

A blurred image flashes across his mind: a young silver-haired boy, looking up at Sakumo with adoration, eyes curved with happiness as he smiles behind his mask. Holding onto this last good thing, Sakumo exhales softly and doesn't find it within himself to draw breath again.

'Kakashi…'

Consciousness floods back to him with the force of a Suiton straight to the chest. Sakumo gasps for breath and staggers on his feet – how is he even standing? – before catching himself against the wall.

He casts his gaze about and reels back in shock at the scene before him, his knees buckling and sending him collapsing onto the floor.

Kakashi is kneeling in a congealing pool of blood, hunched over as he cradles Sakumo's head in his lap, his blank gaze trained unseeingly at the storm raging outside the bedroom window. (It's Sakumo's own corpse, closed-eyed and pale, rigor mortis setting in.) Braced against the far wall, Sakumo chokes on the sickening stench of blood and spilled guts – 'mine,' his mind says, but it doesn't make an iota of sense.

Lightning flashes and sends white light spilling into the cramped room, like the White Chakra Sakumo used to wield through his tanto. Whimpering quietly in his throat, Kakashi bends forward further, beginning to rock himself as his fingers clench in Sakumo's blood-soaked clothes.

"Tou-chan…"

The broken plea snaps Sakumo out of his horror and he crawls forward on unsteady hands and knees, his eyes fixed on his son's small, shuddering form instead of his own eviscerated body.

Gods, what has he done?

What has he done?

"Kakashi?" His voice comes out harsh with fear.

His son doesn't hear him. Doesn't stop whimpering in that half-strangled, almost-silent way, holding onto the cold corpse that's the last remnant of family he has in this world. Instinctually Sakumo reaches out – to touch and comfort even though he knows he has no right to do so, not when he's the cause of his son's anguish – and his fingers sweep right through Kakashi's shaking shoulder.

Sakumo stares. His fingers, though seeming just as solid and whole as Kakashi, have disappeared through his son's body. No sensation registers on his skin except a vague warmth. Unwittingly his gaze is drawn downwards as Sakumo realises he is kneeling right in the puddle of black, black blood, but it neither soaks him nor ripples with the tremors coursing through his body.

He can't feel anything.

"Kakashi," he tries again, croaking in this last desperate attempt.

No response.

Sakumo withdraws his hand because he can't stand it anymore, the way he's here yet in some kind of isolated, alternate plane of existence; able to see but not touch or communicate, left utterly impotent in the face of his son's agony.

Clenching his fists until his fingernails dig in and his palms throb dully, Sakumo bows his head and weeps.

A/N: updates will be 500 words plus. I promise things will get better for our favourite father and son pair (eventually)! :)