Breaking My Heart

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...I have no explanation or excuse for this, other than that the last three stories I've written have been pure fluff, and the Powers That Be decided to smack me with the first line (and then the next 500 words) to this story at 1:00 in the morning last night. Now I need to go write more Team!Yellow Flash fluff to make me feel better...

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She's sixteen years old and watching him die, and with each gasping breath that bubbles past his bloody lips, she grows a little more certain that she's not going to survive this either.

Oh, she's unwounded—if you can call it that. The cut across her shoulder blades stopped bleeding an hour or so ago, and her strained knee can bear her weight when she wants it to, and very little of the blood that gloves her arms to the elbow is actually hers. A great deal of it is his, in fact, and more of it is leaking out every second around the fingers she's pressed desperately into the hole in his chest.

It's such a little hole, not much bigger than a baby's fist. But then, the human heart really isn't all that big either.

And at the moment, as Kakashi's heart pounds itself dry, Rin's heart is breaking.

She's sure now that he won't survive to see the sun rise. And if he's not going to be there with her, she's even more sure that she doesn't want to see it either.

They've survived so much together. Years of life that were never childhood, years in which their sensei laughed and teased and loved like the children they could not allow themselves to be, like the child Rin cannot now even dream of having. They've survived Sakumo and Obito and the Kyuubi and Yondaime, and they survived the war that stole their childhood only to enter a service that stole their humanity.

Rin's sometimes thought that following Kakashi wherever he goes is a pretty poor reason for selling her soul to the ANBU. Then again, when she thinks that she's the last link to the only vestiges of humanity Kakashi ever had in the first place, her heart and her blood and her future don't seem too big of a gift to give him.

Maybe she's all he has.

Maybe he's all she's ever wanted.

And maybe both of them are so screwed up that Sensei wouldn't even recognize them anymore if he saw them now, Sensei who used to ruffle Rin's hair and gulp down the lunches she made for them like a man who hadn't eaten in a week, Sensei who used to tease Kakashi until the faintest hints of rose bloomed in the pale skin over the mask, Sensei who wanted them to be kids and only grow up when it was finally time for them to baby-sit his own kids.

But Sensei also taught them to kill, and to kill so well that now they're sixteen and lying in the dark of a forest with rain pattering down between the leaves to turn the red mud grey again, and Rin can afford to fight in vain to save Kakashi's life because she's made damn sure that none of their former enemies are ever going to interfere.

Sensei wanted them to be children, and he taught them to kill, and then he died and took with him all the answers to the questions Rin never had time to ask.

So they've been forced to struggle on alone, without guidance, without answers, without more than a few tattered pictures and a few faded memories, and a carved face on the mountain and a red eye spinning hopelessly in Kakashi's head.

She can't help but wonder, as the green chakra around her fingers sputters and fades a little more with each hacking cough that wracks her own body, if Obito's eye will stop spinning when Kakashi's closes forever, or if it will live on, a mute and macabre memorial to a friend they both killed (He died to save us) but who, in the end, survived them all. It wouldn't surprise her. Obito always was stubborn like that.

She's pretty sure Obito loved her. Well, as much as you can love anyone at thirteen, when you don't even know who you are yet, let alone who you want to spend the rest of your life with. Obito loved her and he died to save the boy she thought she loved, and maybe that is a love more real than anything in Jiraiya-sama's books or in her own hidden fantasies. She doubts her love is anything like as pure and sweet and noble as Obito's was. It's harsh and dirty and desperate, a young girl's crush tempered by blood into a kunoichi's frantic grasp on anything that could bring her the slightest measure of stability and happiness in a world turned crimson with loss. It's as selfish as Obito's was selfless, and she knows it and she hates herself for it, but all the same she can't stop loving Kakashi any more than she can stop the rain diluting the blood that pools out around her fingers.

Maybe she's not strong enough, was never strong enough. All she knows is that if Kakashi's not in this world, then she doesn't want to be either. Kakashi's stronger than she is; he can go on. He can bear the weight of her love and her sacrifice just as he bears Sakumo's and Obito's and Yondaime's, and maybe he'll stagger, but he'll never fall.

The last bit of chakra begins to dribble away from Rin's hands.

She presses one last kiss to Kakashi's pale forehead, closes her eyes, and opens the Celestial Gates.