#today in thoughts lem had at yoga that almost made 'em cry

[lemony-snickers]

i should have kept a journal.

the thought comes unbidden, late at night, just as kakashi feels the first tendrils of sleep tugging at his concious mind, dragging him under the heavy blanket of a dream.

but then he is awake, mind spinning, sifting through memories he can't quite pull into focus.

he never expected the loss of the sharingan to have such consequence - for all the tender moments of his life, which he had taken for granted, to meld into the backdrop of a long, arduous tapestry of other moments.

before he lost obito's eye, kakashi had been able to recall with perfect clarity some of his most important memories - times when he had merely blinked the eye open for a second or two, the tomoe spinning to life, draining his chakra as the eye greedily memorized whatever scene lay before it.

he had at his disposal a perfect recorded history of his life; for better and worse.

now, kakashi would happily accept all the bitter ends and entrails if it meant he could remember rin's smile the way it truly looked. if he could recall the exact shade of kushin's hair or the cerulean of minato's eyes.

kakashi would watch every death he had ever witnessed in an endless loop if he could call forth the picture of team 7 in the land of waves, fierce and too small and his. but now he forgets which side sasuke wore his kunai pouch on, the length of sakura's hair, how many wrinkles appeared when naruto scrunched his nose in confusion.

small details. minute. insignificant.

important.

now fading. soon, gone.

kakashi knows he's lost any chance at rest and instead he crawls his way to the desk at the opposite side of his room and he uses his creaky fingers to try and scribble out the memories as they come - birthdays and festivals and quiet nights beneath the stars. he tries to remember the look on gai's face during each of their ridiculous competitions; tenzo's expression when he showed kakashi his first apartment after root.

but it's all a watered down version of what really happened. his fingers are too slow, his brain too tired and unfocused. each lost detail feels like losing. like grief.

the way he felt when he forgot his mother's eye color, when he realized he could no longer ask his father about it; could no longer remember the exact pitch of the older man's nose, how many teeth he revealed when he smiled.

kakashi should have known how tenuous a memory can be. had known the devastation of loss, of forgetting, long before he knew the power of remembrance; the true gift of the sharingan.

more than prowess in battle, the eye was powerful because it would not allow him to forget. good, bad, happy, traumatic, it was all still there, waiting to be spun to life beneath a crimson veil.

now everything is gone.

and kakashi realizes he should have kept another record because all those precious moments bled away, replaced by jutsu and regulations and quotes from icha icha as if they could ever matter more than the warmth of his first kiss, the comfort of loving arms after battle.

and it seems such a waste for the most exquisite mundanities of his life to fade into a watercolor backdrop of his world - the colors there, but all the detail lost - in favor of necessity.

because none of it matters if he can't remember the moments that made it worthwhile.