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Another thing to cut himself open on and bleed all over.
Late the night before he left for the final assignment they were twisted and tangled up together in Kakashi's bed, the dogs pressed close around them like the heat from each of their bodies might be enough to ward off the chill of February, might be enough to fill his hollow chest and breathe something like life back into him. Kakashi is going through the motions, these days, worn thin by too many missions and too much fear and held together only by the faint ribbons of anger he can dig his fingers into. Gai's head on his stomach was so heavy, like it was the only thing keeping him from drifting away on the wind.
Kakashi had stared at the ceiling for a long time that evening. The shadows from the street lights flickered on the paint above. They were insubstantial. He'd grown attached to the facsimile of life they provided, entertainment in the small hours when everything about him felt dead, but that night, with Gai laid out next to him, curled around him like a half-moon, Kakashi had not found himself satisfied with the cold false signs of life they provided. His right hand had been very, very careful when he'd reached out to touch Gai's hair.
Gai hadn't said anything to him then. Just opened his dark eyes, and blinked sleepily, and smiled.
They'd fought earlier in the day about the usual things: Gai, trying to press Kakashi into resigning from the special forces, and Kakashi, stubbornly clinging to something that's been killing him for a decade without telling Gai why.
That's the rub of it, he'd thought at the time. You can't make someone understand that you're keeping a secret from them to protect them if you tell them about the fucking secret.
He'd accused Gai of being selfish, asked if he was really delusional enough to believe that there might be more scraps of Kakashi for him to love if only he wasn't in ANBU, watched his face crumple and turned away so he didn't have to see it. His mouth had felt lava-hot. Gai had wrapped his arms around Kakashi's waist and breathed a 'sorry' into the nape of his neck, and Kakashi hadn't said anything at all.
-
Promise me this is the end, Gai had begged of him.
Kakashi had done no such thing. He'd pretended to be asleep when Gai had mumbled it into his ribcage the night before he left. They'd already had this discussion a dozen times, and he didn't want to tear at him again tonight. Neither of them were going to change their minds.
-
His vision is starting to get fuzzy around the edges.
Death, he thinks, is a pretty substantial kind of end.
With his right arm limp at his side and his left clinging tightly to a kunai, he hits the ground hard on his knees. His paper-thin skin has been torn open, and he bleeds heavy black gore from his mouth and nose and ears, from the gashes rent into his flesh, in awful dark bruises still growing beneath his skin. He wonders: if he bleeds enough, might it turn the sky black in the way the sea turns it blue?
Or is it the sky that turns the sea blue? Is his blood black and rotten because it's his, or is it black and rotten because there is something outside of himself making it so? He opens his mouth to ask no one, but nothing at all comes out of his mouth except for a gurgling sigh.
Promise me this is the end.
Maybe he should have, he thinks. It would have been easy enough to keep, now. Death is a kind of end. He could have avoided that fight altogether if he'd taken Gai's rough, warm hand and pressed it to his cheek, to his chest over his heart, to his waist, if he'd leaned over and kissed him and promised: one more job, and then he's out. It wouldn't have been a lie. Instead he'd bitten Gai like a frightened, useless dog, spent the night stiff as a board next to him, and left before the sun had risen.
-
He can't see for the blood in his eyes, smell for the blood in his nose, or hear for the blood in his ears. Hands grip him, and he's too weak to thrash away from them. The familiar talon-tipped ANBU gloves dig into the meat of his arms. He's lifted, slung over a shoulder. Unconsciousness is a mercy, after that.
Unconsciousness is a kind of end, too. Ha.
-
The figure at the end of his hospital bed looks kind of like Gai, but it's here after visiting hours. It looks wasted away, with sallow skin hanging from its bones instead of the cords of muscle under the meticulously maintained tan Kakashi knows Gai is meant to have. The thing that is not Gai has a cold hand spanning the width of Kakashi's bare ankle. Kakashi blinks sluggishly at him, and the thing smiles.
"Do you not wish to fulfill your promise to me?" It asks of him. Its mouth is bloody. Gai's voice, directed at him, has never sounded so harsh.
Kakashi can't open his mouth. He thinks they probably have him on muscle relaxers again. He's awake. A machine breathes for him. He's awake. His foot is cold beneath that hand. He's awake, and his body hurts, but he can't move. He thinks: What promise?
Not-Gai laughs, the sound nothing at all familiar to him. It sets Kakashi's hair on end. "I want an end, Kakashi," it steps forward, trailing emaciated fingers up his shin, his knee, his thigh. That spider-slim hand rests on his thigh, looking like that paper-thin skin might slough off and leave only bone at any moment.
His lone eye blinks sluggishly, like if he tries hard enough to clear his vision this apparition will resolve itself into the real Gai, not this walking dead version, standing over him with a pensive frown instead of that rictus grin. Kakashi wants his warm hand on him, instead of this.
What end?
Again, he's incapable of asking aloud, but the apparition doesn't seem to mind at all. It leans closer, its hand flat on Kakashi's stomach now, pressing down on his ribs and forcing the air from his lungs. He jerks underneath the pressure, choking on the pain that stabs through him. "Any end, Kakashi," it coos, face moving back into Kakashi's wavering sight. Gai's face, dead skin peeling, hollow cheeks. "Yours, mine. This, that. I want an ending from you."
I have nothing at all for you, he thinks. Not even an end.
Stop asking me for anything. I don't have it, I don't ever have enough--
"You have plenty for me to take," the dead thing insists, still smiling coldly. "Look, let me show you."
Its hand on Kakashi's chest sinks beneath his skin and roots around. Kakashi can't scream, even with the immense pain radiating out from the visceral places inside of him that the hand touches. It feels as if blood is welling out of him like a ground spring, spilling in great splashes on the floor. His body does not move. It can't move. The machine struggles to breathe for him. The monitors start to scream when the creature wearing Gai's face finds his heart and squeezes-
-
Under the cold light of the stars, a dog trots along a path, alone. His paws are stained dark from a life at work, his body lean, but his eyes are bright and alert. There is blood on his muzzle from a fresh kill.
Killing is what this beast was meant to do.
His teeth are clasped around the neck of a small bobcat, whose struggles have ceased. She had put up a great fight, but the dog had triumphed, as he was meant to. He's carrying this limp dead thing to his shepherd, who will scold him for frightening the sheep by bringing it back.
Why must he always bring these things back?
-
When Kakashi cracks open his eye again, the world is bright. Too bright. The lights are on, and the shades on the window at the end of the long room are open. He's not the only occupant of the room any longer, and they have him on a different cocktail of drugs. He breathes in, stops, exhales, and then brings in another stuttering breath under his own power. The air is stale, and it smells faintly of death beneath all the healing.
A dark head of hair rests at his elbow, warm, strong fingers curled into his own.
Kakashi struggles to reach for that dark head of hair, but he can't move his arm at all. The one being held is his right, which is in a cast, and he finds it heavy and numb. Probably for the best.
It can't be the end.
Kakashi can't quite make himself articulate it. It comes out as a mumble. Still, the noise is enough to wake Gai, who jolts up and blinks at him sleepily. Wide, clear eyes, warm and brown. Full, healthy skin. There's an imprint on his cheek and forehead from the sheets and the cast. His expression crumples when he sees Kakashi looking back at him, hazy and half-there and confused, but only a few tears and sniffles escape him before he composes himself. He rubs his eyes aggressively.
"Y-you're awake," his voice is normal too. Something inside of Kakashi relaxes at the brittle, frightened resonance in the words. The relief. This Gai is only here to take from him the things he is used to having taken from him. This Gai is here to give him something too.
Kakashi tries to make an affirmative noise and coughs on it, his mouth dry and throat painful. Gai twists, casts around, and darts off for a few minutes that feel like forever. Kakashi closes his eye. He opens it again, and Gai is frowning pensively at him, standing at the foot of his bed with a little white cup. Backlit, he looks very lean. Kakashi twitches, gasps, and Gai slips around the bed and sets the cup to the side, touching Kakashi's forehead and cheek very carefully.
"Are you in pain?" He asks, seriously. Kakashi glances at him and sees again the warm, full cheeks and kind eyes, the concerned furrow between his brows. Alive. His hands are gentle.
"Nnooo," he manages to slur through gritted teeth.
Gai nods, pensive, and without another word he sits at his bed side and spends the next while feeding Kakashi ice chips, until Kakashi turns his face away from the next one offered with a sigh. He feels like he's been awake forever. Like he's been asleep forever. He wants to crawl back into that darkness. His eye falls shut, and he hears Gai sigh softly, and feels his warm hand fold back into Kakashi's.
-
There is one end to be found, though news of it comes later: a wash from the black operations corps with no hope of returning, and six to eight months of convalescence. He thinks he'd rather the creature reached out and taken his life.