Chapter Text
Naruto had always liked plants.
He’d gotten his first houseplant from the Old Man, as a housewarming gift for his new apartment. He was excited to be living on his own, like a real ninja, but for some reason, the plant seemed more important. He saved up money from his stipend, and as soon as he could, he bought more.
As he stood over the garden he’d eventually built, he was struck with the oddest feeling of familiarity. Something about this felt… right.
There were quite a few things that Naruto did for odd reasons. He didn’t realize it, of course, because there was no one to tell him, but that didn’t change the fact that it was odd.
After he started living alone, and getting regular haircuts was his responsibility instead of his caretakers, he just… didn’t. He let his hair grow out. Quite a few people thought it was simply because he couldn’t be bothered to get it cut.
“Naruto, would you like me to get you a haircut?” The Sandaime asked him, during one of their dinners at Ichiraku’s.
“No thanks!” Naruto slurped down another enormous bite of ramen.
“But…” There was something in the boy’s tone that threw the Hokage off, but he continued nonetheless. “Your hair is getting a little long, my boy.”
“Yeah, that’s the point, ‘ttebayo!” Naruto grinned at him, tugging on a lock of yellow spikes. “It’s supposed to be long.”
The phrasing was a bit odd, but Naruto said odd things fairly often. So Hiruzen simply nodded, and dropped the subject.
And, of course, there was Naruto’s ambition to be Hokage. If anyone asked, he’d tell them it was because the Hokage was respected by everyone in the village, and that was certainly part of it. But there was also that sense of rightness deep in his heart when he thought about the idea, like it had already happened, and he was just waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.
Sometimes these instincts, these feelings of had-been-should-be , got him into trouble. He started tying up his hair just after he entered the academy. One of the older kids had grabbed him by the hair, to show his displeasure at the village pariah getting admittance to the Academy.
He could have just cut it, but… He liked his hair long. He vowed that one day, he’d be strong enough that he wouldn’t have to tie it up.
_________
Sasuke often felt like something was missing.
He loved his family. He loved his mother, and his father, and his cousins, and especially his brother. But sometimes, he looked at them, and felt an absence. He looked at his brother, and felt like something was wrong.
He didn’t know why, but he felt like he should be the oldest. He shied away from that thought when it came, worried he was jealous, but — no. He wasn’t disappointed he had an older brother. It was just — new. For some reason. Even though he’d always had one.
His father never payed attention to him, always favoring Itachi. He should have been used to it, but it never failed to disappoint him. Maybe it was simply childish hope that if he just worked hard enough, his father would look at him. But every time Fugaku’s eyes slid passed him without lingering, something under his skin whispered wrong, wrong, wrong —
The first time he got a sense of right instead of wrong , it was morning. Nothing particularly special, just a regular day. He got up, his hair a mess, and went into the bathroom.
When he turned to look in the mirror, though, he realized his bangs had fallen in front of one of his eyes. He moved a hand to brush them away, but stopped.
It felt like it fit. Like that was how it supposed to be.
He wasn’t allowed to keep it, though. His mother brushed his hair back into place, despite his protests.
“Why can’t I keep it like that?”
His mother sighed. “Because, it makes you look like Madara.”
“Oh.” Madara was his clan’s shame. A paranoid warmonger who abandoned his life’s work out of jealousy.
(Something about that story didn’t sound right, but Sasuke was a child. He couldn’t contradict his elders.)
So he let his mother style his hair, and wore his usual cut.
It looked familiar, but it didn’t look right.
(After the Massacre, there was no one to tell him how to wear his hair. If he were any less in need of any positive emotion, he might not have changed it, in fear of dishonoring his Mother’s memory. But those were dark times, and that sense of right was his only comfort some nights.)
__________
Sakura didn’t understand people.
Who cared if her forehead was big? That was no reason to be cruel to her. Every time the other girls teased her, shoved her around, she felt a wildfire of anger well up. She wanted to yell, to rage, to fight back.
But her mother said proper ladies didn’t show their anger. So she swallowed it down.
Ami and her friends made fun of her for crying, too. They said she was a baby, and that someone who cries just because someone is mean to them could never be a ninja. But she wasn’t crying because she was sad, or afraid.
She was crying because she was so, so angry.
Luckily, Ino-chan came, and helped her deal with them. Sakura liked Ino. She was strong. And she was from a ninja clan, so she was allowed to be angry. Sakura hoped they ended up in the same class at the academy.
Ino asked her, once, why she wanted to be a shinobi.
“I don’t know,” Sakura replied, “It just, feels like I need to? Like, it feels right.”
Ino didn’t get it, but she was glad Sakura was so resolute.
Sakura studied for the entrance exam, and passed with flying colors. Her mother chose her outfit, but Sakura got to choose her haircut. She looked in the mirror on the first day of school, and felt and odd mix of right , and wrong. Her outfit was… not practical. But, she was just starting out. She could change it later.
Her hair, though. It gave her the same sense of fitting as the thought of being a ninja. Two locks of hair on either side of her face, and bangs running along her forehead between them. She tied back the rest of her hair into a long tail, and it was complete. She left home with a spring in her step.
For going to a ninja academy, many of the other girls at school were disappointingly… civilian. She knew she should have had little room to talk, being from a civilian family herself, but it wasn’t the lack of experience or physical conditioning that irked her. It was their attitudes.
The life of a shinobi wasn’t glamorous . Star-crossed romances were incredibly uncommon, and emotional displays were discouraged. Who cared about crushes, when they’d have to worry about staying alive in the future?
(She didn’t know why she was so sure about these things. It wasn’t like she had experience being a shinobi. Right?)
But sticking out was a danger in itself, so she pretended. Pretended to be vain and shallow, pretended that she cared more about romance than weapons. Pretended that she had a crush on Uchiha Sasuke.
She was interested in him, of course; just not the way everyone else seemed to be. Honestly, thinking about them together, in that way , made her sort of queasy. He just seemed… familiar. Like they were supposed to know each other.
But Sakura was observant. She knew that these feelings she got, about what-was , and what-should-be, were weird.
So, she pretended.
__________
Kakashi was so tired of being alone.
Even as a child, he had a fear that his loved ones would vanish and he’d be left by himself. He clung to his father, and then later to Sensei. He assured himself that his father was strong, and he’d never leave Kakashi if he could help it.
(He was wrong about that, but what else is new?)
Kakashi graduated the Academy early, earlier than anyone ever had (or ever would). People called him a genius. He didn’t like that, exactly — he didn’t really care what other people thought about him — but it seemed familiar, somehow.
Once when he was young (before he'd entered the academy, even), he’d stared in the mirror, looking at his face.
He didn’t look right, he thought. Not fierce enough. No one would take him seriously with this face. There was supposed to be something on it.
He stared wearing a mask. It wasn’t quite right, didn’t quite fit , but it worked well enough, and he liked it.
He followed the rules, because that was what a ninja was supposed to do, right? Follow orders. They had to be there for a reason.
Then his father killed himself, and Kakashi started following rules for an entirely different reason.
He got his new team, with Nohara Rin (Not strong enough) and Uchiha Obito (Too emotional) and…
They were wrong.
Rin reminded him of someone, but she had a crush on him, and it made him feel weird and kinda grossed out, because her familiarity had a flavor of family to it, (not enough that he actually felt like that about her, but enough that yikes.) and Obito was familiar in two distinctly opposite directions and Kakashi wasn’t sure how to deal with that. They were both too weak, and they slowed him and Sensei down, and they didn’t always follow the rules.
And Kakashi found himself liking them.
He shoved the feeling down, though, because liking them could lead to breaking the rules for them, and he couldn’t end up like his father. He wouldn’t .
But it happened anyway, and Obito broke through all his emotional barriers (those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash — ) and Kakashi went back, he saved them. Rin and Obito.
But then it all went wrong.
He woke up and Obito was under a rock. Kakashi tried to get him out, but it didn’t work, and Obito was practically dead anyway —
And he gave him an eye.
Obito gave Kakashi his eye, and then he was gone. The boy that was a contradiction to his instincts and dead last but still had the power to make Kakashi question his life choices — and all that was left of him was an eye. It was all that was left of him, but that didn’t change that it was wrong .
Kakashi had a Sharingan. (He shouldn’t have one, it wasn’t right, he was — ) He taught himself how to use it, through trial and error, since the Uchiha Clan wouldn’t (They’d just barely let him keep it, and only then because the clan head’s daughter had liked Obito — ) and he visited the memorial stone.
He spent a lot of time in front of the stone.
He started using Obito’s excuses whenever it made him late. He could never inject quite the right amount of enthusiasm, but no one called him out on it.
He did his best to keep his promise to Obito. It was his last request, and Kakashi didn’t want to lose any more people.
It didn’t work out that way, of course. He couldn’t get even one thing right, and Rin died. He killed her. (She threw herself onto his hand, how could she do that to him, how could she — ) He woke up screaming a lot before, but now he scrubbed his hands raw, he could never get the blood off —
Sensei (The hokage, now) put him on guard duty for Kushina-san. He was to ensure her safety, as well as the safety of her unborn child (His brother, they said, because apparently they considered a fuckup like him family. He never said it, but he loved them for that.)
He wasn’t on guard on the actual night of the birth. His security clearance wasn’t high enough, or something. (Maybe they didn’t trust him. He could understand that, he didn’t trust himself.)
Everything went wrong. The Kyuubi broke the seal, and after everything was over, Sensei and Kushina-san were dead.
The Sandaime took the hat, again. He took the hat, and he wouldn’t let Kakashi see Naruto.
On the one hand, Kakashi could understand. Anything connected to Minato-sensei could tip off his enemies that he had a child. Naruto was a baby, he couldn’t protect himself.
On the other hand, Kakashi was furious. (How dare he keep Kakashi from his little brother, he doesn’t want to be alone, he doesn’t want Naruto to be alone — )
Kakashi compromised. He wouldn't be around Naruto as Kakashi, but Anbu Hound was fair game.