@asparkleofmuses sent: [ scars ] a gentle kiss on the partner's scar(s) (Rin & Kakashi)
The lanterns in the infirmary flickered, casting long, dancing shadows against the sterile walls. The mission had been grueling, leaving Kakashi drained, his flak jacket discarded, and his silver hair dampened by a mixture of rain and sweat. He sat on the edge of the cot, his breathing paced but heavy, watching Rin as she worked.
She was methodical, her hands glowing with a soft, aqua hue of the Mystical Palm Technique. But as she moved from the shallow cuts on his shoulder to the jagged, vertical scar that bisected his left eye, her movements slowed. The air in the room felt thick, saturated with the unsaid. The Copy Ninja tracked her expression; the usual professional mask of the medical-nin was cracking, replaced by a raw, aching tenderness that made his heart recoil in a familiar, painful guilt.
He knew that look. It was the weight of years spent protecting one another, of being the only two left to remember the smell of the wind on the Kannabi Bridge.
“Rin,” he stated, his voice a gravelly ghost of itself, “it’s just a scratch. You don’t have to—”
Suddenly, Kakashi was silenced not by words but by the delicate proximity of her. Rin leaned in, her breath hitching, and instead of the warmth of chakra, Kakashi felt the ghost-like pressure of her lips against the raised skin of his scar.
It was a kiss that tasted of devotion and over a decade of suppressed longing.
The contact sent a jolt through him that felt more violent than any blade. His first instinct was to pull away—to put distance between his skin and the affection he felt he had no right to claim. Every time he looked at Rin, he saw Obito’s bleeding eye; he heard the final, desperate request to protect her, not to possess her heart. To love her felt like a theft, a betrayal of the body that had given everything so they could stand in this room together.
And yet, as her lips lingered against the mark of his greatest failure, the wall of his resolve shuddered. Her warmth was an anchor, pulling him out of the cold cycle of his martyrdom. Kakashi didn’t move. He couldn’t. His hands, usually so steady with a kunai, trembled slightly where they rested on his knees.
Gods, he wanted to wrap his arms around her and drown in the scent of her hair; he wanted to apologize until his throat was raw for being the one who survived when the better man didn’t.
“Rin...” He breathed, his voice breaking on the single syllable.
It wasn’t a protest, but it wasn’t an acceptance either. It was a plea for forgiveness, for clarity, or perhaps just for the strength to keep fighting the gravity of the woman who held the Isobu within her, yet offered him the gentlest mercy he had ever known.