[ Kakashi notices the red bleeding into Sasuke's vision, but says nothing of it. Lets it go.

Maybe his choice of words hadn't been the right ones. Maybe he should've said something other than "undo", as there's certainly no going back. Not from what Sasuke's been through.

Keeping his tone relaxed, in an attempt to keep Sasuke at ease, Kakashi hums softly, a low sound. ]

You're wrong that you can't make a difference. You can make a difference, a positive one, if you give yourself... and us... a chance.

[ And it does matter what happens here, even if it doesn't affect their lives and world back home, if only because what happens here is still happening. They're still living through it, however temporary this reality may be. Or permanent. And that alone, the fact that they are living it at all, is what makes it matter. What makes it count. ]

[ It's not surprising that Sasuke would admit something like that.

And perhaps, he simply just doesn't know where to begin. How to even start with an endeavor like this.

When his only goal for years had been the task of avenging his family and killing Itachi, it's easy to understand how difficult it might be after that task had been completed. How terrible it was when he discovered the truth. How strange, to be thrust into a world where not only Itachi is alive once more, but also his mother.

A little like being swept up like a leaf in a violent storm. Hard to put your feet down when you don't know where the earth even is underneath you. Or what might happen if you try to take root.

And Sasuke has not put roots down in so long that maybe he hasn't even considered the possibility of it. Finding his roots with those who still care about and love him. Giving himself, and them, a chance at something beyond all the blood and betrayal and war.

Kakashi turns his gaze onto Sasuke, reading dejection, defeat in the lines of his body.

It doesn't look right on him at all. ]

Sometimes, when you're not sure how to do something, the best thing to do is simply try.

[ Because without that first step, none will follow. ]

[ Talking has never been a strong suit for either one of them.

If only because it's impossible to put into words the incomprehensibility of loss, the way it carves out all the parts of you that make up who you are. With Sasuke, the loss didn't just carve him out. Empty him out into the shell of a boy who should've been just a boy with hopes and dreams and wishes for a bright future that could never be far from blood when the lives of shinobi tread so closely between the line of life and death. But it would have been a future. So different from the life he ended up living in the end.

He'd spent most of his childhood sleeping in an empty compound full of ghosts, dreaming of blood and trying not to care about the people he'd eventually come to call his team, if only because (and Kakashi knew this best of all) he was too scared. Terrified of the prospect of forming any sort of real attachment to someone who would eventually be taken away again -- or walk away.

How ironic that for all he had tried to make Sasuke see the value in attachments, in learning how to trust, learning how to care, Kakashi left him tied up in that tree all those years ago, with his ears stuffed full of the talk of bonds and friendship. All the things Sasuke didn't need to hear at the time, because what he wanted was probably not words. But someone who believed in him. Who didn't think he was weak, the way he thought he was weak, because he was too small and his brother too strong, and when he closed his eyes at night all he saw was the horror of his weakness.

The immensity of how alone he was.

The world was huge and chaotic and everyone around him was concerned with bullshit that didn't matter, and in the middle of it all, he was alone with his rage and anger and memories of people he couldn't save, and no one understood or saw him for what he was.

Except Kakashi.

Who had always, always seen Sasuke for exactly what he was if only because he knew far too well what it's like to spend more time with ghosts than with the living. What it's like to have nothing but the emptiness, the largeness of it slowly drive you mad. How it invades every part of you until you think there's nothing left. Until you are just a big fat nothing, with your hands covered in blood, and the memory of your father or Obito or Rin or Kushina-san or your sensei dying before your eyes and you are helpless to stop it.

So he knew, had always known, what it was that had Sasuke screaming awake at night, that set the fire in his blood to roaring. And yet even with all that knowledge, he didn't have the right words.

Maybe he still doesn't now.

Maybe he'll say the wrong thing and send Sasuke flying off in a different direction again, or fail to say the right thing at all.

And it was precisely this same impasse all those years ago that had him leaving Sasuke in that tree when he knew he shouldn't have left him at all. Letting him go, instead of holding on, like a real sensei should have done.

He's let go of Sasuke too many times.

He won't do it anymore.

Even if words fail him, gestures won't. And despite what reservations or uncertainty he might have about invading Sasuke's space, one look at him is all he needs to know that action, not words, is what Sasuke needs right now.

Kakashi slowly shifts over on the couch until he's next to Sasuke. Then, after a moment, he raises his arm and gently lets his hand drop atop Sasuke's head. Leaves it there, in lieu of putting his arm around Sasuke. ]

I know.

[ His voice comes out softer than usual. ]

But you tried your best.

[ And that's what matters. ]

[ There are times when silence speaks louder than words ever can.

You just have to know how to listen to it.

Kakashi had spent his life shrouded by it, silence. Letting it invade the hollowed out parts of him he cut out of himself to make more room for what could never be spoken, except to the ones who could no longer listen because they were in the ground or buried under a fall of rocks. Speaking without saying a word, because silence is dangerous if it escapes your mouth when you don't have the proper vocabulary to support its weight. When silence is what keeps you going in your continued state of existence, living a life that isn't really a life when you do not know how to live for yourself. When you cannot even begin to speak because silence presses down on your tongue every time you try to open your mouth.

After a while of letting it fill you up, you let it become you. Or maybe you become it. A shadow of a shadow, speaking without a sound. Speaking but not saying anything at all, when the words that come out are not words that really matter. Empty sound in empty space and no one ever hears the silence crackling inside you like lightning cracking through the sky in the midst of a storm.

They're all so swept up by the vigor and whirl of the world around them that it's easy to miss.

The thin note that trembles between silence and need.

Kakashi hears it far too clearly if only because he missed it entirely the first time, when it mattered the most. He had Sasuke right where he wanted him, tied up in a tree with nowhere to run but to listen. And maybe if he listened more carefully between all the anger and vitriol and empty threats Sasuke spat out, maybe he might have heard it then, that note. Maybe it would have rung as clear as the sound of Sasuke's thirteen-year-old knuckles rapping against his door at two o'clock in the morning during a great rainstorm, looking up at him with eyes rimmed with red that had nothing to do with Sharingan and everything to do with what made him scream awake one night, all those years ago.

When it had been just the two of them along a river, with nothing but the sky above and ghosts chasing Sasuke through the night.

He can't hurt you right now, he'd said.

Maybe that was the right thing to say at the time, but what he really should've said was this:

I'm here. I'll always be here.

Maybe if he said that then, or at any other point in the intervening time after, Sasuke might've never left.

Maybe they wouldn't be here right now, with tears running down Sasuke's face and an expression that should have never been there at all. Like he's about to fall to pieces because what's inside him is so large that he can't put his hands around it to keep fraying edges stamped down tight. So he puts his hands around himself instead, squeezing his arms close to his chest, as though doing so might somehow protect him from himself. Or from Kakashi seeing whatever ugliness or weakness he thinks he needs to hide.

For a moment all Kakashi sees is that thirteen-year-old boy who knocked on his door late at night when no one else was listening, who sometimes looked at him with eyes that were as haunted as they were lost. He thought that maybe he could have found a way to draw him back onto the right path. To look towards the future and away from the past. An impossible task, when all Kakashi ever saw were the ghosts that walked behind him, and his many yesterdays of failure and loss. It was hard to give Sasuke the guidance he needed when Kakashi himself didn't know how to live the way he wanted Sasuke to live. But that didn't temper his hope that Sasuke could have what he couldn't have for himself.

Could live, the way Kakashi never could.

Kakashi'd failed him more times than he can count, not just in their world, but even here in Luceti, just weeks ago when he left him again after that mistletoe incident. Even after swearing to himself up and down that he'd never leave, never turn his back on Sasuke, he did just that. Disappeared the moment he couldn't fucking handle it anymore. And even though it'd only been for a few minutes before he realized his mistake, that he'd left at all was enough to cement just how much harder he needed to work to make things right. To make this right.

It's not so surprising that Sasuke would have a hard time believing him, when it wasn't so long ago that Kakashi'd left him behind again.

And even though he'd promised that he would never leave again, when Sasuke's entire life has been defined by the most ultimate of betrayals, he knows how difficult it must be to swallow down a pretty mouthful of words shaped like a promise. He'll have to prove himself to Sasuke, again and again, to make the words more than the empty syllables they currently are. To make them count.

His hand gently drops from the top of Sasuke's head to cup his burning face, his thumb wiping away a hot tear before he slowly attempts to pull Sasuke forward, meeting the expected resistance of Sasuke trying to curl back. Kakashi moves forward instead, until he's walled Sasuke in against the couch arm, then reaches out once more to pull Sasuke against his chest, tucking him under his chin as his arms wrap around him the way they did when Sasuke was still small. ]

Ah, that's where you're wrong, Sasuke.

[ The words are quietly murmured, so quietly they're almost a whisper. ]

You're trying right now.