Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Whatever happened must have hit him like a truck. Shit. Maybe it was?

Every part of him aches; a bone deep, sluggish, constant weight inside every fibre of his being.

There is warmth over him, a surface underneath him, dappled light that feels like a knife digging deep into his skull.

Everything (thankfully, blissfully) fades into nothing again.

-

He blinks. Wherever he is it is still, and dark.

-

Hey sensei,

The voice is distant, small. Familiar?

I hope resting really is what you need. I don’t know what to do now. The others want to stay, but I’m…

His eyes crack open to a blurry mess of a world. Everything swims, and the blade in his head seems to have narrowed, shooting through his eye but deep and back and fuck it hurts to think. Overwhelming nausea follows.

That small voice dissolves into the quiet, choking hiccups of someone trying to hide their tears.

His body still aches. Worse than the worst flu he’s ever had, but now he can distinguish the texture of blankets and a hard mattress. He feels parched but his mouth isn’t dry and he can taste water.

Ever so slowly he turns his head. Fuck. Even that is agony.

Grey, diffuse daylight over unadorned wood and pale walls tilt through his vision, revealing a little girl sitting curled on the floor, just a few steps away. She’s well out of reach but not much lower than he must be lying. Her hair is bright, bubble gum pink. It hurts to look at. She looks real.

Damn. Must be a dream. Or a coma? He shouldn’t have binge-watched Naruto fillers with an essay due. Ugh. Did he miss the deadline?

He contemplates vomiting. There are two doors, one presumably leads to a bathroom. The closest is still way too far away, and clean up would suck if he doesn’t make it. He supresses the urge. It doesn’t go away, but he’s clearly a champion at ignoring his body.

He clears his throat, and her head shoots up, bloodshot eyes and streaming tears and all.

Speaking feels like swallowing a cheese grater.

“You deserved better,” he rasps.

Satisfied, he lets himself pass out again.

-

The next time he wakes (or dreams?) there’s another child. This one’s hair is yellow and he’s dressed in orange, made even brighter by the warm light of sunset streaming through the open window. An absently swinging foot hits the wall below the windowsill with a low, rhythmic thump that rattles his bones. Why are there no other adults? Shouldn’t he be in a hospital if he’s been in some kind of accident?

Or maybe he shouldn’t question his hallucinations. Yeah. That sounds like the only viable option, right now. His thoughts are still fighting through a fuzzy, muddy feeling he can’t shake off. The pain, as always, is the loudest part.

He may joke that his classmates are all brats, but he has no idea what to do with actual children.

“Oi, Naruto.”

The kid jumps and flails and shrieks and falls off the windowsill with a crash and oh he has /regrets./

At least the boy reacted to the name? Maybe that’s not a good thing.

He shuts his eyes and realises one of them has been covered this entire time.

-

The perpetual ache lingers, but it’s marginally easier to think. Darkness has swallowed the room and it’s a balm for his battered senses, with only a small streak of warm light crossing the room from a door lightly cracked. He can hear muffled voices, adults (thank fuck), and he notices the constant ringing in his ears by its near absence. For the first time he can remember since waking up to pain he can contemplate sitting up.

It remains a contemplation, the effort of considering the idea all he can muster right now.

He’s not sure how he knows but there’s someone in the room with him. Soft breaths, the slightest rustle of fabric, the smell of prepubescent boy. The smoky incense tinge of Uchiha. Someone trying to keep still and silent and failing. The details come to his awareness after the certainty of the fact.

“Sasuke?” he whispers.

“Sensei?” The kid trying so hard to play it cool. Ugh. He does not have the bandwidth to deal with this right… wait.

Sensei.

No. Nu-uh. This is not some stupid coma dream where he has somehow become the disaster idiot slash ninja powerhouse teacher of Naruto. He stopped watching the anime ages before it finished and read a decent chunk of the manga… more than fifteen years ago.

He’d watched fillers recently, partially to understand what his little sister’s girlfriend was on about when ranting about how Naruto and Sasuke should have totally gotten together (and something about Orochimaru having children now?) and mostly to procrastinate on his academic classwork. Couldn’t he have ended up somewhere more relaxing in his near-death hallucination?

“Sensei!?”

Right. Agonized groaning in despair should be kept to a minimum around spooked ninja children.

What bullshit.

“Maa, Sasuke…” if they think he’s Hatake fucking Kakashi at least he can play along for now, until he wakes up for real. “Help me get to the bathroom?” He crinkles his eyes and does his best innocent smile, the one that people say makes his eyes disappear and without fault makes his little sister hit him on the head.

“Oh- of course,” Sasuke scrambles across the room, gravely serious. Shit, of course they’re distressed. He’s been in and out of consciousness for… at least a day, probably more, and they think he’s their teacher.

“Not to freak you out or anything,” he says, breathless, when his uncooperating muscles and mostly, to be honest, Sasuke’s determination has him shifted to a sitting position. The bathroom seems very far away again. “But what happened?”

The last thing he remembers before falling asleep is Sasuke’s terrified face as the kid recounts all of them nearly dying to a crazy giant-sword-wielding cow-print-wearing shinobi, Kakashi revealing he has a sharingan eye (and Sasuke looked like he was about to throw up and also like he had a million questions) and then promptly passing out after the fight. At least the useless drunken client was also a kindly grandfather and grateful for their decision to continue protecting him, and had put them up in his house.

-

“Ne, nee, SENSEI!?”

Fun fact. A sudden, full body cringe when feeling like you’ve been run over by a train hurts. It hurt /so bad/. Cramps follow. Cramps in every body part, in all limbs, even in his teeth.

What might be a minute or an hour later he lies gasping and staring at the ceiling, utterly wrung out after only just waking.

“Yeah, Naruto?” he finally mumbles.

Hallucination coma dreams shouldn’t be this painful. What the fuck.

“Is it true you have memory loss!? The bastard says you forgot everything!? DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM-“

The string of questions at increasing volume is mercifully cut short with a heavy thud-

“SHUT UP IDIOT YOU’RE TOO LOUD FOR SENSEI! CAN’T YOU SEE-“

Oh no.

“Be quiet.” Sasuke’s voice can hardly be heard over the shouting, but magically it stops everything, leaving behind a beautiful, ringing silence.

“You are my favourite child,” he tells Sasuke sombrely.

He slowly sits up with Sakura’s help while Naruto sulks and Sasuke looks ready to bolt from the room (maybe other children read that look as cool and aloof, but he can see the discomfort as if it was stamped on the kid’s forehead. He also thinks he can smell it.)

“So do you remember now?” Sakura asks timidly, handing out cups of tea.

As awkward as all of this is, as much pain as he continues to be in, he still feels better holding the warm ceramic. The sluggish weight pressing down on him has lightened, but is far from gone.

“Hm, Sakura, what kind of question is that to ask someone?” he says philosophically, and feels disproportionately pleased at the three outraged expressions suddenly turn his way. If they’d actually been anime characters and not real kids there would have been bulging eyes and those red little anger marks on all of them.

Are they real kids though?

This is the clearest his mind has been since… well. Since this coma-dream started. And he’d be lying to himself if this didn’t feel as real as any of his memories.

He tries to recall tests for seeing if you’re dreaming or not, headache mounting with the effort of concentration. From the corner of his eye he has ten fingers, five on each hand. So do all of the children. The number and colour and shape of cups in the room stays consistent even when he closes his eyes and open them again. The breeze from the window smells like the sea and fish and rotting vegetation and damp earth and trees and cut wood old and new and eggs cooking downstairs and – His sense of smell is way better than it should be. But what he can parse seems real and consistent enough.

If pain was going to snap him out of anything it would have a long time ago.

He sips the tea (cheap green tea, not too bad) and hums to himself. “Do any of you have one of those little spinny toys?” he makes his eyes crinkle as he shows a twisting motion with his hand in the air. He saw that in a film once, if you spin a little spindle toy and it keeps going way too long it’s a dream, and if it falls over you’re probably awake.

The three of them keep having matching expressions, and now outrage has morphed into frustrated despair. He should get some kind of award. Ten out of ten character impression. They probably hate him but they don’t seem to think their teacher has been possessed.

“Uhm,” Sakura says, clutching her teacup like a lifeline. “Sensei, we’re shinobi, you know, not actual kids.” Bless her she’s trying so hard.

He keeps his squinty eye-smile going. “Ah, but Sakura, you’re definitely actual kids,” he can’t keep a serious note out of his voice as he tries to swallow the knowledge that if this is real (and it increasingly feels like it is) they’re all child soldiers put in situations no one their age should be. And I don’t think it’s healthy not to let yourself be, he doesn’t add, letting the statement fall to silence only seconds before-

“Ah-HAH! Here it is! Look Sensei! This one is WAY better than one you spin with your HANDS!” Naruto holds a small wooden spindle in the air in triumph, the middle of it wrapped in string. Sakura looks at Naruto in shock and Sasuke with apathetic despair.

The bratlings all watch with baited breaths as he accepts the toy with a forced smile and places it on the floor next to the futon he’s still sitting on.

Naruto was right, the string pull does work better than spinning one with your fingers. It still wobbles and topples and falls still as a real object worked on by real physics should.

“Ah Sensei,” Naruto laughs awkwardly and tries to be polite. “That was pretty good for a first try, but you can get it to go much longer, here let me show you.” Naruto gingerly picks up the spindle, winds the string, and pulls it so hard he falls over backward, setting the thing to spin so fast it’s a wonder the floor doesn’t catch fire.

From there it devolves to a free for all. He (Kakashi? Can he think of himself with that name now?) watches with a smile that’s only half fake and slowly sips his tea while the kids wrestle and cheer and take turns spinning the toy and timing how long it goes for, and even Sasuke forgets to be serious and joins in.

Every time, without fault, even when he looks away or closes his eyes or zones out thinking of nothing but the ringing in his ears and the ache in his bones, the spindle inevitably loses momentum and wobbles and falls.

-

He meets the kid who lives in the house before he meets either of the adults. He vaguely remembers something about a dead father and Naruto holding rousing speeches, but right now it’s just broken old him and a small figure with a round face and a too-big hat peering at him through the door an absent-minded Naruto left open.

“Sushi, was it?” he asks the child with an innocent smile.

“It’s Inari!” The boy corrects him before catching himself and then gives a valiant effort at pretending he wasn’t spying on a grown-up and a guest.

“Right, Inari. Is your mother home?” He’s tired of talking to only children. He’s tired of this room. He’s also just… tired.

“She’ll be back this afternoon,” Inari says. Then he steels himself and bristles, “You’re all gonna die you know!”

Wow. No build up, straight to the point.

“Yeah,” he sighs deeply. “That’s such an annoying part of being alive.” He makes a show of stretching his arms up even though they still feel like jelly. “Got to make the best of it before we all collapse from old age. Take it from someone who knows.”

Inari who looked set to follow his outburst with more along the same line looks baffled, and then he startles as Sakura’s voice comes from the hallway, telling him not to disturb the ill and infirm.

With the smallest kid successfully deterred, the slightly less small one enters the room carrying a tray with foods, the smells of which turn his stomach.

“Sakura,” he begins as she sets the tray on his lap and hands him a set of chop sticks. “Have you been doing all of… this?” He gestures to the food, then to himself, rudely pointing with the utensils. “The entire time?” She served tea, she served food, she’s clearly been present in the room more than either of the others.

She has the audacity to smile proudly at him. “Of course! Well, not all of it, Tsunami-san has been cooking every day, and I’ve been helping, and helping with cleaning the house of course, and bringing broth to… you…” she trails off seeing his expression, slowly shrinking in on herself. “Should I not have, Kakashi-sensei?”

“No, no,” he waves her off, hiding a flinch at the name. “I’m proud of you for taking care of an injured teammate, Sakura,” he reassures. “But have the boys helped you at all?”

“Well,” her face grows stormy, “Naruto is a big dumb idiot who can barely cook ramen so of course I had to stop him! And Sasuke has been too busy training.” At the last part her anger at Naruto’s incompetence shifts into something between adoration and confusion. He’d forgotten how she’d been early in the story, and sighs inwardly.

“Have they at least,” he says with a sigh, “been sorting out that?” He points to the chamber pot that sits emptied and cleaned by the end of the futon.

Sakura turns bright red and her face contorts, and he can’t tell if it’s from rage or embarrassment. Maybe both?

“Of course they have! I wasn’t about to- to-,“ she turns redder still and goes quiet.

“Well that’s good, at least.” He knows her indignation comes from something other than the division of labour, but that’s not something he’s going to address with a little girl he met only a few days ago.

“When you next see the others, tell them we’re having a team meeting tonight.”

He doesn’t want to address reality, or the reality of this unreality, but as much as he hates it he has to be responsible for these children, or his granny will return from the grave to look at him with such disappointment he will never recover.

“Yes, Sensei,” she says with dignity before taking a bite of something that smells absolutely foul.

He picks at his rice, waits for her to leave the room to use the pot, and then falls asleep again, pressed down into the bedding as if the food in his stomach added to the weight of the air on his strained body.

-

The face that stares back from the mirror is sickly and entirely unfamiliar. The one visible eye is a similar colour to his own (his old? His real?), but there the similarities end. The mask sewn to his shirt sags around his throat.

He strokes a hand across the chin, feeling sparse stubble long enough to start going soft, and watches the reflection follow along. Before he can think about it he’s pulled out a kunai, lathered his face with soap and dealt with the stubble in a few, efficient strokes. He hadn’t thought about it when he picked up the blades on the way to the bathroom, either.

He washes slowly, and can hardly make out the cut-away silver hairs against the porcelain sink.

He looks up again and Hatake Kakashi, damp, tired, and unmasked, looks back. He looks like a real person. Granted, a person with an expensive hair stylist and a good shot at modelling or k-pop or something, with features just unusual enough to be interesting. And in desperate need of a lot of sleep and maybe a hospital.

A forehead protector sits tilted over the left eye. He hasn’t dared touch it since he first became aware of it. It still hurts (everything does, to be quite honest), but no longer to the point where it feels like it will split his head open.

Looking at it feels like a violation. Or like a threat. A boundary he really should not cross.

He closes the eye that almost looks like his own, takes a slow breath, and pulls the headband off.

-

Red has swallowed his vision but he’s not present to see it.

He’s tearing through Iwa nin with ruthless precision. He’s crouching in a tree waiting for the mark to appear between the trunks below. He’s pulling his bloodied hand out of Rin’s chest as she Ka-ka-shi fades and he’s pulling his hand out of her chest and blood runs down his arm and she smiles and she veers as she runs toward him and white sparks arc around his hand and the chirping is deafening and he pulls his arm out of her chest and three figures in pale masks look to him and Obito is on the ground and he is still and his eye socket is empty and it’s the first thing Kakashi sees with the eye that will never forget and strangers die and he can recall the number of eyelashes Rin had the day she died as he pulls his hand from inside her heart and Minato (sensei) nods at him before they move and strangers die and the kyuubi’s chakra floods the village and Kushina tells him he should remember good times too and strangers die and Obito’s still face with no eye peeks out from under the boulder and blood soaks Kakashi’s hands-

“Sensei!” There’s a thudding on the door. “Sensei I’m coming in.” Sasuke’s voice. What?

He sees his (not his? Kakashi’s? His?) face in the mirror, exposed and haggard with tears streaming from the red eye while the near black remains stoically dry (as always). The door opens and he pulls the mask up just in time, and a messy head of black hair appears next to his shoulder in the mirrored image before him.

“Sasuke,” he croaks, trying to sound normal as the world tilts around him and he closes Obito’s eye as he manages to twist with Sasuke’s help to collapse onto the closed toilet lid, rather than the floor.

“Kakashi-sensei,” Sasuke lets go of him and takes a step back, angles his body away and from the corner of his eye Kakashi can see his fists clench at his sides. “Why are you crying?” It’s more a demand than a question.

Kakashi (he) breathes shakily and stares at the floor with the one eye that belongs to him and rests his elbows on his knees. His head sinks lower. He can feel tacky blood drying to crust on his hands, but they’re just pale in the dim light of the bathroom. “I miss your cousin, I guess.”

-

They don’t have a team meeting that night.

He stares at the wall, back to the room, and dissociates so hard he hardly feels the pain or fatigue.

As if through water he can hear the children talking. About him, probably.

“People can get weird and emotional when injured, and even /more so/ with chakra exhaustion,” Sakura hisses.

“How do you even know that!?” Naruto tries to whisper but it’s more like a loud conversational tone. (The volume would hurt if he was present enough for it.)

“It is literally in the academy handbook, idiot,” Sasuke adds helpfully.

“But how do we fix it!?” Naruto’s concern should be touching, but he looks so much like Minato Kakashi thinks he’d throw up if he looked at him.

There’s a decent pause.

“Anyway,” Sakura clears her throat. “Team meeting. We need to decide what to do if Sensei doesn’t get better. As a team.”

“He’ll get better, you better believe it!”

“Hn. We should send word to Konoha. And maybe head back. The sword-guy is dead, so it should be... okay."

“Yeah, I think you’re right, I just… yeah. No. You are right Sasuke-kun.”

“But!? But what about the bridge!?”

A familiar thud.

“IDIOT! We can’t help the bridge building if Sensei is dying!”

They all go quiet.

“He’s… he’s not dying is he?”

“I don’t know,” Sakura hisses. “Inari said Sensei told him that himself!”

“I think chakra exhaustion in severe cases can be fatal.”

“NO WAY! Sensei has been getting better! He won’t DIE he just needs to sleep some more!”

“We’ll try to talk to him tomorrow, and then we decide,” Sakura says decisively.

Somewhere in the fog he’s proud of them.

-

Chapter Text

Faded pre-dawn light filters through the curtains, casting the room in soft relief, and the man who is not Hatake Kakashi forces himself to sit up. He knows by now that energy will not come, no matter how long he sleeps for, but while everything still aches it is less heavy to move, this morning.

He presses his back against the wall and breathes.

He has to address what the fuck he’s going to do next. Even though his thoughts crawl through his mind like they’re stuck in syrup. Whatever has happened to him, it’s bad. Not just energy-depletion and spectacular crash-out bad, but gaping holes in what he should know about the world bad.

Thinking he’s an entirely different person bad.

Was it a jutsu? Some kind of seal? He tries to sift through his odd technicolour memories of a small screen, placing them alongside the too clear too fast moments slowed to eternities flashes of the recent fight Obito’s eye holds in perfect preservation in his mind.

None of it seems like Zabuza’s style, let alone something the seven swordsmen would get up to. The accomplice? He can’t remember the boy’s name, but cartoon-Naruto met him… picking flowers?

Overall, it doesn’t even seem that useful of an attack. What was there purpose here? Turning his loyalties? To a place that’s fictional at best, and worlds removed at worst? (His memories helpfully supply decades of enjoying Sci-Fi and vague, unverified fictional theories about parallel dimensions. Joy.) It seems like an obscenely convoluted way to get rid of an enemy combatant, but he grimly acknowledges that Kakashi is a well-known threat to Konoha’s enemies, and he has no idea how it was brought about.

It could be genjutsu, despite the mental tests for unreality he keeps repeating. Or wasn’t there something about the sharingan making that near impossible? No. Wait. It does, but Sasuke’s insane brother could do it anyway, because he was way too powerful?

(Something niggles at the back of his mind about the brother, but he can’t spend what little energy he has on that right now.)

He is shocked at how easily he stabs his own arm, letting red rivulets trail down to his elbow before he stems the blood flow. Well. It fucking hurts. Which should have helped against anything short of extra-magic sharingan illusions. Nothing shatters, the sun continues slowly rising and more and more birds join a chorus outside. He wraps his wound with practiced hands. Tightening the bandage hurts more in the joints of his hand than the cut itself.

The sound of steps breaks through the noise of birdsong and the constant ringing that still won’t fade.

He hasn’t seen her yet, but he recognises the cadence of her feet on floorboards. Tsunami is up.

It takes him a shameful amount of time to leverage this still unfamiliar body upright, and then longer still to make it out the door and through the hallway. The stairs down loom like an abyss before him.

He mentally kicks himself into gear, prepares for the challenge, and takes the handrail in a white-knuckled grip, and wrestles his unsteady legs into submission. He descends step by agonizing step, and lets himself slump onto the third lowest step as his feet finally hit the floor below.

There are quiet thumps and clatters coming from a room ahead, the distantly familiar sounds of a kitchen well lived in and currently in use. He can almost close his eye and pretend it’s Granny down the hall, if only the solid wood step was a fuzzy carpet instead.

“Oh!” Something between a sharp inhale and a squeak interrupts his reminiscing. Tsunami quickly gathers herself. “Kakashi-san, I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

“Tsunami-san,” he greets her, “maa, no worries at all. Just taking a small breather.” He smiles and can virtually feel her gaze on him.

“Really now.” She steps back toward the kitchen, “just give me a moment, where, ah-“

She’s soon back in view with a set of ancient looking wooden crutches, holding them out to him without comment. Without pity either, he hopes he’s not just imagining.

“Thank you, Tsunami-san.” He slowly hoists to his feet by pulling on the handrail, and she’s there with the crutches before he has time to ask for them, guiding his shaking hands to grip the crossbars. “And thank you,” he clears his throat awkwardly, “for helping the kids.”

“Well, I wasn’t about to throw you all out after what you did for my father,” she replies, entirely no-nonsense. He follows her into the kitchen, and finds himself in a chair at the large wooden table as she prepares tea. “And I wasn’t about to make a little girl care for her unconscious male teacher on her own,” she says pointedly. While his heart swoops into his stomach with nauseous discomfort, having had a stranger so close to his unconscious body, his still foggy mind is genuinely grateful.

He bows in his seat, half-forgotten formality somehow kicking in. “I am in your debt, Tsunami-san.”

“You’re really not,” she says grimly, “after what you did for my father. But thank you.” A familiar teacup is set on the table, then pushed closer, into his reach.

Resisting the urge to fidget is as easy as breathing. He has never- he restarts the thought. In what life he can currently remember he has never managed that. It makes sense that an elite level ninja would have full control of his tells.

It’s such a relief to be in a room with an adult that he almost succeeds in supressing the need to evaluate her as a threat, and he lets a few minutes pass in comfortable silence. The tea is scalding hot in a way that feels like punishment in his sore throat, and he lets himself enjoy it, foregoing the mask as Tsunami sets rice to boil and starts cutting vegetables.

Eventually she sits across from him, her own teacup gone cold as Kakashi pulls his mask up and considers the scratches and dents in the wood of the table. He sighs.

“I know the kids might have made promises,” he begins, feeling numb as he makes the decision that might ruin this woman’s life. “But we will need to start on our way back to Konoha within the next few days.”

“I understand.” Her knuckles are pale as she sets the tea down.

He doesn’t do her the disservice of saying he wishes they could stay. “I’m a liability, injured like this, and the risks of this mission are… not something that a team of ten-year-olds the first time leaving town should have to handle.” They tried in the story in his memories. It went to shit. He doesn’t know if there is any actionable information there or only dangerous misinformation, but what he does know is that Konoha’s jinchuuriki and last real Uchiha are valuable to the village, and none of the three brats he’s been entrusted with (and whose idea was that anyway? Absurd.) deserve the kind of suffering that peace is supposed to protect them from. He hasn’t told them Zabuza is alive. And that knowledge isn’t just his memories - it’s Obito.

“I do think they’re all twelve,” Tsunami smiles, the dark mood lifting for a moment.

“Maa,” he waves a dismissive hand, “Ten, twelve, tiny is what they are.” Even if they are marginally adult by village law, now. He tries to remember what he was doing at twelve. Crying that his birthday present was the wrong colour, skinning his knees falling on a kick-bike and cable-connecting Gameboys with his friends to have Pokémon battles, he’s pretty sure. Getting good enough grades was the biggest worry in his life, at that time. Life or death never seemed real until much later.

“I do understand, really. They’re your top responsibility,” she turns to look out the window, to the sea. “Just like Inari and Father are mine.”

Kakashi watches her profile and sees the frown, the tension around her eye, the way her façade of glossy hair and steely determination is only very thin. “Lives are precious,” he says. Knowing that he’s probably overstepping and doing it anyway. “And bridges can be rebuilt.”

She turns toward him, and he can’t tell where her reaction will fall, after everything they’ve gone through so far, and he thinks she doesn’t know either. She smells like citrusy shampoo, salt-water and stress.

Kakashi continues, “I’m reporting to Konoha. They’ll probably want to investigate.” What the fuck happened to his mind if not what is going on with Wave. “And either way Gato will become a problem for the whole region if left unchecked. Greater powers will not be settling for that.”

She looks about to protest.

He speaks before she can. In too sharp red soaked clarity too many people go to their deaths. “There’s nothing to fight for if no one is left.”

Muffled steps and a door handle clicking can be heard from above. Then a bang.

“SENSEI IS GONE!” Wow. Naruto’s bellow really carries. “WHAT IF HE’S DEAD!?”

Sakura’s voice is only marginally quieter, “WHAT DO YOU MEAN SENSEI IS GONE!?”

Sasuke can barely be heard. “Morons. Dead people don’t get out of bed.”

Tsunami laughs, though it’s a little bit stilted, and Kakashi crinkles his eye at her.

“Well,” she says with false cheer. “Good thing breakfast is almost ready!”

Heavy steps thump down the stairs and soon three mini ninja appear in the doorway.

“KAKASHI-SENSEI!” Sakura.

“YOU’RE ALIVE!?” Naruto.

“Told you.” Sasuke.

“Ah, good morning, children.” He waves at them. It hurts to flop his hand around. At this point he would just permanently become a cocoon, steal some blankets and abscond to some hole in the dirt and never crawl out. If only he didn’t need to get these brats home.

Breakfast is a chaotic affair. It might be called delightfully so, if not every object and every person moving in his vision hurt his eye, and if not every sound, every scrape and word tore at his insides. He can’t stomach food, and slowly sags in his seat while around him the genin are ecstatic that he’s left the room upstairs.

Inari watches him suspiciously, and Kakashi finally meets Tazuna. The old man is far too optimistic, and Kakashi hopes without real emotion that he hasn’t put Tsunami in an impossible situation.

“All right everyone! Time for cleanup!” Tsunami ushers Inari off to get ready for the day, and Sakura starts clearing the table. Naruto and Sasuke stand and start stretching. Tsunami reaches past Kakashi’s shoulder to take an empty cup and he flinches. “Dad,” she addresses Tazuna, “I need to talk to you before you leave today, okay?” She’s smiling but it doesn’t hide her tension.

“Genin,” Kakashi finally speaks, “team meeting upstairs.” He can virtually feel Sakura about to protest. “All of you can help with chores later.”

With sturdy crutches and three determined kids the trip back upstairs is less of an ordeal than he’d feared.

-

“We leave for Konoha the morning after tomorrow.” They are once again gathered on the floor around his futon.

Naruto looks about to protest. Sakura looks relieved, and guilty. Sasuke looks blank.

“It’s not about not wanting to help,” he tells them before they can say something.

He can’t remember if there was any solid reason in the show or manga, of why they did stay to help, but he assumes the guy who would later become Hokage (whose body he seems to have stolen, or who has gone insane enough that probably won’t ever happen) had leeway, and good reason to decide it was a thing worth doing. The problem is, he has no idea what that reason would be, and the problem of, well, himself is bigger than whatever benefit could be won here. And that’s if they don’t all get brutally murdered by Zabuza because Kakashi can’t fight.

“You three could maybe do some good here, but I need a proper hospital,” he sighs, and stares at the ceiling, “and I can’t protect you.” He doesn’t tell them the swordsman is alive. “Right now, we can do more for Wave by giving a proper report to Konoha.”

He sees the three of them look to each other. It seems like after last night they’re mostly decided. He doesn’t remember exactly what they were saying, but there’s a fuzzy, dreamlike idea of them talking about going back to the village.

Sakura is clearly on board. She nods seriously. “Yes, sensei!”

Sasuke looks out the window. “Hn.” Well. He’ll take it.

Naruto is bubbling with frustration that finally spills over, when neither of the others protest. “What kind of cowards are we!? Just running away!? Kakashi-sensei you’re getting better every day! You’re not going to die! I PROMISED to help protect Tazuna-ji! WE CAN’T JUST LEAVE THEM BELIEVE IT!”

“Naruto!” he barks, and magically Naruto’s jaws clack shut. “Do you have any idea,” he says, letting himself sound harsh, “how bad it would be for everyone if you died or was captured here?” His heart beats like a heavy drum, and the ringing in his ears pulses in time.

Sasuke and Sakura look surprised. Naruto’s face has gone white, a hand twisting into the fabric of his shirt, over his stomach.

“Would it be bad like… politically, if a genin team got hurt out here?” Sakura ventures.

“Something like that,” Kakashi says, not taking his eyes off Naruto.

-

They go through logistics, Kakashi’s exhaustion quickly building back to something unbearable. They will leave before daybreak the day after tomorrow. Until then they will rest up and prepare, and Kakashi will hopefully get well enough to move under his own power.

Sasuke stands to leave first, then clears his throat and jerks his head at Sakura when she doesn’t follow. She’s so distracted by his attention that she misses the calculating look Sasuke throws from Naruto to Kakashi. Perceptive.

They leave the room, and Naruto lingers as Kakashi slumps against the wall. Soon he can be horizontal.

“Do you know, sensei?”

Kakashi covers his eye with a hand, pressing into his aching temples for a moment. Then he sighs, “It’s illegal to talk about it, Naruto. But yes.”

Naruto is a tiny ball at the foot of Kakashi’s bed. “Do you hate me, sensei?”

“No, Naruto,” he can say without hesitation. “I couldn’t hate you if I tried.”

One of his favourite characters, back when he was little himself. Memories of learning to draw people by copying images of Naruto alongside Son-Goku and Sailor Moon. A real actual child, who deserves care, and to grow up safe and happy. Minato’s son, Obito’s eye won’t let him forget.

-

The next day he lets himself rest. His world once again narrows to the futon and the bathroom. He curls underneath the scratchy blanket, eats because he knows he needs to, and lets Sakura, Naruto, Sasuke and Tsunami check on him in a semi-regular rotation.  He’s vaguely aware that the kids keep watch outside.

-

When the morning of departure rolls around his head is marginally clearer, the ringing in his ears reduced to an annoying whine rather than a deafening screech, and while it still hurts to move, he doesn’t feel as pathetically weak doing so. It may still be a stupid idea to go on a (who knows how long) camping hike in this state, but he’ll take it over the risk of staying where they are.

The kids say goodbye - Inari cries, Naruto cries, there’s a lot of hugging while Kakashi hovers awkwardly out of reach. These people welcomed them even though they have very little, and Kakashi is all too aware of it.

When the goodbyes and the hugs come to an end and the genin set off toward the road, he lingers a moment and bows to Tsunami.

“Goodbye, Kakashi-san,” she tells him.

He has thought about it without coming to any clear decision. There are so many unknowns about what the hell happened to him. But another unknown is the fate of this family. Now he decides to fuck it all and just say it.

“If you see the shinobi with the sword,” he tells her quietly, “or Naruto’s pretty friend, if he told you about him… tell them Gato is planning to kill them both, to get out of paying their fees. They could still kill you, but if things look dire... Better to have your problems take care of each other, ne?” He crinkles his eye and gives an inadequate little wave. “Stay safe, Tsunami-san.” He turns and leaves before she replies.

“Ahh, so romantic!” Sakura is cooing nonsensically when he catches up to team seven, longer legs making up for how sluggish he still feels. He’s too tired to consider what she’s on about, and they go to join Tazuna at the boat.

-

What he needs, Kakashi thinks, more than anything else, is an adult who actually knows what they’re doing, and can keep these brats from hurting themselves, or getting lost forever in the woods. A lot of things have been going by muscle memory and some kind of innate sense, in the back of his mind, but he quickly realises that he doesn’t even know which direction Konoha lies in. He trudges along, one foot in front of the other, every scrap of energy going into the performance of looking unaffected. Tsunami and Tazuna’s absence is disproportionately felt, as Kakashi tries to watch their surroundings and his team and hold it all together.

He can hear the kids talking to each other as they take the lead, so far seemingly unaware that their teacher doesn’t know where they’re going.

Preferably, he thinks, he would have a responsible adult here who could keep the children safe even from Kakashi, if whatever is wrong with him progresses. So far he's shown no inclinations to causing harm or violence, thank fuck, but he has no idea how this happened or if it could happen again. Maybe he'll wake up a sadist tomorrow. (That might still be preferable to friend-killer Kakashi.)

“Ne, ne, Kakashi-sensei!?” Naruto calls to him for confirmation.

He has no idea what the topic is, so he just smiles through the pain. “Sure, Naruto.”

“SEE BASTARD!? Dogs ARE better than cats believe it!”

Sasuke bristles at this apparent blasphemy as Kakashi stops in his tracks.

Dogs.

Doesn’t… Kakashi have dogs? That appear in magic puffs of smoke when he calls them?

He wracks his memories of the story, but confirmation is easily reached in sharingan-clear recollection. A real talking dog is way weirder than an animated one.

With not a little apprehension and even more relief, he watches the backs of the kids as they walk on. Sakura notices first and pauses, looking back to him. Sasuke copies her a moment later. Naruto is not paying attention at all, even as he is very carefully looking for out of place puddles on the road. It rained this morning. There are a lot of perfectly normal ones to rule out. Kakashi ignores them, and bites down on his thumb, hard. The skin splits easily and he doesn’t even flinch at the pain.

Thank you, Obito, he thinks as he goes through the motions he remembers thanks to the eye that does not belong in his skull.

There is a spectacular cloud of smoke.

“Boss,” a deep, clipped, familiar voice says, as Kakashi topples over and faceplants in the dirt, unconscious.

Oops.

-

Chapter Text

Awareness returns with grating, repetitive sounds that scrape the insides of his skull, overwhelming pain, crushing immobility, and the smell of dogs, trees, and unwashed pre-teens.

The world is swaying strangely, and he wonders if this is what the soul leaving the body feels like.

“Boss,” the warm, comforting weight on his chest says before he’s consciously noticed its presence. He can’t deal with shit right now, so pretends to still be asleep. Pakkun can handle this.

The weight heaves a great sigh. “You just had to summon all of us, didn’t you? And without the scroll.” There’s a disapproving tsk.

“Maa,” he breathes, very quietly, “I have to keep the brats safe, you know.” He’s not sure what the scroll has to do with it.

There’s a grumble from somewhere above his head, and he finally cracks his eye open.

Blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds, reaching treetops, and a small bird flittering across his vision. He’s on a stretcher made from a blanket, with wooden spokes dragging in the dirt at his feet. When he slowly, painfully, cranes his neck he can see that the stretcher has been strapped to a massive brown dog. Bull, Obito supplies, in a flash of Kakashi underneath a pile of warm, safe, joy. Kushina’s You should make sure to remember the good times too, twists in his chest with bittersweet nausea, grief that feels like it should be someone else’s eating him alive. Like he’s a parasitic voyeur of the worst dregs of Kakashi’s life.

The smell and sound of the kids confirm they’re in formation in front, beside and behind the central group that is Pakkun, Bull and Kakashi.

“They would not be more safe if you died from chakra depletion,” Pakkun says with reproach, then shifts his weight and clearly on purpose digs the sharpest elbow Kakashi has every felt into his breastbone.

His entirely justified gasp of pain alerts the children.

“Kakashi-sensei!”

“YOU’RE AWAKE!”

A sharp breath of relief.

“Kakashi-sensei,” Sakura has quickly relocated to walk by his side, glaringly pink at the edge of his vision, “we’ve been moving in diamond formation, it’s past mid-day, on the day after you summoned the pack.” She tells him the current calendar date. Reporting. Huh.

“YEAH, YEAH, KAKASHI SENSEI!” Naruto shouts from somewhere up ahead, “PAKKUN-SENSEI HAS BEEN TEACHING US ABOUT DOWNED-TEAMMATE PROTOCOLS!”

His eye meets Pakkun’s, and the dog looks so very judgemental. Kakashi gives the best semblance of a shrug he can manage.

“Sasuke?” he prompts hoarsely, looking back at the last member of Team Seven. The boy isn’t looking at him.

“Ah, sensei,” Sakura says a little sheepishly. “Sasuke-kun tried to kill the dogs.” Her voice lowers to a whispered cringe. “They beat him very easily.”

“Ne, ne, Kakashi-sensei?” Naruto prompts, “Pakkun-sensei said you did something dangerous and irresponsible!”

The gall of this brat. And this dog. They have no fucking clue. Kakashi momentarily glares at the smug looking pug, then smiles with a hefty dose of sarcasm, makes his tone entirely innocent, and raises a finger in the air. “Oh no. This was an important lesson… in expecting the unexpected.”

Ah, the knowledge that there would be anime sweat-drops on all of them, if only this wasn’t reality.

-

They make camp early.

Pakkun takes charge from atop Bull’s head, getting the three genin in line as they clear ground for a fire, set up a perimeter, and scavenge for fresh food. Meanwhile five dogs keep a close eye on the children and their surroundings, seeming to have decided while he was out that this was a necessary precaution.

Knowing that the (unrealistic, absurd, amazing) pack are certainly much better ninja than he is, Kakashi digs his fingers into Urushi’s scruff, leans back against a tree, and lets himself fall into foggy dissociation.

-

An indeterminate amount of time later, when the kids are cooking under the canine supervision of Bisuke, Guruko and Shiba, Kakashi manages to stir.

He has barely formed the thought before Pakkun turns to him and trots over, as if he knows. The pug nods, Kakashi inclines his head, and finds a gigantic, jowly head shoved under his arm on his bad side, as Bull leverages him upright with practiced ease. (Kakashi’s fingers curl around the collar with comfortable familiarity, agony shooting through every joint.) This is insane, he thinks. The world feels like a surreal fairytale, and the ringing in his head and glare of dappled evening light in his eye gives everything a dreamlike quality.

He drifts after Pakkun, as the two of them in silent agreement move out of earshot of the genin.

The dog sits, and looks up at him silently. Kakashi crouches in front of him.

“First of all,” Pakkun says very seriously, and raises a paw slowly. “Touch the toe beans.”

Kakashi stares. Right. Okay. He reaches out, just as slowly. The paw settles in his hand. The toe beans are so soft. What the hell. He doesn’t let go for a long time. Pakkun doesn’t seem to mind.

Feeling incredibly foolish, and entirely out of his depth, something inside him trusts this creature, deeper than any scraps of memory his broken mind clings to, deeper than the ache in his bones.

He tells him everything.

-

“You smell like the boss,” Pakkun says gruffly. “Don’t know where this’ll all end, or if I like where your thinking’s going. But for now I’ll call that good enough.”

-

He writes a missive to Konoha. Well. Pakkun dictates a missive, and Kakashi groggily scribbles on a blank scroll he hadn’t even realised was in one of his pockets. His handwriting is abysmal.

Aid requested urgently. Genin team without jounin protection. A to S rank hostiles previously engaged and potentially active in the area, hostile team of two. Date, route, distance in time from Konoha, by both their estimated pace of travel and by standardised chuunin team pacing. Henohenomoheji.

He wants to add more detail, but Pakkun tells him that the people in charge already know all they need, by the mission parameters and by who is on Kakashi’s team. He relents, too tired to question it at this point.

The two of them return to camp, where the children perk up and Kakashi is enthusiastically bundled in a blanket (suprisingly, Sasuke), given a bowl of fish stew (Sakura) and a heartfelt but confusing recount of the evening’s activities (Naruto).

Kakashi pretends to enjoy the food and manages to get some down, while occasionally giving encouraging nods to the genin who are telling him about the training Pakkun had them do while he was out. It may have almost killed him, but getting the dogs in is clearly the best thing he’s done since… well.

The scroll is discreetly given to Uhei, with Akino and Shiba gearing up to join him as backup. The three dogs, lead by the now slightly vibrating greyhound, eat, drink, and stretch, then nod their goodbyes.

“So long, brats,” Akino salutes, a paw brushing the fur above his dark glasses, before the three of them disappear like shadows between the trees.

The genin look after them. “Ne, sensei?” Naruto’s voice is surprisingly quiet. It would be suspicious if Kakashi wasn’t so damned tired. “Where are they going?”

Kakashi crinkles his eye, but can’t quite get the rest of his face to cooperate into a smile. Good thing it’s all covered. “Dog business.”

He lies down in a bedroll, and lets the fog descend again.

Somewhere between waking and asleep, with Bull’s warm bulk pressed against his back, he hears the kids whispering quietly.

“He just… pulled it down, right in front of us,” Sakura mutters, concerned.

“He just looks like some guy! I’ve never seen him eat like a normal person before!” Naruto hisses.

“He looks tired.” Sasuke sounds as flat as he does when trying to play things cool.

“Do you think he’s wearing it to hide that mole? It’s nothing to be ashamed of, even if Ino-Pig would say so!”

“I think…” Sasuke says quietly, “that it would’ve been fun to see it if we could catch him, normally. This way is… not right.”

“Yeah Sasuke-kun, you’re right.”

“Ne, ne, guys. Let’s decide we never saw it! We can make it our own ninja pact, believe it!”

“…I agree, Naruto-kun.”

“Hn.”

There’s some minor rustling.

“It’s a deal!” Naruto confirms.

Two other voices ring out in affirmation.

Pakkun shifts underneath Kakashi’s numb arm, and mumbles softly, “You’ve got some good kids, over there.”

He exhales in agreement.

-

Hatake Kakashi’s hands are covered in scars. They’re not terribly obvious, both skin and scars pale and keeping a similar hue, but there are countless little nicks and marks noticeable in the morning sunlight. He watches them through the clear water of a stream as he washes, crystal light and gleaming refractions of ripples bringing them out more than just daylight.

On the right hand jagged lichtenberg figures arch from his palm, down the fingers, and up past the elbow, healed so well you need to know to look for them to notice. They layer over each other, again and again. He flexes each hand; watches tendons move under skin and knuckles pale. They look like they have been broken, before, probably many times, and the joints are wide and strong while the fingers are long and slim. The fingerprints are non-existent, and he observes in fascination as the fingertips still wrinkle and warp with time in water.

The cold water hurts, like everything seems to always do. He relishes the control, keeping the hands submerged longer than he probably should.

At the back of his mind thoughts swirl of whys and hows.

The person he remembers being had virtually no national loyalty, and only marginal pride, and even less attachment to his hometown, moving time and time again to chase new experiences and jobs and further education. If this lack of commitment was a supposed reason for this being done to Kakashi, to loosen his bonds to Konoha, the plan had a majorly fatal flaw. Not just in discounting the sharingan, but in the fact that he has no fucking clue where else to go.

The Naruto manga and anime may have shown Konoha to be a shiny turd full of child soldiers and corruption, but anywhere else in the world for a shinobi to go seemed even worse. And he was not about to buy into that whole “brainwash everyone into happiness” or “kill dissenters to bring about peace” bullshit either. Democracy, transparency and peace were values too deeply ingrained. (The Hokage is an autocratic warlord, knowledge from his high school social sciences classes insist.)

Maybe if he had been on his own things would have been different, but there are kids relying on him who don’t deserve any of his bullshit.

Eventually he decides he can’t draw things out anymore. Rolling down his sleeves as he goes, he returns to Team Seven and the dogs.

Pakkun sits like a king on a throne atop Naruto’s wild hair. Hair that Kakashi finally notices has a texture he has never seen on people, in the life he’s half-convinced he’s actually lived, somewhere that isn’t here. Kakashi’s is similar, as is Sasuke’s to a lesser extent. Soft, slightly crimped, and bunching in straight clumps that form spikes on its own when not just recently brushed, and matting horribly if not taken care of. Sakura’s is smooth and silky, a much more (to his memory) natural texture, if entirely impossible in colour without bleach and dye.

He is startled out of his contemplation of hair and absent wonderings if they are all actually aliens (which would fit with the weird moon thing he vaguely recalls hearing about and laughing at) when Sakura pauses in front of him and salutes.

“Kakashi-sensei!” She sounds so serious. It would be endearing if it wasn’t terrifying. He tries to pull his mind into order and only marginally succeeds. “Camp has been broken to Pakkun-sensei’s instruction! Please approve!” Behind her Sasuke also salutes. Naruto raises the pug straight in the air above his head.

Wow. Someone should have given Pakkun a genin team ages ago.

“Well done.” What was it Kakashi always said in the anime… “My cute little students!”

The three of them really shouldn’t look so relieved at that.

He looks over their work, and sees Bisuke erase the last few tracks and Guruko disguise a few broken branches as parts of a long-abandoned animal nest. Other than that, he honestly can’t see any signs that people have been through here at all. Not that that’s saying much, when the dappled light is doing its best to drill through his skull, and he hasn’t had to think about tracking since fourth grade trips with the scouts.

-

They follow the road at a painfully slow pace, the genin and dogs once again in diamond formation with Kakashi in the middle, paced by Bull who is carrying his pack. Guruko walks in front of them, dashing in repeatedly to nearly trip Kakashi when the small, floppy-eared dog by some unknown metric decides he should slow down.

It’s incredibly frustrating, but at least distracting enough that he mostly can’t think of the blood soaked, flawless visions of murder and suffering trapped in his head.

Obito’s eye seems as much a curse as it is an asset. Obito’s eye. Obito. Obito who might be… alive?

Kakashi freezes. All eyes of his team turn his way, and he hardly notices.

Obito, captured by Uchiha Madara and being forced to go through horrors, made to do what the madman wants. Obito, crushed, healed by terrifying, warping plant tissue.

It’s ridiculous. It can’t be real. It’s just a cartoon some mind-altering jutsu shoved into his head.

But what if it’s not.

Obito’s face, still and bloodless, the eye socket empty, Rin shaking by his side. The first thing he remembers in the memories that stuck through everything. The first time he opened the sharingan and saw through Obito’s eye.

He has to-

He clamps down on every impulse running beneath his skin and beating in his chest. This might be the reason for this, this jutsu. This change. Pull on something so painful and so deeply ingrained that he’d want to let everything go, maybe to run straight into a trap.

He takes two steps sideways, past Urushi, yanks the mask down and releases what little he ate for breakfast into the underbrush.

-

Near midday the sky is clear and bright, not a cloud to be seen. The road smells sun dried; the dust kicked up by genin feet mingling with the heavy scent of woodland. It should be an idyllic scene, but he can't shake uneasy shivers and itches at the back of his neck. His feet feel like lead, Bull carries all his equipment and still he struggles. Even in his memories where exercise was a bare-minimum consideration, he did better walking than this.

He thinks it's just him, paranoia and fatigue and the pressing memories from Obito's eye, the thoughts of what if and it was Kakashi's fault putting him on edge, until Pakkun jumps onto his shoulder and speaks, low into his ear.

"We're being watched. One, as far as we can tell. Been following for a little while, at varying distance."

"Within ear shot?" He whispers back, suddenly glad for the mask that will cover any movement of his lips.

"Rarely. If they're ANBU they're not quite up to snuff. If not, they're a decent imitation."

He thinks of Naruto's meeting with the pretty teenager in the anime. "Sex ambiguous by human cultural norms?" he asks.

Pakkun grunts in assent.

Kakashi hums.

"What you want to do about it, boss?"

He doesn’t know how long it took for Zabuza to heal in the story. If he would come after them as they left.

He tries to remember anything he can about the boy. Ice related bloodline. Escaped persecution in Kiri? Died for Zabuza, when he shouldn't have had... Chidori. He jumped in front of Kakashi's chidori, and was torn through like paper. The frame from the manga suddenly stands out clear in his recollection, and the real Kakashi's memories won't be done worse. Over it is superimposed Rin, impaled on his arm and he can see the tears in her eyes the dust in her pores the smudges of dirt the blood pooling as the wound cauterises but not fast enough and the light in her eyes going out the beating pulse in her throat falling still and the brilliant arcs of chidori die as she dies and the bruises on her skin and the burst veins in her eyes and the blood that specks her chin from the hole in her chest from his hand-

He draws an unsteady breath, feels his hands shaking. "My judgement can't be relied on," he whispers, "you are team leader until Konoha reinforcements arrive."

Pakkun says nothing for a long moment. A bird screeches angrily as Sakura to the side steps too close to its nest. "Understood," he finally confirms.

-

"Let's see how determined they are," Pakkun tells him an hour or so later, after confirming that their tail is remaining, currently dropped back well out of ear shot.

"All right children!" Kakashi calls them to attention shortly after, when Pakkun has told him the plan. "Pakkun will take us through some evasive drills. Very good practice. You should see it as training for when you're no longer genin."

Maybe they should tell the kids, about the threat, but Pakkun had been insistent. We don't know them well enough to gauge the outcome of that, he'd grumbled, while we know secrecy will keep them calm. Normal circumstances, I'd agree with you. He'd given Kakashi this painfully sympathetic look, and Kakashi had just flicked his fingers in agreement. He feels like he might know them, from the silly, bright and exaggerated images he remembers, but feelings aren't truth.

"Right!" Pakkun barks from his perch on Bull. "We will be veering off road to shake potential followers. Diamond formation again, but this time I'm in the lead. Urushi and Bisuke will take up the rear, and ensure our passage doesn't leave too many tracks. Guruko takes the left flank and Bull the right.” Each dog wags their tail as Pakkun calls their name. “You three!" He points an imperious paw at the kids.

Kakashi thinks he may have created a monster. Lord Pakkun, next Hokage, ruling with an iron fist demanding treats and toe-bean massages between directing his troops.

"You three will be in the centre, protecting the Asset." Pakkun points at Kakashi, who makes himself smile and wrenches his fingers into a victory sign. The real assets are the children, but they don't know that. "You'll take turns carrying him. If he's too heavy for Sakura, she will be relieved by Bull, and Bisuke will take his position. Am I understood?"

A chorus of "Yes-sir" rings out, and soon Kakashi finds himself perching piggy-back on Naruto, while Sasuke takes Naruto’s things. Sakura, embarrassed, gives her pack over to Bull.

This is ridiculous. His feet almost drag on the ground, and he has to curl over Naruto's shoulder to not overbalance them backwards. The closeness is incredibly uncomfortable and makes his skin crawl, and he'd quite like to go scrub it off now, thanks.

"Don't worry Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto says with determination. "I've got this! We'll be back in Konoha in no time, and I'll carry you the whole way, you better believe it!" The kid smells like fox, fire, and old sweat dried into cheap, synthetic sportswear.

Kakashi closes his eye in pain that's not just physical (even though that's still present, of course). He should be the one protecting these brats. Not slow them down. He'd tell them to leave him, if he thought they'd listen.

Remember, he himself says in Obito-sharp clarity, we leave no one behind. Three masked figures flick their fingers in the same twitch of acknowledgement he'd used with Pakkun, and a small voice -Tenzou- says on his left, Of course, Captain. Those who abandon their friends are worse than trash.

"We will move with stealth and speed," Pakkun instructs, and they all steel themselves. "Go!"

-

They run for the rest of the day. Pakkun leads them on an occasionally curving path through the forest, and Kakashi does his best to not be a disruption. The kids are surprisingly serious, for thinking this is just a training exercise. He has noticed Sasuke being good at picking up subtle cues, so he may understand more of what’s going on, but Kakashi can’t tell with Naruto and Sakura. Soon it doesn’t matter though, holding on to the running genin being just about all he can focus on. If they have to fight, he will have to stand in front of the kids.

Several hours in, Naruto swaps roles with Sakura, getting to run unimpeded for a while.

It quickly becomes clear that Sakura is nowhere near strong enough.

“Well,” Kakashi winces after hitting the ground with a thud, Sakura sprawled on her back on top of him, “we tried. You know I think I can run by-”

A good four voices in unison go “NO!” before he even has the chance to finish. Rude.

Instead Naruto and Sakura take one pack each, and Kakashi is tied to Bull’s back. At the next swap Sasuke takes over, and Sakura looks ashamed as she climbs onto Bull instead.

It would have been one thing if this was some kind of exercise designed to wear away the children’s apprehension at carrying wounded teammates, but it’s not. It’s Kakashi failing to keep up.

He somehow actually falls asleep, sitting on Sasuke’s back.

-

“I think we’ve lost them,” Pakkun mumbles to Kakashi, shortly after calling an end to the ‘training’. “Or they decided to turn back.”

Sun has set hours ago, and pale moonlight filtering through the dense canopy above give them the slightest bit of vision, down in the small hollow between trees Pakkun has chosen for their camp.

The kids fall down dramatically, groaning about the torture they’ve been put through.

Kakashi sits, head spinning with dizziness and intense vertigo, and wonders if lying down will make it better or worse.

They don’t make a proper camp, or a fire. Instead a few blankets are unrolled and the four humans flop together in an exhausted pile. Pakkun tells them the dogs are on watch rotation, and that it’s safe to sleep now.

-

If this is a coma dream, he thinks, waking in the middle of the night with cramps seizing his body and three heavy children crushing his aching bones into the slightly damp moss, he would like to wake up now. There’s a very mild breeze that has managed to break in between the trees, and the wind itself feels like burning agony against the small patch of bare skin on his face. Everything is muted, near grey, revealing the early hours of morning when it is no longer entirely dark, but still some time until sunrise.

They are being watched.

He’s again not sure how he knows until he already does.

The forest around them is almost too much as expected. The sounds are just right. The scents are just right. They shouldn’t be, with five dogs nearby. Wild animals should give them a berth, especially as Urushi has deliberately marked nearby, staking a claim that most forest creatures will note and nearly all humans will not.

He carefully disentangles himself, wincing as he has to pull his hurting fingers out of Naruto’s tight grip.

Pakkun stirs as Kakashi stands, one ear twitching in question. Kakashi tries to convey in body language that someone is here, hidden, but he’s not sure how successful he is. Nonetheless, Pakkun stretches and follows as Kakashi takes a few steps away from the children. The two dogs on watch, Bisuke and Urishi, glance at them, then turn back to their attentive posts.

Where, where… He’s lifting his hand toward the headband before he can think about it, then hisses and jumps when sharp teeth clamp around his ankle.

“What the fuck?” he hisses at Pakkun.

The dog let’s go and snorts quietly.

In the split second of divided attention, a cloaked figure has appeared between the trees.

ANBU. He tenses, powering through the wince as his whole right side cramps even harder.

Next to him Pakkun relaxes.

Wait. He… knows that mask. Tanuki. In unnatural resolution, side by side, falling in tandem working in step, blood and precision and poisoned senbon-

The ANBU raises a hand, and takes off his mask.

“Genma,” Kakashi breathes.

“Captain,” Genma replies.

-

Two of them have come to Team Seven’s aid. Shiranui Genma, who Kakashi remembers both through the sharingan and from the anime in his own maybe false life, and Hyuuga Tokuma, cranefly mask, who he doesn’t.

The ANBU pack away their black-ops gear once it’s clear they will not immediately need it and set a perimeter.

Dawn comes quickly, and Kakashi waits it out sitting slumped at the base of a tree, letting the buzz in his head overcome everything else.

Tokuma looks at him with regular intervals, monitoring his vitals without any touch or equipment needed. (Now if he had to get hit by a truck and end up in ninja land, that would have been a nicer special power to get than flashback-extraordinaire no jutsu.)

The first thing the Hyuuga had done, after informing him of the examination, was tell him to sit down, to for the love of Hashirama’s saggy Senju balls NOT get up unless he and no one else explicitly tells him to, and to preferably pass out. Right now. Neither of the new arrivals are skilled enough at medical chakra refinement (which is a thing, apparently) to give him a transfusion compatible with his weird white Hatake life energy.

He hadn’t felt up to giving even a token protest, letting himself feel the relief of someone else is dealing with this now.

Pakkun wakes the kids just after sunrise. The three of them wind their limbs out from the bundle they’d slept in and stretch groggily, then one by one pause in confusion as they realise there are two more people in the (barely one at all) camp. Sasuke is first, freezing, then looking to Kakashi, then Pakkun, then deciding to play it cool and pretending like nothing is out of the ordinary. Sakura just stares.

Meanwhile; “Hey, hey! Who are you!? I’m UZUMAKI NARUTO BELIEVE IT!” Their noisiest ninja takes the direct approach.

“Shiranui Genma, Tokubetsu Jounin!” Genma waves amiably from where he, while the genin slept, made a tiny little fire and heated up tea. Pakkun had meanwhile detailed their trip from Wave, and the Kiri ANBU impersonator who had followed them. Do they want to start a war? Tokuma had muttered.

“Tokuma. Jounin.” The Hyuuga doesn’t bother to turn around at all, just tilting his head slightly from where he stands at the base of a tree, facing in the general direction of Wave. His clothing and light brown hair blend exceptionally well with the forest.

“Oi, Rude Tokuma Jounin-san!” Naruto points just as rudely at their recently arrived protector. Kakashi would facepalm if he had the energy to. Tokuma just slowly turns around and reveals his Hyuuga-pale eyes and the straining veins of the byakugan. Naruto flinches violently. Tokuma turns his face to the other children.

“Oh,” Sakura finds her manners somewhere beneath surprise and suspicion. “Uhm. Haruno Sakura. Genin?”

“Don’t make it a question, idiot,” Sasuke mumbles to her under his breath. Then he squares his shoulders. “Uchiha Sasuke. Genin. We are Team Seven.”

Bisuke wags his tail and stands next to Sasuke, who staunchly ignores the dog.

“Ne, ne, why are you here? Are you on a different mission? Where are you going? Two jounin! It must be super cool…!” Naruto’s conspiratorial voice is only slightly less loud than his normal one.

“They’re here to get Kakashi-sensei back to the village, dumbass,” Sasuke says before Genma can answer.

“Ehhh!? But we are doing a great job of it!” Naruto looks genuinely shocked.

“We were followed all of yesterday, moron!” Sasuke growls.

“I’m NOT A MORON! And that was just a training exercise BASTARD!”

“Why would Kakashi-sensei send his dogs with a scroll if it wasn’t for this!?”

Kakashi sighs. Sakura looks at him, then steps over, picking up her pack as she goes. “I’ll help you, sensei,” she says seriously, as Naruto and Sasuke’s squabble begins to involve actual hair pulling.

“You are my best genin,” he tells her. He lets her grab him by the arm. Tokuma is there immediately, supporting his other side. Kakashi can’t even bring himself to feel awkward about it, just leaning heavily on the other man as he is brought to standing.

Pakkun breaks up the escalating brawl while the other dogs gather around, and Genma pours a suspicious white powder into a cup of tea before giving it to Kakashi.

“What is it?” He is not drinking mysterious ninja drinks without at least the guise of reassurance, over here. No one else is getting powders.

“Electrolytes,” Genma smirks around the senbon in his mouth. “We can’t give you any good stuff, or you might actually drop dead in this state.”

Well. He didn’t have to be so smug about it.

They all get through a brief breakfast of ration bars and tea, and the kids (two of them now slightly banged up and covered in moss) are instructed by Pakkun to erase their tracks. Not that they need to be as worried, now, with two ANBU to pick up Kakashi’s slack.

He needs to speak with Genma in private.

The thought has barely entered his mind before he feels his fingers curl, and the other nin nods to him in acknowledgement.

They step aside, the excuse of a bathroom break easily dissuading any children from following.

"What is it, captain?" Genma crouches as Kakashi pretends the way he falls against a tree is just a suave and casual lean.

"I'm… potentially compromised." He looks at Genma from the corner of his eye.

Genma's eyes go wide, incredulous. “I thought the chakra exhaustion was enough of a problem,” he says jokingly. Then his eyes narrow. "Tracking- no… Mental jutsu?"

"Something like that. Something new." Probably. He looks at the branches above Genma's head. "I'll need to head straight for T&I when we get back. I don't remember the village layout," he says, forcing his tone to remain unaffected, "so you should bring me in blindfolded."

Genma is quiet for an uncomfortable stretch of time before, "Understood."

Kakashi nods, and it's decided.

They rejoin the others after an actual bathroom break, and Genma looks at Team Seven in a different way. It's subtle, Kakashi will give him that, but his calculating tension hardens into some type of understanding as his eyes go from the Uchiha mon on Sasuke’s shirt to the scars on Naruto's cheeks, and slide past Sakura as if she's not even present.

-

Chapter Text

They reach the imposing Konoha main gates in golden evening light. Genma sets Kakashi down with practiced ease, and steadies him well enough when his numb feet hit the dust that he barely staggers.

The kids are dirty, too tired to complain, and obviously relieved at the sight of home.

Home. He wishes it was. Instead there is an odd mingle of nauseous apprehension and fatigue-muffled fear roiling in his gut. At least the method of travel, where he had to do absolutely nothing, has prevented his health from deteriorating again. He’s still balancing on a fraying rope about to snap, but Tokuma’s constant surveillance became less intense a few hours into the journey. They had rejoined the road when the real jounin deemed it safe, and travel had been made significantly smoother.

“Right, kids,” Kakashi says as they all limp to the back of the queue entering the village. “Genma is taking me in. You guys go with Tokuma,” Sasuke nods stiffly, Naruto grumbles, and Sakura looks about as exhausted as Kakashi feels. He glances at his dogs “…and Pakkun to sign in, and report.” He nods to their chorus of “Yes, sensei!”

He looks to the other dogs, “Thank you all for your hard work. I’ll… I’ll try to call you back when things are settled, and thank you properly.” They look at each other with a bit of uncertainty, but wag their tails. Then after a huff from Pakkun they all make various signals of assent and dismiss themselves, only Pakkun remaining where he perches on Tokuma’s shoulder. He thinks he will never ever get over magic teleporting dogs. It’s weirder than the Sharingan.

Finally, Kakashi turns to Genma and tilts his head.

Genma nods, chews the senbon between his lips and salutes the genin before giving Tokuma a look. Then he walks Kakashi past the line, up to the desk and past it with a nod to the desk staff, and into the village proper.

No one even bats an eye at their passage, even as Kakashi clings to Genma’s shoulder to remain upright.

Konoha is simultaneously surreal, exactly like imagined, and absolutely a real town. The wooden wall is massive, as are the Hashirama trees outside it, but once inside the scale seems less overbearing. Konoha itself is colourful and lively, in a way it rarely seems in the few Obito-clear memories he has of wider views of the place. In the distance, between the taller buildings in this area, he can glimpse part of the Hokage monument. The Nidaime and Sandaime, drenched in sunlight and looking down on all of them.

A cart clatters past, pulled past the customs station at the gate by two men who look sun weary, sweaty and smell strongly enough to match, but seem pleased to have arrived. They talk about the restaurant they’ll be hitting up after checking in to their boarding house, and how well they expect their goods to sell here. They exclaim in excitement as a ninja flicks into visibility next to them and then dashes off to the clearly marked gate office.

Genma jerks his head to the side, and Kakashi follows. When they’re out of even potential view of the genin team, Kakashi takes a breath he hopes doesn’t come across as nervous, and tugs the forehead protector down to cover both eyes.

“I’ll carry you again,” Genma says, “so you can’t memorize the route as easily.”

“Maa… Maybe you should just knock me out,” Kakashi replies, only half joking.

Genma groans. “Don’t even try. I’m not explaining that one.” He taps Kakashi’s elbow, then slides underneath his arm and hoists Kakashi into a piggyback ride again, so smoothly he hardly realises what’s happening before it already has. “Just zone out again or whatever. I’ll get us there.”

The lurch and almost silent tap that follows quickly escalates into more jolting leaps and wind brushing through Kakashi’s hair, and it can only mean they’ve taken to the rooftops. He just about has energy to wish he could actually see it for himself, as he is now, and he just about has energy to hope what’s coming isn’t brutal torture and execution, or strange experiments in dark underground tunnels.

-

He half falls off Genma’s back once they finally stop. Motion sickness is a familiar feeling, but right now he feels like motion sickness had a love child with a migraine and decided to also shove his head under water. It’s not Genma’s fault – Kakashi just seems to work like this. Returning to the village flat along the surface of the fucking planet had been fine. Blindfolded and flung who knows in what direction for what was definitely a too long route intended to confuse him was… not.

“Come on.” Genma takes him by the shoulder and guides him up two steps and through a door. The place smells like people, floor cleaner, paper, ink, and underneath it all enough of the metallic tang of blood to make Kakashi’s hackles rise.

Genma taps a rhythm against the armoured vest he’s holding Kakashi by, and he can somehow parse it.

All clear, mission success.

He tentatively lifts the headband off his right eye. They’re standing in the lobby of an office building. It’s slightly worn around the edges, and outdated by several decades to Kakashi’s alien delusions, but well cared for. The neighbouring building casts a shadow that blocks the late sun from coming into the room, but the light is still warm. A metal door further in, past a desk, is the only thing that makes the innocuous place seem sinister, aside from the scent of blood. The door has no handle.

Behind the desk a young woman leans back on a rickety chair, balancing it smoothly on the two back legs as her chunky sandal boots rest on the desk’s surface, crumpling what Kakashi thinks might be intake forms.

Kakashi glances at Genma, who raises an eyebrow as if to say well, you wanted this.

Apprehensively, he approaches the desk. The woman is chewing gum obnoxiously, and her dark hair spikes out into a halo behind her head. She seems somewhat familiar, but he can’t place her. She stares at him.

“Why the fuck are you here?” she raises an eyebrow and rakes her eyes up and down his entire body in a way that should make his skin crawl, but somehow doesn’t. Probably because she just smells vaguely reptilian and entirely disinterested.

He steels himself. “Turning myself in.”

She slowly takes one foot off the desk, then the other. The hovering legs of the chair thunk down onto the floor (linoleum over concrete, the noise tells him). She puts her elbows on the papers her feet were crushing just moments ago. Twines her fingers together. Leans forward, rests her chin on top of them. He waits. Wishes he could pass out now, thanks. Standing up is exhausting.

She blows a chewing gum bubble that snaps with a loud pop. “T&I is not the place to deal with your crushing guilt and mental health problems.” She sounds like she’s quoting someone.

What the fuck? What is he supposed to do with this? Can’t they just lock him up so he can go unconscious already? “No.” He crinkles his eye insincerely. “Something hit me on a mission. I don’t think I’m Hatake Kakashi anymore.”

She laughs at him, full bellied and open mouthed. “Good one, now fuck off.”

He glances helplessly at Genma, who is staring at the ceiling, twirling a senbon needle in his hand. “Just get the intake forms, Anko,” he sighs. “Or we’ll have to take him in the other way.”

Kakashi turns back to her, keeping the sarcastic smile. “I have no idea who you are.”

-

The intake form is clearly not designed for someone turning themselves in. Kakashi clicks his pen and stares at the letters swimming in front of his eyes. “I still have my weapons,” he tells Anko. “That seems wildly irresponsible.”

“If you were actually an impostor,” she counters, “you’d be out there wreaking havoc on the village, not handing yourself over like this.”

He can feel himself sag, the long day catching up with his broken body. He leans an elbow on the desk, trying to stay standing. “How’d you know this isn’t part of my evil plan?” he slurs and scribbles something on the form. He’s not sure what. It probably doesn’t matter.

“You’re such a fucking asshole,” she scoffs.

He sluggishly raises two fingers in a victory sign.

“Okay. Know what. Just come with me.” At last she gets up and walks out from behind the desk, and heads over to the door. Kakashi looks back for Genma, and realises he disappeared somewhere between Anko’s scoff and her standing up.

Anko knocks, and the door opens up away from them, with a completely smooth silence that feels incredibly ominous.

He follows behind her as she proceeds, feeling the world narrow again to the effort of putting one foot in front of the next.

At some point there’s a clank and a faint echo of steps, but the ringing in his ears has gotten so loud he can’t be bothered to try to focus beyond it.

The kids are back in the village, and no one is getting murdered by Mochi damned ass Zabuza. That’s all that matters. He knows the guy isn’t named Mochi. Can’t remember what it actually is though. And the stupid self-sacrificing child fake ANBU isn’t dead either.

Anko stops, and he somehow succeeds in not bumping into her.

“Sit the fuck down,” she tells him. “Someone will come see you in a bit. I know there’s no AC so you’ll just…” her voice disappears into a muddled din as he decides to listen and sit the fuck down. Somehow he actually manages to sit in a chair. It has stuffing. Huh. This doesn’t seem like a torture room. Anko is still talking when he loses hold of consciousness.

-

He has no idea what time it is when he comes to again. The room has no windows and no clock, just a yellow overhead light, a probably two-way mirror, a bolted down table and two lightly stuffed, straight-backed chairs that if anything reminds him of his school cafeteria growing up.

He doesn’t bother to supress the groan forcing its way out his throat as he slowly stretches. Because this is just his kind of luck now, he seems to have been blessed with the combined joy of flu-like deep body aches, not quite (but nearly) as bad as after waking on the road on a stretcher, and the torturous stiffness that comes with sleeping in an aeroplane seat designed for shorter people.

Through the mask he scratches his nose, and wonders if he can ask for a glass of water. Stupid, he immediately berates himself. You turned yourself into Torture and Interrogation. What do you expect? Hotel service. No. This is necessary. He is a potential hazard and threat to those kids and this village, and if he has to suffer some dehydration to get through it, then so be it.

Eventually the single, again handle-less door swings open, to reveal a blonde, middle aged man wearing a red haori over his standard issue vest. He steps inside and the door remains open behind him. Kakashi can smell the presence of two more people in the hallway, but they are out of sight. He eyes the blonde in a way he hopes comes across as relaxed, but probably doesn’t.

“Hello, Hatake-san,” the stranger says politely. “My name is Yamanaka Inoichi.”

Oh. That name does ring a bell. Ino’s dad. Ino-Shika-Cho, allied clans and special techniques.

“Nice to meet you, Yamanaka-san,” he grinds out through his dry and rasping throat.

Inoichi watches him in an unreadable way, then quickly seems to make a decision. “Walk with me, Hatake-san,” he says, and then waits for Kakashi to force his painful joints to shift into some semblance of a person capable of standing.

He’s lead out through a corridor he’s now present enough to take in, and the place still mostly looks like a boring office hallway, though the floor is suspiciously smooth and well-scrubbed, and the doors are all reinforced. The smell of blood adds a certain nightmarish je ne sais quoi.

They have to climb a set of stairs, but finally get to their destination. A room with a similar door, but no partnered room connected with a mirror. They sit in matching armchairs, and Inoichi pours Kakashi a glass of water from a pitcher moist with condensation.

Kakashi drains the glass he’s given without hesitation, not bothering to hide, though he pulls the mask up immediately after. Then sets the glass down with a soft click against the wooden side table. He sits still, posture straight, no fidgeting, something he's learned by now comes so natural to this body that anything else is a conscious choice, until fatigue steals it from him. Inoichi sits relaxed, legs crossed, a clipboard he hasn't once looked at in his lap.

The room has the one entry point to their side, and up under the ceiling a camera he can hear working sits with the recording light off. There is no table between them, just the small one at the side, no windows. Wide chairs that don't restrict movement. Aside from the single entry point he'd guess the space is designed to put jumpy shinobi at ease.

"I’ve been told you claim to be suffering some kind of depersonalisation,” the Yamanaka clan head finally says. “Badly enough that you're worried it’s a security risk. Can you tell me what's wrong?"

Well then. At least there are no thumb screws or painful jutsu involved. So far, his very helpful brain adds.

He crinkles his eye, too tired to even pretend the rest of his face is sincerely smiling. "I don't know,” he breathes, “if I'm Hatake Kakashi, subjected to a nefarious jutsu, Hatake Kakashi, who finally snapped and became someone else as a coping mechanism, or truly that someone else, forced to deal with Hatake Kakashi's shitty brain."

Inoichi looks at him for a long moment. He doesn't take notes. Probably has a little copy of himself doing it in his funky mind world. It's nicer than talking to a therapist (maybe, partially, because he knows what the goal is here). Fuck, why couldn't he have become Inoichi instead of Kakashi, after being hit by the nebulous truck of wherever he was before ending up here? The guy seemed pretty well adjusted, in what tiny glimpses were had in what he remembers of the story.

"Shitty brain?" Inoichi questions. He smells like flowers, fresh dirt, and something sharp Kakashi can’t place. "Why do you say that?"

He deliberately lets his snort happen. "Are you kidding? There is so much trauma going on up in here."

That actually startles a laugh out of Inoichi.

"He is-" Kakashi corrects himself, "I am also exhausted and in pain. All the time. What is up with that?"

A beat of silence stretches just long enough to be awkward.

"Anyway. I also have," Kakashi says, wondering how unhinged he'll seem (not that it matters, Inoichi will probably be inside his mind soon), "memories of watching an anime - a cartoon about Konoha, and reading manga of the same. I don't know if it's my real memories warped by... Whatever this is or not, but... It details the future." To be honest, if he went crazy and decided to make Naruto the main character of everyone's lives, that kind of tracks. "The only exceptions to... Well. Not at all remembering being Hatake Kakashi, are memories from the Sharingan." Saying that feels wrong. Like he shouldn't draw attention to the eye in conversation.

Inoichi's eyebrows have risen so far they're more than halfway up his forehead. Kakashi distantly recalls being fascinated how some people's faces can just do that.

"Fascinating," Inoichi says, sounding just a bit too interested for comfort.

Kakashi continues, hands resting on his thighs. They hurt. As does his elbows, shoulders, knees, ankles – the list could go on. He wants to move to make it hurt more, to make it change, not just be this constant radiating agony. "I have not been able to verify the cartoon information, but I am aware it's now affecting my interactions and influencing my choices, so far in that I'm lost without real reference points to the world without them. I am also trying not to trust any of it. I would not consider this to be a sustainable strategy."

"What happened before the change?" Inoichi asks, far too kindly.

"As far as I can parse, from what Team Seven has told me and memories from-" he can't bring himself to say it, and instead moves a numb, puppet-like hand to indicate Obito’s covered eye. "I was fighting Zabuza, possibly one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist? To near death, and then collapsed with chakra exhaustion."

Inoichi pauses at this. "You took down one of the Seven Swordsmen?"

"Mostly. The final blow to Zabuza was struck with senbon, thrown by a false Kiri ANBU agent. I believe this was an accomplice, and that Zabuza is still alive. I have... Quite a report to make, once you decide what to do with me. The kids should be making theirs now." He should probably call them Team Seven and not the kids, but he’s already said it now.

"I'd like to perform a mind walk to properly assess things, if you're all right with that?" Inoichi says instead of answering, ever so gently.

"I don't think we need to pretend I have a choice."

"You do." Inoichi is very serious now. Kakashi thinks that look has probably preceded too many people ending up gibbering messes. "I'm not in the habit of entering the minds of loyal Konoha citizens without their knowledge and consent. I cannot, however, guarantee how soon you may be out of confinement, if you object to a more in-depth examination."

Kakashi takes a measured breath. "Yeah no. I'm not objecting." His head is spinning though, and he can't tell if the increasing smell of blood is real or not. "It's why I'm here in the first place."

"Very well," Inoichi puts his clipboard on a small side table. "If you are ready, let us begin immediately."

Kakashi inclines his head in acknowledgement.

Inoichi stands, still so relaxed. It could be an act, but Kakashi is not complaining.

"All right," Inoichi moves his chair closer. That too is disarming. He probably should be performing this standing, with Kakashi in chains or something.

The door quietly clicks, opens, and Ibiki steps inside. Kakashi recognises him straight away, both thanks to Obito’s eye and through the manga and show. None of them speak as he takes up silent watch between Inoichi and the door.

"This will feel odd, but you have to let me in. I'm not going to slip past a Sharingan user undetected, and everything will be easier on both of us that way," Inoichi instructs. Kakashi wonders if this has been done to this body before, and how many times the real Kakashi might have witnessed it otherwise. "This technique will have you aware of me in your mind, and it requires physical contact."

Kakashi can feel his own flinch as he supresses it. The effort sends shooting cramps from his chest to his armpit and elbow and down his side and left leg. "Understood."

He is painfully aware that how he's being treated is an immense privilege. If he'd been almost anyone else in the village, he'd probably not have had a clan head playing at kindness, together with the current lead of T&I in the room, both to attend his potential mental break with what seems like immediate haste. Maybe it would have been easier, to just be thrown in a cell.

Inoichi sits down in front of him, close enough that their legs would touch if they did not both carefully angle their limbs to prevent it. He flicks through rapid hands signs and leans in, hand reaching for Kakashi’s head, and Kakashi smells toothpaste, rice, orange juice and raw tuna on his breath.

Ibiki, off to the side, smells like iron.

Letting someone into his mind is a strange intrusion that feels way too intimate, and he hates it.

-

The mind walk is odd. It feels like reminiscing, like his thoughts are just wandering, but he is at the same time keenly aware of someone else’s presence, as if someone is pressing in closer than he has ever before experienced, and they are gently flicking through his consciousness as if they belong there. He is aware that he could fight it, like one could push someone bodily away, but he resists the impulse.

For a moment Inoichi catches on cars, on computers, on smartphones, on plane travel, on his sister, makes a detour to Teflon coated frying pans and from there to the moon landing, to Granny’s funeral, lingers on his friends, on his classes, on his camera.

Then Hatake Kakashi in all his anime glory. Naruto, the text emblazoned in bold colours on glossy manga covers. The credits song he once learned to play on piano. The contents of what of the story he can remember, quickly going from one disjointed scene to unrelated manga frame to the next. The kids doing D-ranks, the disaster mission to Wave, held up in comparison to his muddled real recollection of the days that have passed since he woke here. Filler episodes, Tora the cat, Sukea chasing around with the kids trying to take photos of Kakashi’s face. The Chuunin exams, Orochimaru attacking and cursing Sasuke and the kid leaving and the Uchiha massacre and Danzo with a Sharingan eye and the Hokage dead and Tsunade returning to the village and Gaara exploding with sand into Shukaku and Gaara the Kazekage and Naruto speaking to the demon fox and the red clouds of the Akatsuki and looming war and Tobi- Obito… ALIVE? The flashbacks to Kakashi’s childhood and the manga frame of Rin impaled is easy, recent, within a split thought’s reach and Kakashi doesn’t mean to but his attention draws Inoichi’s and the memory clears into too real perfection as if it is happening now and Ka-ka-shi- Rin dies on his arm and blood runs down her face and death after death after death -

-

"I understand your concerns," Inoichi says when it's finally over. He looks worn. "I've never seen anything like it." The grim frown and clipped tone feels more genuine than the gentle smiles did, but Kakashi doesn't know if that's because he thinks it's closer to what he deserves, or actual truth. He feels wrung out, as if he’s been crying. He’s pretty sure Obito’s eye has been.

"I have at this stage found no traces of genjutsu or any other brute force jutsu work. Nor does your consciousness appear a separate entity, or harmful presence, and it does not have any of the usually associated signs of a dissociative identity. But I found no traces of Hatake Kakashi's genuine memories." Neither of them address the encounter with the ones from Obito's eye. "By Hatake Kakashi’s profile, I also would not expect an episode of this magnitude at this stage, unless something unprecedented happened.” Neither of them acknowledge that failing and losing members of his team would not have been unprecedented, even if it would have come to pass. “It could still be sophisticated seal work at play, so we need to tread with caution." The next sentence is apologetic. “Sadly I never got much chance to examine any Uchiha. They were prone to some… interesting tendencies, and the Sharingan is a major unknown here.”

Inoichi pauses for a longer beat.

"We will take a break," that means we will consult where you can't hear us, he's pretty sure.

"I'll come speak to you with a clearer plan going forward, sometime in the next few hours."

I will. Not someone will come for you. He can't decide if that is a good or a bad thing.

-

“We would like to continue with more in-depth mind walks,” Inoichi says, returned an indeterminate amount of time later.

Kakashi had finished off the pitcher of water, found a semi-comfortable sleeping position in the red, faded armchair, and however much time has passed vanished in the literal blink of an eye.

“After a longer break,” Inoichi finishes.

“Why not now?” Kakashi presses, fatigue throbbing in his temples.

Inoichi looks at him like he’s insane. “Because we don’t actually want to kill you.” He sighs. “We’re taking you to another room, one with a cot. Eat. Sleep. We’ll continue in the morning.”

He feels like there is something Inoichi isn’t saying, but he is too tired to care.

-

Kakashi-kun.

Someone is calling him.

Ugh.

No.

Everything hurts.

He's tired.

The light turns on, stabbing his aching brain through his eyelid.

He turns over, away, and pulls the cover over his head.

There is an indulgent sigh.

"It's time to wake up, Kakashi-kun."

The speaker smells like tobacco smoke, old and fresh, and like ink.

He wrinkles his nose under the mask. It prickles.

Finally his consciousness seems to catch up. Who the fuck would-

He opens his eye. Sits up slowly. Probably looks as bewildered as he feels. An elderly man in a very big hat stands in the open door, watching him.

Too many memories of the delusional ideas he has about Konoha and the future sit too close to the surface, after Inoichi's rummage around the previous evening. Things he should have thought about before turning himself into custody with the potentially very suspicious knowledge he has. Knowledge he can't know if Kakashi had already known and just kept to himself because it's probably really fucking dangerous to know.

"Hello, Kakashi," the fucking Sandaime Hokage says with a smile.

After some internal and hopefully invisible hyperventilation Kakashi twists his heavy legs to hang off the edge of the bed. Still hurting, still sandal-clad feet quietly settle on the concrete floor.

"Hokage-sama." He bows from his seat, not trusting his legs to hold him. He doesn't seem to be getting any better, and even though this maybe isn't his real body that's a terrifying thought. Is he just going to wither away in slowly maddening pain and exhaustion until he dies? Is this the real consequence of what's wrong with his mind?

"I'm sorry to hear something went so wrong with your mission that you felt you had to come here," the Hokage says, with grandfatherly kindness, moving properly into the room.

Recently reminded of the many potential atrocities the man has either through neglect, wilful ignorance or conscious decision been a contributor to, that kindness seems like a threat.

"Why," he clears his throat, forces his back to straighten, "are you here, Hokage-sama?" he manages.

"How could I not come to check in on my successor's student, and Naruto's sensei?"

Right. Maybe it's an excuse, but sentiment makes as much sense as anything.

"Maa," he tries to play it off, as much as he can while dressed in his mission dirtied blues on a cot in a T&I cell. "They're sorting me out."

The Hokage watches him for a long moment. "As long as we make sure village resources are used appropriately," he finally says. And fuck, if he doesn't sound disappointed.

That tone alone is enough to send Kakashi's exhausted mind into a spiral. What does that even mean? Maybe he shouldn't have come here. But everything wrong seems to tie back to information, and memory, and if anything he knows is correct (which to be fair it might not be) the hospital couldn't handle this, while the Yamanaka were a good bet, and Inoichi had seemed quite concerned and insistent, but maybe he should just have gone to the hospital anyway.

He should speak, should probably say that his report will be done as soon as he can or something. That he'll explain things. The words sit like a choking lump at the base of his throat.

While Kakashi’s mind spirals, the Sandaime calmly stuffs his pipe, lights it with a practiced flare of chakra, and puffs light clouds of cloying smoke into the air.

"Well done for getting them home safe, Kakashi-kun," the sovereign fucking dictator of their military society says.

-

After a short while of a peaceful silence that feels like very thin ice over deep seated dread, the Hokage is called away. Thank fuck.

-

Later, he has slept again on and off, and he has been staring at the ceiling and recited his entire upcoming essay in his head, tweaking the wording (which no one will probably ever again care about, including him) and he doesn’t know how much time has passed, there is a polite knock on the wall next to the barred door. The cell doesn’t have a solid one, just narrowly spaced metal rods and ominous seals around the outside door frame.

“Yes?” He wrenches into sitting, leaning onto the flaking, cheery yellow paint of the wall.

“Hatake-san,” Yamanaka Inoichi greets, while doing something out of sight by the door, then he pushes it open, this time with a grating whine that has Kakashi resist a flinch. “It’s good to see you awake. Have you had breakfast?”

He hasn’t. They both know that.

He decides to just roll with whatever the fuck is happening. “I could eat.”

Inoichi brings a chair with him into the sparse room, which before now held only a sad, bare lightbulb in the ceiling, the hard cot with its worn-out mattress, and Kakashi himself.

“Here you go,” the expert interrogator hands him a plastic box and a set of wooden chopsticks.

“Thank you, Yamanaka-san.” He pops the box open, and is faced with a beautifully arranged homemade bento. There are rice balls shaped into little pandas. He looks up in surprise.

“Call me Inoichi,” Inoichi says and opens his own bento box.

“Kakashi, then.” It feels wrong to claim the name, even if he’s been responding to it this whole time. He’s still baffled by the food, and Inoichi picks up on it.

“Ino-chan came home from her first out of village mission, yesterday,” he smiles proudly. “She wanted her favourite breakfast to celebrate, so I made some extra.”

Kakashi nods and looks back at the food, feeling terribly awkward but also cared for. He doesn’t actually know Kakashi’s age, but neither he nor who he maybe was in that other world can be that much younger than Inoichi. The care still feels strangely paternal.

His body hurts, and he longs for Granny’s warm soups and crochet blankets.

“It went well?” he decides asking can’t hurt, it’s not like Inoichi has to answer.

“It did. We’re almost," he says almost with a pointed look at Kakashi, "a clean score of new genin teams coming back intact so far, this year. All the kids are doing well.”

Kakashi feels immense relief for a worry he hadn’t quite realised he carried. All the kids are doing well. That means Team Seven too.

He pulls down his mask, notices and ignores the subtle looks Inoichi gives the lower half of his face, and they share the meal in comfortable silence.

-

The room is spacious, dully grey in every aspect, and a strange contraption covered in chakra-conducting and amplifying marks stands in its centre.

“This will help me look through your mind more efficiently,” Inoichi explains, as a younger man in sunglasses quietly flanks him.

Kakashi has been guided downstairs, legs shaking at the bottom steps, and through a deliberately confusing set of hallways. Inoichi had paced him closely, to keep him from falling over no doubt, while an unfamiliar chuunin lead the way.

“All right.” Kakashi eyes the thing dubiously, but he does remember something like this from the anime.

“It will be quick,” Inoichi reassures, “but taxing. So we’ll be doing a few sessions over the next couple of days instead of just one or two longer stints. Tell me,” he orders sharply, “if you at any point feel too ill to continue.

Kakashi doesn’t know what that means. Feeling too ill to continue seems to be this body’s natural state. He nods anyway.

-

The hours upon hours that are actually sessions of minutes a piece are gruelling. They sift through Kakashi’s broken mind with methodical precision. Physically it feels like prolonged, intense concentration. Which would be all right, if he wasn’t so tired by the start that not even red bull and Chappell Roan on loud could have helped him.

When they begin he tries to guide Inoichi’s gaze to what he thinks might be helpful. By what he is pretty sure is the second day he is a quiet observer to the Yamanaka’s endless research project. By the fourth he has fallen into a sea of deafening, ear-ringing, head-splitting dissociation.

When Inoichi asks, he assures him that he is all right, and happy to continue.

-

"You are off active duty," Inoichi tells him, while flipping through some paperwork Kakashi is almost certain is just a prop, "until such a time both you and I deem you mentally ready to be back in the field. So as things currently stand, that means indefinitely. And you are prohibited from leaving the village until further notice."

He inclines his head. It's hard to argue with that one, and he mostly just feels relief. His incomplete memories and general incompetence won't put people’s lives in danger again.

His head feels filled with stuffing liberally sprinkled with razor blades. “Am I safe to -,” he makes an undefined gesture to the door, “Am I safe to be around?”

“I don’t see why not. Spend some time with your friends. Recover. Train when you feel up to it. We’ll be having weekly check-ins, all right? I expect you to attend every one.”

That’s also a relief. As much as he doesn’t want to consider having to what… pretend? Around people who actually know the person he should be, knowing that the expert on weird ass brain stuff has decided he’s not a danger to the people around him seems like a good thing.

“Can it be fixed?” His voice is empty of everything except the ever-creeping fatigue.

Inoichi watches him, clearly weighing up the best way to break bad news. “I have to be honest,” he says, finally settled on just straightforward bluntness. “I have no idea. My best strategy here is observation, and we will have to go from there. I have sources to consult, but I can’t give any promises.”

Kakashi thinks of the disasters that he's not managed to shake the feeling will come. "What if something should happen?" He asks it around the chokehold in his chest and the radiating pain. Chest pain is probably a bad sign, he thinks absently.

"You are still on the reserve list," Inoichi says, "at least as far as my evaluation is concerned. So do your best to keep your skills sharp. Familiarise yourself with your abilities, and how to fight." His lips twist into a small, crooked smile. "This, of course, is all also provided the hospital gives you the go ahead, and all that."

He should have known what was coming, with that damned smirk.

-

When Kakashi finally leaves the Intelligence Division's headquarters he is released from the watchful eyes of Inoichi into the care of two medical ninja, probably chuunin, armed with a wheelchair and put-out expressions. By the look of them they've been waiting a while, and Kakashi feels an odd pang of satisfaction mixed with long worn grief.

"I can't believe this," says the older of the two, a woman pushing fifty in medical scrubs, with all of her hair tucked neatly beneath a forehead protector’s headband. "You look like you're about to keel over! Sit down. Suspected chakra exhaustion my ass, this is the goddamn Hatake m.o. to a tee-," her grumbling continues as Kakashi gingerly sits, struggling to keep himself from slumping too much. "And you, she snaps at the poor random T&I worker with the sunglasses, as she puts a hand on her hip, the other pointing under the guy's nose. Inoichi had made a strategic retreat at the exit of the building. Kakashi is just glad he's not expected to move, and that that isn't happening to him. His brain feels like mush anyway, he'd probably not retain any of the lecture at all. "What the fuck were you thinking not bringing healers in before doing whatever the gods-be-damned Shodaime-cursed bullshittery you decided was so important! Chakra exhaustion is no joke-"

While she rants the younger man with her, dressed exactly the same but with some brown strands of hair poking out around his ears and chunky glasses on his nose, brings medical chakra to his hands, and hold them out over Kakashi's body.

The chakra is weird, less visible than in the anime and more like a heat wobble in the air, tinged green like the hint of a mirage.

"Kana-san!" The med-nin in front of Kakashi interrupts the woman's tirade. He's gone suddenly pale, Kakashi observes through a half-lidded eye.

"What is it, Juhei?" she snaps, and steps over.

The apparently so named Juhei grits his teeth and shakes his head, then stands and says something quiet to the woman now revealed to be Kana.

She looks intently at Kakashi, then turns to sunglasses-T&I-lackey with a snapped "We're taking him to hospital now! Fucking hell you people…"

She grabs the handles at the back of the wheelchair, and where Kakashi expects a leisurely stroll where he can just zone out through the village, he is sorely disappointed. Juhei steps in in front and grabs another set of handles Kakashi hadn't noticed, and then they lift, and run. Civilians and shinobi alike throw themselves out the way as Juhei barks at them to move.

It might even have been fun, if Kakashi had any power to do anything beyond trying to keep his head from knocking back into Kana's chest.

-

The hospital intake is loud, bright, and smells so strongly of antiseptics that it almost brings Kakashi to full consciousness. Meanwhile the stench of blood is everywhere too, over a distant tinge of sickness and death, making Kakashi restless as Juhei dashes into an office at the side of the emergency intake hall. Kakashi eyes a bed near them, where a dark haired chuunin lies pale faced and shivering with a badly broken leg.

This whole thing seems quite excessive, really. All he needs is a horizontal surface and he'll be fine. He just wants to hide from the noise and the smells, curl up somewhere dark and quiet and not move or think or do anything at all, really.

A team of med-nin come rushing out the door Juhei had gone in, hurrying past a bleeding Academy sensei and coming towards them. He watches in detached confusion as they also ignore the broken-boned chuunin.

"Maa," he tries to speak up, but it comes out closer to a quiet huff, "don't worry about me," he wants to say, but somewhere around don't the words turn into a slurry mush, and he's too tired to fix it.

The next few minutes are a frantic blur, but that's okay, because when it's over he's bundled into a cool, clean bed where the sheets only smell a tiny bit like blood and a lot like bleach. He's hooked up to too many machines for it to make sense, thankfully all silent. There's also an IV, so he doesn't have to deal with drinking, which seems nice.

Finally, his mind lets everything go, and sleeps.

-

Chapter Text

He has no idea how much time has passed, the first time he’s aware enough again to care. The body aches are there, the expected fogginess too, but less confusion than that first, awful time coming to in Wave.

At least the room is quiet, and nearly dark. Only a faint bit of light escapes the blinds over the one window. Beyond the screaming whine in his ears he can hear steps and distant, muffled voices. There is some comfort in the knowledge that there are people all around, even as he itches to try and pay attention to every single one.

He shifts, the tubes connecting to his arm and hand pulling with the movement, and the has to resist the violent reaction to just pull them out get them off get them away now. Right. Hospital. He stares blearily at the ceiling, then blinks, and his eyes stay closed. Maybe it’s okay to rest a little more.

-

Someone other than the nurses or doctors is in his room. He doesn’t move, doesn’t change his breathing pattern. They smell… of reptiles, blood, and melted sugar.  Anko.

“You know, fuckface,” she says, and he can feel the puff of her breath as she leans uncomfortably close. Then she sighs and backs off when he doesn’t react. “You made so much trouble for us! Can you imagine? The fucking Copy-Nin almost killed by T&I. Do you have some vendetta? Does Inoichi owe you cash?” There’s some rustling, and a clunk and the smell of flowers. “Anyway. This is from him. Toodles, asshole.”

There’s some rustling. The cloying smell of milky chocolate.

She leaves, letting the door slam on her way out, the noise sending a wave of vertigo through his aching head.

-

Kana seems to be his nurse-in-charge, and honestly? It’s awful. She manhandles him, tells him what to do, and forces him to eat, when all he wants is to stay zoned out and not think about anything, or even better just sleep. Why is Konoha’s hospital so much like a real hospital anyway? Can’t he just eat those little round pills they had in the manga and keep going?

Absolute bullshit.

-

There are flowers, and cards, and what looks like an opened box of chocolates on the table beside the bed, opposite the machines. At first, he stares at the things without comprehension, but as it becomes easier and easier to breathe, and think, and turn over in bed, over an amount of time he cannot track and numerous naps, it also becomes easier to look at them.

It is one of the times when he lies on his side, looking at the large bouquet in a plain vase, that someone comes to visit again.

His whole body hurts, and the hospital bedding is unfairly sharp. Kana was in earlier, to move his limbs around to ‘prevent atrophy’ and ‘make sure you don’t get bed sores’, and he feels wrung out and just about ready to pass out again.

His back is to the door, but it opens without hesitation, and Kakashi smells sushi, sun warmed earth, a human man and fresh sweat and something slightly minty.

“Oh, Rival!” The deep voice sounds happy, and warm. “It is good to see you awake!” Kakashi tenses. How does he know that? “I brought my dinner with me; I hope you don’t mind!” He can hear the smile in his voice.

Kakashi rolls gingerly onto his back, eye tracking for the voice as he moves, and his vision is filled with green. The guy comes around the bed and sits on the empty chair as if he belongs there. His hair is perfectly straight, perfectly cut, perfectly shiny and gleaming black in the dim light, the bowl cut doing everything and nothing for his tanned face.

“Gai?” he manages to croak. There is no way this could be anyone else.

“Kakashi!” Gai grins back. “I brought some extra eggplant, just in case!” He sounds so enthusiastic.

Kakashi watches from flat on his back, blanket up to his chin, medical mask on his face, as Gai unpacks his bag and stacks boxes of takeaway food on a corner of the bedside table, next to the cards and flowers. He’s humming gently as he does; his voice is mellow, and it doesn’t cut into Kakashi’s painful head.

Gai lifts the apparently spare box of eggplant – and it smells incredible, baked just right, glazed with soy and miso, a hint of ginger – and Kakashi slowly shakes his head. Gai just smiles, “later, then,” and puts it down again.

He feels like a monster, watching the real Kakashi’s maybe probably best friend happily dig into his meal, while giving Kakashi just… space to exist. He shouldn’t feel this comfortable while weak and miserable in bed with a stranger right next to him, but he does.

He remembers being a child himself and hating Gai, when he first showed up in the anime, because the second-hand embarrassment was killing him. And he remembers revisiting the show through those filler episodes as an adult and loving the character. Neither translates to seeing the man in person.

Once Gai has eaten he wipes his hands on a tissue, packs away the empty food containers, and stands up. He speaks again. “Once you are well again Rival, I challenge you to a Youthful Battle of Wills to see who can refrain from blinking the longest! I must have the chance to once again even our score!” He grins widely and holds out a thumbs up, with way more emphasis than the gesture could ever need.

He can feel Obito’s eye tearing up. He needs to… not be this impostor. Not steal away the person who this man obviously cares for. Even Inoichi doesn’t know how to fix him. How can he lie to Gai? He settles on saying nothing, just worming a hand out from under the blanket, to give a half-hearted thumbs up in return.

Gai looks like he has been given a wonderful gift. He might also be crying?  “So hip and cool, Kakashi! You just wait, I will Prove Myself in our Challenge or I will run around Konoha’s wall four hundred times!”

What the... That’s… perfectly in character with Kakashi’s delusional anime memories, but also insane.

“Now I must take my leave, dear Rival! I shall come by the day after tomorrow, once I and my Team of Youthful and Dedicated Genin complete our next mission! Please rest well and regain your strength!”

-

The next day the crushing weight of exhaustion has lightened a tiny bit more, and Kakashi manages to shift back slightly against the pillow to lean more upright. It takes a lot out of him, agony and fatigue pushing him back to sleep for a time before he comes to again. When he does, he's in the same position, and succeeds in wrenching his uncooperative limbs under control, to look closer at the things left on the table. As much as he is still more tired than he ever remembers being in that old life in the other world, he is also bored.

There is a card from his team, with a dog wearing a party hat on the front. Get well soon, sensei! is scrawled around its head with an orange paint marker. Inside the three of them have signed it, Naruto and Sakura both including some messages he doesn't have the brain capacity to parse. There is a terrible drawing of a busty woman done with orange gel pen in a corner, labelled Icha-Icha, scribbled over in glittery pink to try and erase it, with a valiant attempt at drawing some flowers instead. Sasuke's signature looks old-fashioned and formal, done in black ink with neat calligraphy.

He feels content, looking at the card, knowing it was worth the pain to get those brats home safely. He carefully puts it back, and looks at the rest. There is a card from Iruka the academy teacher of all people, polite and impersonal. A small grouping of flowers with a neat, friendly card from Asuma and Kurenai. An open box of chocolates with unknown provenance, and finally a massive bouquet of all kinds of flowers from Yamanaka Inoichi. He eyes it suspiciously. There's no way that doesn't mean something, (if this stuff actually applies in the real world and not just in the cartoon, he reminds himself), but he'll be damned if he knows what. Maybe the Kakashi who remembered his life knew flower arrangements and what they mean, but this probably fake Kakashi now does not understand it at all.

He's a bit annoyed that the hospital staff seems to have taken away his eggplant dish. It would probably still have been fine.

From there, he goes back to the riveting experience of staring at the ceiling.

The sounds of people in the building are still all right, but the smells have become harder to ignore, and the now more present idea that someone could enter at any moment puts him on edge. He eyes the window in consideration. If the light around the blinds wasn't so painful, he'd consider it.

There's a quiet knock at the door, and by the time he's turned around it's already opening, revealing a short figure topped in bright pink.

"Sensei!" Sakura exclaims, "you're awake!"

"Maa, Sakura," he waves a little from his half-sitting position. "You don't need to sound so surprised about it."

She hurries over, then fidgets before she sits. The silence is awkward.

"So..." he prompts, "how are things?"

She looks down at her knees and picks at the fabric of her dress. "It's all right." She's clearly lying.

"The team?"

"Okay I guess," she fakes a smile. He doesn't think she'd be hedging if something was really bad, so this must be something else, right? Shit, what if it's almost-teenager problems? He can't deal with that. He looks around the room, searching for a distraction.

"Ne, Sakura, did you learn flower language in the Academy?" His eye has landed on the ridiculous thing sent by Inoichi.

"Oh, ah, yes we did, in kunoichi classes." Why is she looking surprised?

Oh well. He smiles and points at the bouquet. "A test for you. Tell me what this means."

She nods and sets aside what was bothering her, at least for now. Her hand reaches for the card first, for context, he assumes.

"Ino's dad?" She says quietly to herself, then she looks at the flowers with more determination.

After a couple of minutes of study she straightens up, and speaks with her report-voice. "Okay, sensei! There’s raspberry, which mens remorse, the bell flower, for acknowledgement, and those two are placed with hop for injustice, so… acknowledging and regretting an injustice,” she nods to herself. “Then lint, which is the sender expressing obligation together with juniper… promising assistance, flowering moss and hawthorn for health and hope… and oleaner with beldevere rose and mercury. So," and she frowns a little, "based on this… Inoichi-san is saying he regrets something that happened, admits guilt while promising to do better, wishes you a good recovery and then… threatens you with a good time?" From confident start, the end is said dubiously.

Kakashi laughs, more of a small huff as he can't muster the energy for a real one. "I think from context he's probably telling me to behave."

She nods seriously, accepting his interpretation.

"Uhm, sensei, what did he do?"

Kakashi waves a hand, relishing the shifts in pain radiating in his joints as it changes position. "Just some work stuff," he smiles. His fake smile is much better practiced than Sakura's. "He feels bad that I had to report before going to the hospital, but that’s not his fault."

He can see how suspicious she is, but he's not about to try and explain things to the children. It's not their shit to deal with, and he doesn't have the energy for whatever the fallout would be. No, for now this is between him, Yamanaka Inoichi, and whoever Inoichi, being an actual high up jounin with an idea of how things work, decides needs to know.

Sakura seems to make a decision. "Ne, sensei, when you said... I don't know if you remember really, but at Tazuna-san’s house, you said I deserved better. What did you mean?" She’s still looking at the flowers, not at him.

He crinkles his eye. He doesn't remember, but he can imagine. He also can't tell her, because it's about a story and a future that probably isn't true. Some things are, though.

"You have a lot of potential, and you deserve the support to develop it."

She looks stunned. Top kunoichi in her year, and she's surprised when her specifically chosen elite soldier tutor tells her she has potential. Shit really did go wrong somewhere here, didn't it.

From there he quizzes Sakura further on flower language, not listening to a single answer, the fuzz in his head grown compact enough that no information seems to stick. At some point he sags, sinking back into the bed, and he absently feels Sakura pull the blanket properly back over him before she leaves.

-

"Are you ready, Rival!?"

He turns away from Gai, to the wall ahead, ready to... keep his eye open for as long as possible. "Ready."

"No, Kakashi!" Gai exclaims. "We have to observe each other! How else will we know who wins!"

He's... Got a point. All right. He turns his neck again. "Right. Okay." Looks into Gai's dark eyes. He has a strategy.

"All right! Now close your eye, we will begin at the count of three!"

They both face each other, Kakashi leaned back in the hospital bed, Gai sitting forward in the chair next to him.

"One... Two... And... THREE!"

Kakashi's eye opens to a lazy droop, mostly covered by the eyelid, protected from the drying air.

Opposite him Gai's are both wide open, staring widely. Fuck. Don't laugh. He's not going to lose because Gai is making a silly face and using bad strategy damn it!

Time drags on. Neither of them are willing to give up. He can see little tears forming at the corners of Gai's eyes from the strain.

It's weirdly intimate, having someone look you in the eye for this long. He really, really wants to avert his gaze. It feels like he's being seen and that's... incredibly uncomfortable.

The longer the seconds pass, the worse he feels. What is he doing? Gai is ridiculous, but he’s as much a real person as the children are, if any of this is real at all then he is too. And Kakashi is being cruel.

He sees Gai’s lip start to wobble as he fights to keep his eyes open.

He can’t take it anymore.

“I’m not Hatake Kakashi.”

“Hah! As if I will fall for your clever strategy!” Gai says. He’s still keeping his volume at a level where it doesn’t hurt Kakashi’s head.

“I’m serious, Gai!” He gives up. He turns his head away and closes his eye. It stings.

“What? Why-?” Gai flounders, then laughs a little awkwardly.

“I don’t really remember you,” Kakashi says harshly.

“Ah, such a cool and aloof…? Dismissal?” Gai sounds so uncertain now. Shit. He really is a monster. Yes, you are Rin’s dead eyes in Sharingan-clear perfection agree.

They are both silent for while that feels like it drags on forever. He glances over at Gai, who is watching him with gentle concern. The great blue beast of Konoha, silently giving him space to talk. He hates it.

“You knew my name,” Gai finally reminds him, carefully.

“Yes. But I don’t remember being Kakashi,” he snarls.

Gai just waits. It has all Kakashi’s hackles up, the tension in his neck and shoulders making the pain in his every joint grow sharper.

“Something happened.” He can’t keep quiet forever. He stares at the wall.  “On the mission. I don’t know if Kakashi died and my spirit took his place, or if he went insane and started remembering me instead of himself. I don’t know if it was a jutsu that did it or if something is just really fucking wrong with me. Even T&I couldn’t figure it out.” Obito’s eye is crying underneath the hospital-issue eye patch. Damn it.

“Hey,” Gai’s hand lands gently on his shoulder.

“Don’t touch me.” He doesn’t shrug it off, and Gai doesn’t let go.

“Look at me,” Gai says, so painfully kindly. Kakashi doesn’t want to.

He does anyway, and finds himself wrapped in strong, green clad arms. He would expect to go tense, for the familiar cramps to seize his body, but instead he reflexively relaxes. His head sinks forward, burying into the vest over Gai’s shoulder.

He wants to go home. He wants to call his sister. He wants to boot up the computer and try to not be killed by the stupid harpies in Baldur’s Gate Three. He wants to go for a walk with his camera and forget about the world. He doesn’t want Gai to let go.

“We’ll figure it out,” Gai promises.

-

“You have a guest,” the nurse tells him as she closes the door. Not Kana this time, but a younger woman with light brown hair, who smells of freshly baked bread, sesame oil, the hospital soap all staff smell of, and baby vomit.

He’s been lying in the dim room staring at the ceiling tiles, enjoying the silence and stillness. There’s an itch in him that wants to leave, get out of the scrutiny of all these people coming and going, escape the smells and the sounds, but more than that right now, this room feels safe. Here he has been able to just… be.

For the last couple of days he’s been able (and allowed to) make it to the bathroom on his own, and now the nurse deposits his pack, his vest, and his freshly laundered shinobi blues on the chair. He wonders if they took his things in a meagre attempt to prevent him from leaving.

“I know,” he crinkles his eye, the medical mask tickling the bridge of his nose. Sasuke has been camped outside since ten in the morning. As he has been on and off for the last four days. “Former genin student of mine. Just leave him be.”

“If you say so,” she says sceptically, and pulls a pen out of her pocket. “All right, Hatake-san. You’re set to be discharged this afternoon, I just have to go through some things with you first.” She keeps side eyeing him over her clipboard, dark eyes watching him carefully as if she expects him to bolt. She clears her throat. “I realise it’s been a… while. Since you stayed for one of these, so I’m just asking you to listen carefully and try to stay until you’re officially discharged, okay?”

He hums noncommittally, but nods. If he can follow what she’s saying, he’ll do his best. He’s been feeling like crap for as long as he can remember in this… world. Body. He should at least try to do what they say. “Any written notes I could take home? For reference.”

Wow. Her eyes look like they’re about to pop out her skull, for a moment.

“Oh yes of course,” she says quickly. “That’ll be ready for you shortly!” She doesn’t have to sound so excited about it.

She then proceeds to run through a whole litany of things to think about, that his head is definitely hurting too much to hold onto properly. The gist of it seems to be rest, eat plenty and simple foods, stay lying down as much as possible for the next week, rest, don’t do anything physically or emotionally taxing, and rest. He can manage that, probably.

Kakashi drifts off to sleep before he can make sure she’s left the room.

-

He leaves the hospital with only a pair of crutches for support, having refused the wheelchair. A small plastic bag, full of stuff an amazed nurse had handed him before going, dangles from around his wrist. He is in less pain than he can remember ever being in this world - or maybe ever? He’s no longer sure any of him existed at all, before Hatake Kakashi decided to check out back in Wave.

The afternoon is sunny, a warm glow enveloping Konoha’s brightly coloured buildings and plentiful trees. The village is honestly beautiful, reminding him of a multitude of older cities across Earth, and something wholly unique. He slowly starts making his way toward the area Inoichi helpfully gave him instructions to, before he’d left T&I.

He can finally take a good look at the entire Hokage Monument from closer than before, and if his face didn’t just stay perfectly neutral unless he forces it not to, he’d be gaping at it. Whoever made that decision sure knew how to immortalise their leaders, and make sure their people never forget, as much as it had seemed a silly Mount Rushmore reference when he first read the manga. He never saw the American monument in person, so he has no idea which is bigger.

One thing that is now clear to him though, is that it does make sense that no one in the manga looked at the cliff face and recognised Naruto. At least at this age, and without colour, the Yondaime’s visage does not match his son’s. But it does, Obito confirms, if you know what to look for.

Kakashi continues on his way, rounding the far end of the hospital complex after what feels like an eternity.

Sasuke falls into step shortly thereafter, glancing up at Kakashi sideways.

“Sasuke,” Kakashi greets.

“Sensei,” Sasuke replies, though he must know by now that that’s no longer an appropriate title. “You didn’t go into hospital until a week ago.”

“Maa,” Kakashi watches shinobi flit across the rooftops, civilians weave past each other on street level, smells people and industry and cooking food and waste. “I had to take a detour first. It was related.” Kind of.

Sasuke doesn’t look pleased, hiding his face with the fringe of his hair as he looks away. “You don’t want to be our Sensei anymore.”

“No, Sasuke,” he says tiredly. “That’s not it, I-,” he decides to reformulate. “It’s not about being your Sensei or not. I can’t be an active shinobi at all.”

That gets a reaction. Sasuke’s head whips around, face open with shock. “What? But-?” His hands shove deeper into the pockets of his white shorts. These ones are clean. The one’s he’d worn on the dash from Wave back to Konoha had shown every bit of their travel. “Is it to do with the chakra exhaustion?” he finally asks, almost urgent.

“Partially,” Kakashi sighs. Sasuke looks at him in askance, but he refuses to elaborate.

Kakashi looks around to get his bearings, and turns left by the newspaper stand. There are classic black and white papers as well as glossy magazines. The elderly vendor is smiling with three teeth missing and a dented forehead protector slung around his neck.

Sasuke follows, sticking close to Kakashi’s side.

“Did you report to the Hokage?” Kakashi asks, drawing from the potentially fake, potentially alien memories to figure out where Team Seven might have gone after the wave mission.

“Hn,” Sasuke confirms. Then, “why do we always do that? Report to the Hokage? Most genin teams don’t, unless it’s for special missions.” He’s frowning.

Kakashi hesitates. He had kind of assumed reporting to the Hokage was the kind of handwaved illogical thing that went with the territory of kids’ entertainment. But that can’t be it, not really. The Hokage may really pay a lot of attention to the next generation of teams, but it’s unlikely he’d do it with everyone always, he has a military state to run.

The answer doesn’t take much thought at all, and he decides what the hell. He’s hardly a ninja right now, and they let him out in the village knowing what soup is swimming in his brain.

“Nepotism,” he says, “and maintaining loyalty. Not just yours, but that too.”

Sasuke looks about to protest. Kakashi looks pointedly at the Hokage monument, then back to Sasuke. The kid catches his look and stops before he speaks, hiding his confusion relatively well, for a twelve-year-old. He turns to the monument, and Kakashi can virtually see the wheels working in his mind.

They walk together in silence for a few more blocks, then Sasuke says, “I’m this way,” and points down a side street. Kakashi nods and stops to say goodbye, even though he knows it will be torture to start moving again once he’s lost momentum.

“See you around, Sasuke,” he smiles.

Sasuke hesitates, then, “You should come to lunch with us. Tuesday. Eleven hundred. Ichiraku Ramen.”

“All right,” Kakashi agrees.

“Don’t be late.” Sasuke nods in goodbye, and Kakashi half-heartedly raises a hand in response. The kid walks down the other street, hands in his pockets, eyes on the ground. Every now and then he looks up, and glances to the sunlit monument looking down at the village.

-

He’s not quite sure how much further he has to walk, and it’s very tempting to power through the fatigue and just get there as soon as possible, but there is also a very nice bench, just over there. There are people moving in the park, some young children playing with a ball in the distance, a civilian woman walking a dog, school-age kids with backpacks on their way home… It’s… peaceful. It feels real. Like deciding to go for a late afternoon stroll in any other town he’s ever lived in. There’s a shout, and laughter, and one of the kids with bright Byakugan throws the ball at a target with unerring accuracy without turning around. Almost like any other town.

Kakashi sits and gently balances the crutches beside himself. Just a short break, and then he’ll continue.

The sounds of shuffling steps and tap of a cane are a courtesy. The man who comes up to the bench from Kakashi’s bad side, from Obito’s side, smells like nothing.

The hairs at the back of his neck stand on end and a cold chill runs down his spine. He holds the affected relaxation of his casual posture.

“Hatake-kun.” It’s the strained voice of someone elderly having taxed themselves a bit too far. Male. “Is it all right if I sit?”

It absolutely is not. Kakashi turns. Dark tufts of hair shot with grey over medical dressings. Gauze, not adhesive, but not heavy bandages either. Right eye covered, right arm tucked away inside old-fashioned robes. Cane clutched in a tight grip in his left hand.

“Ah, Councilman Shimura-sama?” Shit. Shit. Shit fucking fuck shit. Obito supplies the sense of dripping water, the crystal-clear view of this man telling him to act. Ordering a much younger Kakashi into ROOT. “Of course.” He gestures to the space next to him. He doesn’t know enough of the history between them, within the fictional story or from the Sharingan’s disjointed snapshots of action. Had the Kakashi before him told him to fuck off? Tenzo is real, Obito’s recollection supplies.

One of the few people who is much, much worse than Kakashi himself sits down, playing up his infirmity with a must be false supressed groan. Every part of Kakashi is on alert, tensely waiting for Danzo’s next move, even as he leans into the bench and watches the everyday activities of the park in front of them.

“I am glad to see you out of hospital, my boy,” the man who is kidnapping children and probably got all of the Uchiha killed says kindly.

“Thank you, sir.” He’s doomed. This is it. Don’t even think it. Channel casual. Channel slightly frustrated Hatake Kakashi on medical leave.

“I heard of some of your issues,” Danzo continues.

WHICH ONES?

Shit once again. He doesn’t know what Danzo knows, what he’s heard from the Hokage, what Inoichi has reported. What his spies have seen.

He only has one choice.

“Maa,” he smiles and makes sure his eye crinkles sincerely. “Just a blip, I’ll be right as rain in no time.”

Play dumb.

Danzo smiles back.

“Well, Hatake-kun, I’m glad to hear it. I just wanted to check in on you, and make sure you know that you can always come to me if you need anything.”

Holy shit. If he didn’t have his fake, too clean, too colourful memories, and if he didn’t have Obito’s eye confirming that when it comes to Danzo they could be true he might even have bought it.

“Thank you, Shimura-sama. I appreciate your concern.” He turns back to the park for a moment. Two children are fighting over a plastic kunai, while their mothers are distracted by conversation. He can smell barbecue and river water and fertiliser from the flower beds nearby and living people. Danzo is like an absence beside him. “I should probably get going again,” he sighs. “Have to get these old bones into bed.” He reaches for the crutches without wating for Danzo to answer.

“Ah, just one more thing I wanted to ask.”

Kakashi pauses, things gathered but not yet standing.

“The Sharingan… how are you finding it? It is only… I know things have changed for you, and I remember my own teammate’s struggles when his first developed. It can be quite an overwhelming experience, to be unfamiliar with it, as I understand.”

Don’t react. Don’t show that you know anything. He needs something more than half-remembered, more than decade old memories of anime-Kakashi to get through this. He can not lie.

“Well, I will have to familiarise myself with some of it,” he laughs sheepishly. He channels the feeling of having to tell Granny that no, he can’t pick her up from the library like he promised, because he no longer has a car, as he had the genius idea to go off-road racing in a Toyota Yaris. “When I’ve recovered some more of course… or the nurses will come after me again,” he makes sure to shudder, while trying to hide his embarrassment.

“No changes with the eye?” Danzo presses. Shit, is he fishing for if Kakashi has the Mangekyo Sharingan?

“No, no, I’m pretty sure it’s just like how it was.” If the mangekyo is there Kakashi already unknowingly had it. If it’s not, well the him who he is now never knew any different. He stands, hooking his hospital goodie-bag around a wrist once again. “But it’s good to know I have you in my corner,” he smiles, thinking of people he actually trust, holding on to that feeling as tightly as he can.

Danzo nods seriously to him, and stands slowly as well. “We could work well together again,” he says, and Kakashi thinks and hopes the old man has no idea what his delusions contain. “Keep it in mind.”

“Thank you for the offers, Shimura-sama, and for your time.” He makes sure to bow politely, and then he turns his back, against every instinct screaming at him to keep his eye on the threat, and walks away.

-

He's not sure how he gets to the building. The ringing in his ears has increased again to almost deafening, the pressure of fatigue heavy in his mind once he had started moving again, as Danzo was left behind in the park and the sense of imminent danger faded. 

He feels blank, unfeeling, like every emotion is a facade over this automaton he's become. The feeling will probably fade again, but when it does, who even is he?

He finds himself shuffling across the third floor landing, open to the air to his left and going past door after door to other units on his right. The crutches had seemed silly when he started, but less so now. The cream stucco of the walls looks scuffed but relatively new, the floorboards of the landing matches the railing and the posts. The building can't be more than ten, fifteen years old.

He finds himself stopping by the second to last door, hand absently reaching into another untried pocket of his vest. The keychain that's pulled out looks hilariously out of place in the hands of a trained killer, in the hand that has been inside Rin's chest. But it makes sense for a new teacher finding his place. There's just the one metal key, tied together with a wooden charm of a pug and a big, soft figure in the shape of a round, orange frog. He shouldn't be touching it, with so much blood on his hands.

Numbly he checks for signs entirely on muscle memory. A finger drawn along the top of the door reveals a small, dry leaf, the grains of gravel on the door mat look right, and there is a near-invisible pale strand of hair strung between the door frame and the handle. No absolute guarantee, but he feels himself marginally relax.

The door unlocks easily, and he steps into the silent apartment.

It smells of stale air, dogs, dust, some kind of natural detergent and, he realises with a startle, what must be the smell of himself. A clear presence of human, the tinge of sweat and skin and hair grease he's come to know is part of everyone, unless they make conscious effort to hide it, here with a faint tinge of ozone and weapons oil that seems to belong to Kakashi personally. He becomes starkly aware that right now he stinks of hospital.

He gingerly toes off his sandals and leans the crutches against the wall, before looking around. There’s no genkan. He has entered into a small, sparsely furnished main room, with a bed in one corner, by the large window that takes up nearly all of the far wall. There is on the other side a desk and a single chair. A threadbare rug covers the floor, and there's a half-filled, low bookcase below the window. There's also a built-in wardrobe next to the desk and a closed trunk at the foot of the bed, and a doorway that leads further in. He looks at the bedroom in exhausted dismay.

He has watched so many feng-shui shorts on YouTube. This place is a disaster. The foot of the bed points at the front door, there's a window behind the head of it, and the whole place is also the entrance hall. What the fuck. There is art on the walls and, aside from a calligraphy piece reading perseverance, all of the pieces are clearly stock images that came with the frames.

The shuriken patterned blanket on the bed looks like the one in the anime. Weird thing to remember, from a show he watched such a long time ago, as much as Inoichi shuffled it around recently.

He continues to the next room, and finds a narrow hallway with a door to his right, a washing machine to his left, and an open doorframe straight ahead, revealing a fridge and green kitchen cupboards.

Above the washing machine there are rows of hooks and a clothes rail, and the only things there are dog collars and leads. His vest joins them. There are spare, worn sandals shoved next to the base of the machine.

He assumes the closed door is a bathroom, and is proven correct, peering in to look at white tiles and a basic, utilitarian set of sink, toilet and bathtub, with a plain mirrored cabinet over the sink. Good to know.

The kitchen turns out to be even smaller than the bedroom, but fits a solid table that could just about seat four at a squeeze, two chairs, and another window, with a lush green plant on the sill. Mr Ukki is written with marker on the terracotta pot.

He upends the bag from the hospital on the wooden kitchen counter, tipping out a flood of little paper sachets, each with a time and day written on them. There turns out to be pills inside each one, medication pre-measured and given to him in a way so he won't have to think about it. There are also four glossy pamphlets, with titles that are way too long. He'll look at them later, he thinks groggily, and stacks them neatly next to the disorganised jumble of medicine packets.

He opens a cupboard and gives a tired, deadpan look to the view of two glasses, a water bottle, three plates and one singular bowl he finds inside. The next cupboard has ten dog bowls of varying sizes. The next a single pot and a frying pan. The drawer for tools and cutlery is just as sad.

Pressing on, there turns out to be hardly any food in Kakashi’s place. Ration bars, stacked neatly and filling half a cupboard, a box of cereal that smells pretty good, tins of dog food. The fridge is entirely empty. Whether the Kakashi who remembered his life just lived like this, or if he’d cleaned it out in preparation for a longer mission, the person who is Kakashi now has to live with it.

He tiredly grabs the box of cereal and pulls down the mask. There’s nothing to have together with it, but that’s okay. He can make do for tonight, and then get some shopping done tomorrow. He foregoes cutlery and skips the bowl, sticking his hand into the box instead.

It’s surprisingly tasty. He hates sweet cereal, but this is savoury, properly crunchy and with a nice tang of umami. He eats another handful. Konoha really seems like it knows what it’s doing with food, at least. He wonders what’s in this.

He finally lifts the box up and looks at it.

It is dog food.

Special formula for brachycephalic breeds!

Kakashi sighs, puts it down, and goes to faceplant into bed.

-

Chapter Text

He comes to with daylight shining through the window and a patch of drool drying underneath his cheek.

The ease of movement a week of bed rest has granted hasn’t yet left him, and he tentatively stretches before sitting up. The mask still dangles around his neck, and he did not even take off the kunai pouch on his thigh before crashing. He still feels like he has the flu, but it’s a more subtle thing now. Closer to I need to be in bed for a few days and further from shit am I dying.

He rubs a hand across his face. Gloves are on, too. He pulls those off with a huff and stacks them on the bedside table. There are two picture frames there, and unlike all the other artwork, these are personal.

It’s with quiet reverence that he picks up the images of two generations of Team Seven. Minato-sensei, Rin, Obito. All younger than he remembers with Obito’s eye, but very much real. It’s hard not to spiral, not to fall into the crystal clarity of death and suffering his mind wants to dig up against his permission.

Obito’s wears a sturdy set of goggles, tinted but not reflective, with attached ear covers. For the first time, seeing the real deal if only in posterity, Kakashi wonders if he had sensory issues. Rin is smiling, as is Minato. Looking at tiny Kakashi feels like looking at an awkward childhood photo of himself.

Then there’s the current team, and they have hardly changed at all. He looks at the Kakashi who isn’t here anymore, smiling behind his genin, and carefully puts both frames back in their place.

A bathroom stop and some water, then he’ll be ready to… try to figure out where to go from here. He’s still exhausted, and he weighs up the blissful idea of a proper shower versus the energy it would take, and settles on a quick wash at the sink.

This time he keeps Obito's eye firmly closed. The scar looks brutal, deep through the eyebrow and going down past the cheekbone. The eyelid itself is oddly warped, and the line of pale eyelashes does not quite match up, when looking at it very close. It's tempting to open his eye and look at the Sharingan, the same way it's tempting to jump off a ledge from very high up.

In stylised artwork the scar looks cool. In the flesh with blood through the tissue and bone underneath it just looks like something very bad has happened. Something very bad did happen. He idly pokes the scar, watches the thinner skin pull and pucker. Maybe a hospital could have sorted it out, made sure it healed nearly invisible, but this was repaired by a terrified little girl in a war zone, who had to watch one of her best friends die. Who probably had to speed up that death, removing an organ.

He knows what it felt like to open his eye to unnatural clarity in that dark, dank, horrible place, as Obito's blood soaked into the dirt and his own ran down his face. He thinks of having to be the one to physically take out an eye from someone's face, and he thinks that what they did to Rin in asking for the procedure was almost worse, if not for the fact that they would have both died without Obito's gift.

He shakes himself, and shaves for the first time since returning to Konoha. The hairs have gone long and soft, but are growing in sparse and patchy. It seems like Kakashi can’t grow a proper beard even if he tried. It’s a relief to be rid of it, the mask settling smoothly as he pulls on a fresh, uniform-blue undershirt.

The wardrobe holds rows of identical uniforms, a few sets of pyjamas, and funeral wear. In a box at the bottom he finds a beautiful, deep royal blue set of formal kimono with hakama and haori, decorated with the Hatake mon. It is ever so slightly sun-faded at the shoulders, and inside the back of the haori is intricate embroidery; golden crop fields over swirling rivers of silver with small cranes flying in the distance. The silk is so soft he can hardly feel it, but so smooth there is no hint of a single thread catching. It feels sacrilegious to touch it.

He feels a little bit shameless as he looks through the real Kakashi’s things, but he also has to live as him now, so he justifies the snooping. He also knows he needs to get some actual food, but he’s still nauseous and hurting, and procrastination is a way of life not swayed by being hit by trucks, coma dreams, dimensional travel or entirely losing one’s mind.

Underneath the bed are tubs that look so much like IKEA storage containers he does a double take. Inside one there are dog beds and blankets. In the other lies something that makes today feel like Christmas. A camera. And film rolls, some that are opened and awaiting development, some still in their sealed little pots. It’s been ages since he handled one at all like this, and not a modern digital camera or the university’s antique silver plate. Stacked in the same box are envelopes of photographs, so similar to what he remembers his Granny getting from the camera shops, growing up.

He can’t help himself, as he pulls it all closer to get a better look.

Kakashi’s photography is amateurish, with all the hallmarks of someone who is enthusiastic but has little experience with the tool they’re using, and even less knowledge of theories on image composition.

More than that though, and more importantly than that, he thinks, looking at the small, glossy images, they are happy.

Hatake Kakashi, the real one who may or may not be him, has seen the darkest pits of human depravity, but in his art, he chose joy.

There is a photo of a dragonfly almost landing on a reed, the focus in the wrong part of the picture. There’s a photo of all the dogs together, not quite fitting in the frame. One clearly taken while trying to throw a stick and snap the image while the dogs are running, half blocked out by a brownish-grey blur of wood. An unflattering angle of Gai, laughing, with sunshine glinting off his ridiculous hair. Konoha street views. An angry cat. Wide, round eyes below a strange looking face plate marked with the leaf – Tenzo, Obito confirms. A grandmotherly Akimichi waving from a window. Mr Ukki’s leaves held up against the sun, backlit with light shining through to reveal green veins.

There is so much colour, and no pain.

More than ever before he feels like he has stolen someone else’s life. He doesn’t belong here, looking at these things, feeling these private feelings.

He is reminded those anime filler episodes, of Kakashi as Sukea teaming up with the kids on a quest of photography.

Sukea, with two visible eyes.

He is afraid of true recollection, he realises, sitting on Kakashi’s bedroom floor, with proof of a life lived not just in darkness spread around him. The Sharingan’s blood-soaked legacy and the painful strain of repeated mind walks both make his chest feel tight and temples throb at the thought. He looks at the images again, and wonders.

Finally he takes the plunge to consider what he hopes might be there.

-

It’s not.

No matter how he tries to remember, there are no sun-soaked, Sharingan-sharp views of walking the village at a casual pace, of lifting a camera to his eye. Where he had hoped for something gentle, there is only a yawning abyss, and Obito’s eye socket watching him from underneath too much stone with dead, empty accusation.

-

He doesn’t manage to drag himself out to the shops until late afternoon. Finding Kakashi’s wallet, he can’t even muster the energy to feel bad about taking it.

-

“KAKASHI-SENSEI!” Naruto’s voice cuts through the din of the street, and Kakashi stills with a cabbage in his hand. “HEY Kakashi-sensei!” The blinding blur of yellow and orange that used to be his student comes to a sliding stop at Kakashi’s side, the vegetable stall proprietor eyeing him in alarm.

“Naruto,” he greets with a smile that is tired but genuine. He may be a wreck of the pieces of two people who may or may not exist, but he is genuinely glad to see the orange menace.

Naruto’s eyes rove across him from top to toe, inspecting him for illness or injury, he assumes. Then a small, tanned hand raises, points, right at Kakashi’s face, as Naruto’s tone turns accusing. “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN HUH LAZY-SENSEI!?”

What. His own face droops with exhausted disapproval. In the hospital, he doesn’t get a chance to say before Naruto continues.

“WE MISSED the chuunin exam sign ups!” Naruto sounds actually distressed.

The civilians around them have scattered. A few shinobi have frozen, watching.

Ah. How to put this… “Naruto… To sign you up for the exams… we’d need to be a team.” He realises too late that this probably absolutely definitely is not a conversation to have in the street.

Naruto’s eyes fill with shocked tears. Kakashi can smell the sudden turn from indignation to despair.  The kid takes a stumbling step back, sandals scraping against paving stones and a hurt gasp escaping as he turns to bolt. Kakashi lunges and grabs Naruto’s arm in a tight grip. The tracksuit sleeve rustles as Naruto pulls against Kakashi’s hold.

“I don’t mean it like that!” his voice is harsher than he intends. He takes a breath. Crouches in front of Naruto. “Look. I need to get some food,” he hefts the now somewhat mangled cabbage in his other hand. “Help me carry the shopping, and I’ll make us a meal, and then we can talk. Okay?”

Naruto is clearly suspicious, but he slowly relaxes, and Kakashi eventually feels confident enough that he won’t run, and lets him go. He nods at the kid, who tentatively nods back.

-

Shopping with Naruto is an experience. He clearly has no clue what anything is, and chooses food items based on colours and shapes, rather than what could be made from them. He happily picks up bacon, but seems ready to cry over lamb.

Kakashi gravitates away from meats (nausea still haunts his every step, and the idea of smelling cooking meat and how heavy it would sit in his stomach is entirely unappealing) and picks up fish instead, and Naruto happily regales him with a story of ‘Jiji’ the Sandaime Hokage teaching him to use a fishing rod. The happiness is a thin veneer over Naruto’s obvious worry, but Kakashi doesn’t call him out on it.

“Ne, Kakashi-sensei! This is always in my mystery food bags that show up sometimes!” Naruto grabs pak-choi and shows it to him. “It’s actually pretty good in ramen, believe it!”

“Let’s get it,” Kakashi encourages him to put it in the quickly filling basket. He watches Naruto from the corner of his eye, trying to gauge if the kid has been eating well, lately. He’s ashamed to remember that, if cartoon images serve, original-Kakashi was the one to drop off those bags, and now he has no idea how the brat has been coping.

-

Even with someone else carrying the bags, shopping turns out to be too much of a challenge for Kakashi’s still recovering body. Instead of the brilliant, nutritious, home cooked meal he’d envisioned, he and Naruto sit in his cramped kitchen eating instant ramen, with some torn up nori and fresh pak-choi dropped into the broth.

This time he is trying to hide his face, and scarfing down a lot of noodles way too fast, in the moment Naruto goes and refills his glass of water, is surprisingly easy. He doesn’t know why the Kakashi who-he-isn’t went so hard keeping his face hidden, but he can’t deny that it’s comfortable, and not having people watching him when he eats is a bonus. Teasing them is even better.

Naruto just reacts with a scoff and a put-out eyeroll, but he does also smile, and Kakashi takes that as a win.

“So, Naruto…” he finally begins once Naruto has polished off four ramen cups. “I just wanted to say…”

He has the kid’s full attention. This very real child who he almost made cry, earlier.

“The reason we can’t be a team,” he continues as Naruto’s face scrunches. Oh no. “Maa, Naruto, please don’t be sad. It’s not that I don’t want to train you.” He doesn’t, but that’s not the reason why, so it’s not even a lie.

Naruto’s lip is wobbling and he’s clenching his jaw, round cheek flushed beneath the tan and the scars, which really do look like his face was deliberately cut and healed very visibly. “It’s okay sensei,” he chokes out. “No one really wants me around.”

He doesn’t know what to do.

He does know that he’s just helplessly watching while a kid who has no family is trying to be strong, and all he wants to do instead of helping is go to bed and not talk to anyone for a month.

But this kid also helped save his life. He has no illusions that without the genin this broken, crazy version of Hatake Kakashi would have met his demise, either in the forest after the fight with Zabuza or on the road back. He fought to bring them home, but they and the dogs are the ones who made sure they all made it.

“Naruto.” There’s a lump in his throat. This is Minato’s son and Kushina’s baby and when he smiles he looks like a mix of the two, but when he cries it is all Kushina.

Obito unfairly brings up the perfectly sharp, too real time Kakashi had used his blood and death given powers to help a weeping Kushina build baby furniture. Sensei had been busy, and Kushina had tried to do it herself and failed. First she had erupted in a terrifying rage and then broken down, pregnancy hormones mixing with real worries into a mess that Kakashi had only known how to fix by taking over the task himself. He’d been on guard duty, ANBU mask over his face, supposed to stay hidden and quiet.

Sensei and Kushina’s house was gone, the nursery and its furniture with it, after Naruto’s birthday. That too is recorded without error in his mind.

“Listen, Naruto,” he tries again. “Even if I can’t be your sensei properly anymore, you can always come here, okay?”

Naruto looks like he’s fighting not to let the tears fall, and his fists have bunched into his jacket, over his stomach again. “I- I don’t- but why, sensei?”

This child is not supposed to sound so small. Do you hate me, sensei? He had asked back in Wave. Kakashi wants to smash something. Preferably the Hokage’s face.

“I’m sick.”

That seems to cut through the spiral of self-recrimination. Naruto chokes back a sniffle, then pauses, and probably should have sniffled for real, because Kakashi can see a dribble of snot hanging below his nose. Naruto’s eyes go wide, and he just says, “What?”

Kakashi smiles. “See? It’s not you. I’m the one who’s the problem!”

“Eh… Sensei?” Oh good, Naruto has forgotten about crying and is wincing instead. Mission… accomplished?

He waves a dismissive hand, relishing that it’s not hurting as bad as it did a week ago. “Maa, maa, don’t worry. I won’t die or anything, I’m just off active duty for the foreseeable future, so I can’t be a genin-sensei. That’s a rule you know.”

“HOW IS THAT A GOOD THING KAKA-SENSEI!? YOU CAN’T JUST QUIT!? YOU’RE A SUPER COOL NINJA BELIEVE IT!” Naruto slams both hands down on the tabletop. One of the ramen cups falls over.

Ahh, that’s more like it. His smile feels more genuine now, as he tilts his head, letting the ringing in his head from Naruto’s volume tell him things are a little more like how they should be again.

“I mean it, you know,” he says when Naruto’s shout has left them in a near deafening silence. “I don’t want to be rid of you, and you can come here whenever. We won’t stop seeing each other unless you want to, okay? I know you have Iruka-sensei too-,” somehow he’s surprised, when he’s interrupted by Naruto’s tackling hug.

It’s awkward, and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so he settles for patting Naruto’s head. The kid seems happy, at least.

-

After Naruto leaves, making him promise to come to Ichiraku’s for lunch tomorrow, Kakashi goes for a long walk.

It’s probably bad for him, but sitting in the empty apartment feels like torture, and it is good to move, as much as he has to push through fatigue to do it. It is still easier than it was in Wave, and there is a simplicity to it. One foot after the other, a goal of a lamppost, a tree, an open late convenience store.

While he walks, his mind spirals. He knows Inoichi decided he can be part of village life. He knows he has no intention of hurting anyone, and still he feels like he’s made of razor wire. It wasn’t him like he knows himself, but his mind screams that it absolutely was he who stilled Rin’s heart and it is he who carries Obito’s eye, now. He who wasn’t there when Kushina died and Sensei chose the village above everything else. Maybe it’s a good thing that he seems to have replaced the friend-killer wholly, having subsumed all that is left of that old Team Seven, and left in their wake someone who finally takes the monster off the board.

Once he gets back, exhaustion drags at his body, his mind, making every movement sluggish agony and every thought a battle. He goes to bed, each movement on lagging autopilot.

He'd like to pass out, but he's too wired to sleep. Instead, he lies in the stillness of a comforting room, staring at the ceiling. If this is how Kakashi felt all the time it explains... A lot. The tardiness, the inconsistent training, hours standing still staring at a rock, no matter the time of day or weather or tasks to get done.

Finally he can’t take it anymore and moves again; lethargic, painful pulls of muscle over bone. He'd gone to bed in his blues, so grabbing the vest he's not sure he should still be wearing is only a minor hurdle to get out the door.

He ends up walking again, even as he now fights the strain of being anything but motionless. This time he chooses no target in view and instead lets his feet lead the way, the steady beat of painful steps lulling his mind back into blankness. It hurts more, now, so it’s easier not to think.

-

The stone shouldn't come as a surprise, with how much muscle memory seems to be ground into every part of Kakashi's being, but somehow it still does.

The view of it is gentle. Familiar grooves in his vision that don't hurt the way new sensations do. It's big and polished black like in the anime, names upon names etched into the surface. Soft, electric lantern light keeps the text legible despite the darkness of the overcast night, and casts deep black shadows over the landscape. After a minute or an hour or a day, he takes a shallow breath.

"Hey, guys," he whispers and tucks his hands into his pockets. "You wouldn't believe what bullshit I've been through." He falls silent, and stills again, letting the peaceful vision fill his view and mind alike.

"KAKASHI-SENSEI!" The voice cuts through the lovely void in his mind and he blinks and it's daylight. Sakura's steps thud over packed earth and her sharp, gasping breaths tell of running further and faster than she's conditioned for. "Kakashi-sensei you're LATE!"

He is? He lets the confusion show on his face and in the tilt of his head. He's not teaching anyone right now, and he's off active duty. He knows the team knows about it. There can't be anything he's meant to do. The agony has crept back up over the night, and it is mostly the reluctance to have to get up again keeping him from collapsing.

Sakura groans. "You promised to come to lunch with us, Ichiraku, at eleven!" Her tone is indignant, but he can see worry in her expression, and she smells like concern. "It's been three hours!"

"Maa, Sakura," he smiles, eye crinkling, "I'm sorry, I think I'm too tired for lunch today." He turns back to face the stone, keeping his back slouched. "I would've expected you to go on without me."

A few quiet steps approach from his good side, pink and red entering his view in periphery. Bright whiteness of a steely, overcast sky gleams over the names of the dead.

"We want you there, Kakashi-sensei," Sakura says softly.

They stand together for a drawn out, silent minute.

Then Sakura steps forward, past him, approaching the stone. She smells like sweet-scented shampoo, clashing, floral deodorant and pre-teen sweat. "My uncle is on here." Her small, pale fingers reach out and touch a name. Sato Touri.

He doesn't know what compels him. He’s… someone… but maybe not the Kakashi who lived it. Still. He walks up next to her, and reaches for the stone anyway.

"My team." His hand moves from one to the other. Uchiha Obito. Nohara Rin. "Sensei." Namikaze Minato. "My mother." He has no memories of her, and thinks she died before the original Kakashi could remember too, but there is a Sharingan-clear vision of accusing her name on the stone of abandoning him. He falls quiet, and lowers his hand, feeling like there's more of them he's forgetting, like he owes the dead to remember them when he can't even remember his own life as he should. Obito's eye is leaking again. He hardly notices a small hand curl around his fingers, but he holds it gently once he does.

They again stand together in silence, for several minutes, before Sakura speaks. "Come to lunch, ne, Kakashi-sensei?"

He lets her tug him away from the stone, then he forces himself to smile as their hands part and he falls into step beside her.

"Maa, such demanding little students I have, can't even dissociate in peace anymore." He sighs and roughly ruffles the hair on the top of her head to her outraged shriek, and follows her to Ichiraku Ramen.

-

"Sorry we're late," Kakashi grins at the furious faces of Naruto and Sasuke, both sweaty and angry as they too seem to have recently arrived at the ramen stand. "There was this little old lady-,” he begins

 “-whose grocery bags exploded all over the street, and we had to help her rescue the vegetables!" Sakura fills in and copies his smile exactly.

Naruto screams. Sasuke slaps his own face.

An old man could weep with pride.

-

They sit together at the bar of the ramen stand, Naruto happily ordering four bowls for himself as if his entire body isn't probably made of the stuff already. He seems pleased to have everyone together, kicking his feet in the air and chatting to the young woman taking their orders.

Kakashi thinks he's doing a pretty good job, hiding the fact that he has lost a night's sleep and that it's hard to retain any information, now, but Sakura and Sasuke keep throwing him concerned looks anyway.

Orders placed (he just picked the first thing on the menu), they wait. The civilian couple at the far end of the bar finish their food at an uncomfortably fast pace, glancing at Naruto and smelling of stress all the while. The kid doesn't seem to notice, in the middle of saying, "Ne, ne, Ayame-nee, did you know Kakashi-sensei has EIGHT DOGS? One of them is Pakkun-sensei, and he is so cool like a real ninja, except he's also super cute!"

Ayame laughs and takes away the empty bowls the couple left behind. "You did tell me about Pakkun-san, but I didn't know there were so many more!" She keeps most of her attention on Naruto, but briefly looks at Kakashi with a fond, commiserating smile.

Naruto gasps, "Sensei! Maybe we can bring the dogs HERE and then they can all EAT RAMEN TOO BELIEVE IT!"

"Maa, Naruto, too much salt is bad for them." He looks sceptically at the kid. Maybe too much salt is bad for children too?

Naruto looks heartbroken. "They- they can't? But... but ramen?"

Sakura has hidden her face in her hands, Sasuke is leaning his chin in his palm, elbow on the bar, looking supremely unimpressed. "Idiot," he scoffs, and then they're off.

Naruto shouts about stuck up bastards, Sasuke mocks him for not knowing dogs don't eat people food, Naruto retaliates by trying to bite Sasuke.

It ends by Kakashi getting up and lifting Naruto away by the back of his tracksuit jacket, as if he is an unruly puppy. As much as his joints are hurting from it, he also marvels at the ease with which he's just lifted a wiggling almost-teenager. Hatake Kakashi is really fucking strong.

"LET ME GO UNFAIR-SENSEI LET ME GET HIM-"

He plonks Naruto into Kakashi's own previous seat, and puts himself between the two brats. Sasuke looks wild too, but is at least quiet about it.

Kakashi smiles at their audience behind the counter. "Sorry about that, Ayame-san, Ichiraku-san."

As much as their fight was disruptive, afterwards it feels like some unseen tension has left the group. Their food arrives soon after that, minus Naruto's upcoming extra bowls, and Kakashi is reminded of his constant friend overwhelming nausea. He swirls his chop sticks in the soup, watching pale pieces of pork belly bob like obscene icebergs in the broth. He doesn't think he dislikes ramen, but right now he'd rather choke down a dry and nearly tasteless ration bar instead.

"So tell me about your new teams, ne?" he asks, both because he wants to know and to distract himself from the food.

"It's all right," Sasuke sighs, "I'm training with Team Ten, and I’m on a chuunin-lead squad for missions." He glances at Kakashi, "Asuma-sensei... We have more like lessons, between regular training. We're doing strategy this week, then we’re learning economy stuff after that."

Kakashi hums. The kid sounds a little put out, but that seems better than what random shit Kakashi had been up to in the story, to be honest. Asuma is training three clan heirs, if he can trust his fake memories on this, so it makes sense they'd need a more rounded education. He idly also wonders if they're being taught by the Hokage's own son to try and keep their loyalties close.

"I'm glad you're getting to train with them," he tells Sasuke. "Asuma-" he almost tacks on a san, but just about remembers the familiarity in the card he'd received in the hospital, "knows what he's doing." Probably.

"Oh yeah!?" Naruto cuts in. "I'M getting a super cool special teacher just for me!" He's boasting this around a frankly concerning amount of noodles. Kakashi is amazed that he could understand it. Naruto swallows without choking (thank fuck), then continues more subdued, "He's just far away so it's taking a while for him to get here, ya'know."

Kakashi nods. Could it be Jiraya? The guy had arrived in the story to train Naruto after all, maybe this just moved up the timeline. If it is real, he kicks himself internally. It just feels like it might be, too many things matching up. But what if that's the point, throwing him just sideways of reality to make him fuck up when it really matters? Obito flashes through his mind.

"What are you doing now, then?" He prompts Naruto to continue.

The kid groans and turns to the ceiling above, so Kakashi takes advantage of the distraction to swap his untouched ramen for Naruto's almost empty second one.

"I have to do missions with this annoying Ebisu guy, believe it," he says grumpily and starts eating Kakashi's food without notice.

Turning to his other side, Sasuke is looking at him, deadpan. Kakashi winks at him. The kid has the audacity to roll his eyes.

On Sasuke's far side, Sakura hasn't said a word, seemingly engrossed in her meal.

"Sakura?" He calls her attention, and she jumps a little. "What about you?"

"It's okay," she says, and goes back to eating. It doesn't seem like it is okay, but she also doesn't seem like she wants to talk about it-

"EHH KAKASHI SENSEI HOW DO YOU DO THAT!?" Ah, Naruto has seen 'his' empty bowl. "I WAS PAYING ATTENTION THE WHOLE TIME TOO!"

Kakashi laughs, Sasuke rolls his eyes, and Sakura cracks a small smile.

It might be painful to exist, and he's probably dead, but at least, right now, he's happy to be here.

Once they've finished up -Naruto somehow never clocking that he's had five meals instead of four- Kakashi addresses them all outside the stand.

"Even if we aren't officially Team Seven now, I don’t want to not see you, okay? I know I was late," he flaps a hand in the air, "But yeah, that's, it’s not to do with this." No one addresses the elephant in the room of why they're not an official team. "I told Naruto already, but this goes for you two as well, Sasuke, Sakura, you can come to my home whenever. If you just feel like company, or if you need anything. I'm still... You know..."

"You're still KAKASHI-SENSEI!" Naruto cuts in.

He crinkles his eye. "Right. That."

He is such a fraud.

OMAKE

"Aaarghh! I can't believe we told Kakashi-sensei to be here two hours early and he's STILL LATE!"

"Hn."

"Maybe we should go look for him?"

"Are you kidding!? Let's just get ramen and lazy-ass-sensei can join us when he shows up!"

Sakura shares a look with Sasuke.

"He's been weird," Sasuke says.

"And why should we get punished for Sensei being weird, huh!? I want ramen believe it!"

Sakura thunks her fist into Naruto's head and yells "NARUTO SHUT UP! Sensei's been super sick! We ARE GOING to look for him!"

Naruto rubs his head, grumbling, and looks at Sasuke who just nods in agreement.

“Yeah, yeah,” Naruto says and rubs his head. “He told me he’s too sick to be a ninja, believe it. I told him to stop being stupid, he’s too cool to just QUIT!”

Sakura and Sasuke both stare at him with big, round eyes. Then they look at each other seriously, and Sakura only blushes a little bit.

"It's, settled then," Sakura cracks her knuckles.

"You go to the training ground," Sasuke tells Sakura. "Naruto, you take the bookshop. I'll check sensei's apartment. Circle out from there."

Both Sakura and Naruto nod decisively.

"If we don't find him in an hour we meet back here." Sakura says with a serious determination.

"We'll find him believe it!"

They pause for a moment, looking at each other. Then Sasuke tenses up and the others copy. "Go!" he barks, and the three kids set off running in different directions.

-

Chapter Text

The day after the lunch at Ichiraku’s he decides to check out from existence. He feels like he’s done so very little, but just walking around (and to be fair, he acknowledges, not sleeping) has really taken it out of him. The fatigue that had once again built the day before is if anything worse today, too. But he has food in the apartment, for sure nowhere to be, and a comfy bed that smells like Pakkun right here. He is not going out.

After a lazy morning spent mostly asleep, a real, long shower, and a late breakfast he halfway manages to eat, he shuffles around the apartment in threadbare, green pyjamas cheerily printed with whippets wearing scarves. It’s good to know that funny pyjamas transcend dimensions.

The film roll settles into the camera with perfect smoothness. The little hatch closes with a satisfying snap. It’s a solid thing, probably expensive, by the standards of technology he’s seen around so far. He takes exactly one photo, of the bedroom. The bed is made, the room neat. Sunlight is only just coming properly through the windows, casting fields of brilliant warmth across the shelf, the desk, the impersonal stock art on the wall. Hatake Kakashi is not present. He puts the camera down on the desk, and sheds the emotion. Kakashi is gone but he is here, and unlikely to wake up to reality any time soon.

He eventually drifts to the bookshelves, crouching before the rows below the window with a cup of tea in one hand, the cup itself liberated from holding his toothbrush in the bathroom. A few training manuals, what looks like untouched volumes of a few different high-brow sounding literary works, and an overwhelming majority of tacky romance novels. About half of those are just the Icha-Icha series. Some of them there are three copies of. One that is either the favourite or the first instalment there are five of, one of which is a pristine, signed first edition.

He grabs one of the more intellectual seeming titles, and flops into the chair at the desk. He sips at the tea and flips it open. It quickly becomes clear that while the topic might be interesting, his head is not enjoying the experience. If he focuses he can follow it and understand it just fine, but he’ll be damned if that focus doesn’t feel like his brain is being slowly rolled through a printing press while also soaking in bleach. It sucks.

Reluctantly, he returns the book that hurt him to its spot, giving it a reproachful look, before he admits defeat and grabs a well-worn paperback. This time he droops into bed instead of bothering with the chair.

Icha-Icha is somehow both much worse and much, much better than he’d expected.

He’s never read anything where so many breasts are boobily breasting around for no discernible reason (and he can’t quite parse if Jiraya is just that bad of a writer, or if he himself is just not into it), though the sex scenes still have him feeling violently embarrassed. Titillated is not the right word, but he can absolutely see why people blush and giggle reading this stuff. It’s shameless, and unrealistic, and the prose makes him think of when people would do dramatic readings of Fifty Shades of Grey. He can’t stop reading. Between the painful love confessions, cringe-worthy displays of seduction and wild and plentiful sex scenes there’s a surprisingly compelling story, with well-written characters (even the booby ones) and an exciting plot. It’s not deep, it’s not complicated, but it settles the ever-present buzz of worry at the back of his mind.

In this one the main lead Itsumi desperately tries to woo the mysterious Senshi while dealing with her dead father’s ghost, an inheritance scandal and a determined assassin on her trail. There are misunderstandings and drama, but it always comes back to the two of them together, and the ending is happy. Kakashi can’t decide if Jiraya is such an idiot he somehow struck gold, or a literary genius. For now he’ll err on the side of the latter.

-

An actual good night’s sleep, and he feels not exactly ready, but absolutely determined to get to a training ground. He needs to figure out chakra - he knows how, Obito’s eye insists, and he needs to test if the ideas the Sharingan are fuelling would work. He had a lot of time, lying in that hospital bed, to think up fun things to try. He may be a sad ball of misery, but he could be a sad ball of misery with super ninja powers.

He dresses for the day and heads out with a cheery goodbye to Mr Ukki. He locks the door, restores the warning signals that will let him know if someone breaks in, and exits onto the landing, morning sunshine making it bright and welcoming, though a bit painful to his still tired eye.

He spots a rotund civilian woman dropping envelopes into a row of postal cubbies by the stairs. She’s whistling as she works, a hefty cloth bag slung over a shoulder, long dark hair a neat flow of micro braids.

“Ah, good morning, Hatake-san!” she greets when she spots him.

He slowly raises a hand. He has no clue who this is.

“Don’t worry, not too much for you today, ah here we go, can hand it right over since you’re here,” she flips through the stack of post in her hands and comes over. Kakashi stands frozen. Why does this normal interaction, something that obviously just happens in a functional world, make him feel so wrong-footed. How can this content, normal person live in the same village that has demon foxes and fucking ROOT.

He accepts a glossy magazine, Ninken Gear Review, and an unmarked envelope. As he does, he notices the forehead protector on her hip, previously hidden by the bag. She smells like a mellow perfume, hair product containing olive oil, paper and fresh laundry. She doesn’t move like shinobi. His attention settles fully on the moment, every twitch of her hands, the area around them. Where to move if she should lunge.

“You always deliver post here,” he says it like a statement though it’s mostly, obviously, a guess based on her confidence.

“I do!” She smiles, and he can see a little bit of a blush on her dark cheeks. “Every weekday morning!”

“You don’t move like a ninja.”

Her face falls, and she responds defensively, though she’s trying to hide it with cheer. “Well, you know, it’s been a few years since the academy,” she laughs. It’s forced, “and I’ve mostly just done desk duty since. You need a pretty hefty security clearance to deliver jounin post, you know.” She’s frowning now. He’s not noticing any signs that she’s lying. She had clearly recognised him. They’ve probably shared impersonal greetings many, many times before.

He immediately feels bad. She doesn’t deserve some big shot asshole full of trauma to question her first thing in the morning.

“Sorry, sorry.” He waves and makes himself smile. “Just making sure.”

Fuck. He has to walk past her to leave.

Before he has time to think about it, he’s steeled his body for impact and leapt off the railing.

He lands like in a dream. Instinctively he not just tenses muscle and braces in a good position, he also shifts internally, some sense that feels a little bit like the mindfulness exercises he never stuck with in the other life (the one he’s starting to think really is the fake one). He sets down in the little patch of grass across the road beside the building, and wants to jump inside with joy. It hurt a little, but no more than he’s always hurting from moving at all, and he just did fine with a three-story jump, like it was nothing! Parkour can eat ass. Chakra is the way to go.

The postal worker’s face appears over the railing above, at the corner of his eye. The need to not be observed is overwhelming.

He makes a quick escape, hurrying around the corner and onto a street filled with stalls setting up for the morning and civilians heading off to work.

-

He quickly discovers a major hurdle to this training plan. He has no idea where to go. Konoha is big, and confusing, and nothing is sign posted. He could find the ANBU training halls from the locker rooms. He is not ANBU right now.

Maybe he'd find some grounds if he took to the rooftops and ran, but his intent is to test out some minor chakra tricks and run through basic taijutsu kata, not put himself back in the hospital.

He finds himself watching the people moving through, picking out shinobi. At one point he tries following one, but the blonde chuunin gets increasingly jumpy before running away. He could use ANBU techniques to stay hidden, but that seems pretty sketchy to do to random people on the street, especially since he's still not entirely convinced of the benevolence of his own existence.

So far every experience of Konoha he has had for (as) himself has been in good weather, and today is no different. The too-bright morning progresses into a too-bright day, brilliant sunlight over the eclectic mix of sizes and shapes of buildings and the green of lush trees.

Up ahead there's a school building, and it just looks exactly like he'd expect a school here to look, a few large wooden buildings in a u-shaped complex, red and white stucco, walled off with a playground and yard visible through the gate, and areas of greenery around it. He strolls past, hands in his pockets and wondering for how long he'll have to wander before he finds what he's looking for.

"Kakashi-san," a surprised voice interrupts his musings. "Is everything alright with Naruto-kun?"

He turns his head to get the man out of his blind spot and into view. Young, late teens or early twenties, tan skin, long hair tied back, a grim scar across his face from cheekbone to cheekbone. Smelling like ink and paper, wood smoke and paint.

"Ah, hello, Iruka-sensei." He crinkles his eye and waves. As fucked up as this all is, it's nice to see a clearly recognisable face today. "I think so," he answers the question. "I haven't seen him for a few days."

Wow, Iruka knows how to make a disappointed expression burn.

"Maa," he deflects, "I'm not his sensei anymore, I don't keep track of his every move."

Iruka's eyes widen in shock, then, sharply, "What happened?"

"Nothing serious, nothing serious," he reassures, smiling again. "I'm on medical leave. They're sorting the kids out with other teachers.” He would have assumed Naruto had talked to Iruka sometime in the last… two weeks or so since they returned from the mission to Wave. Maybe they’re not as close as their fictional counterparts seemed.

For some reason he now looks concerned. Whatever. Kakashi has a plan, and Iruka is the target.

"Say..." he taps his chin, "any chance you're training, later?"

"Training? Why-?" His eyes narrow. "What are you up to?"

"Just wandering the road of life," he smiles. Then he leans a little closer, and Iruka looks flustered, alongside a breath smelling of teriyaki, rice and dango - what must be a recent lunch. "And I'm just curious what my students' favourite teacher is up to!"

Now the fluster is matched with a blush. "Well, If you must know, I am meeting with some friends at training ground seventeen after work."

"Wonderful, thank you sensei. See you around!" He waves a small twitch of a hand in goodbye, then walks away. From around the corner he sees Iruka remain for a moment, then the academy teacher shakes his head and goes inside.

Kakashi waits long enough that he's sure Iruka has gone to do other things, then he loops back and settles in to wait on a sturdy branch of a tree. It’s located in a little patch of greenery a ways down the road, and from there he can't see the Academy yard but will be able to see Iruka exit the building.

Remembering the morning's debacle, he pulls out the post from where he'd shoved it down a pocket. The magazine is folded and bent out of shape, but the mysterious envelope is intact. Inside is a card stamped with the Intelligence Division's logo and name, a scrawled date, the day after tomorrow, and fourteen hundred hours. Must be Inoichi's 'weekly meeting’ he assumes, and tucks the card away.

He dozes off on the branch, a magazine full of dogs and product reviews for things that would help them in a ninja world still clutched in his hand.

-

When he next moves the sky has shifted a few hours' distance in the sky, and Iruka is disappearing down the street away from Kakashi's hiding spot.

This time Kakashi applies himself, though still without stealth techniques. Iruka seems distracted, so he goes unnoticed as he follows. It's kind of fun, seeing how close he can get without being spotted, or how far away he can trail him and not lose track. The answer to both turns out to be very. He keeps his eye on the magazine, for plausible deniability, and realises that once he's caught a scent it's pretty easy to follow, even through crowds of people. He wouldn't wager it with any decent passage of time, but idly wonders how it would be without the mask, and if cycling chakra to his nose would work like in the anime. Yes, Obito-neat perfect images of missions in ANBU assure him, the visions of dead assassination targets promise.

It’s a bit less fun, after that.

On the way to ground seventeen they pass fifteen, and at sixteen Kakashi lets his attention on Iruka go, and waits until he's entirely out of his range of notice, before he steps out in front of the chain link gate.

16 reads a painted sign, tied with wire to the gate. There's a little glass-fronted, thin cabinet on a lamp post right next to it, frame wooden and painted red; recently too, by the shine of the colour and lingering smell of paint. There is a list inside.

A closer look proves it to be a booking schedule, one-hour slots with spaces for signatures in the grid. At the top there's a checklist of what this area has opportunities for. Maximum 5 slots can be booked in a row, and no more than two weeks in advance. Light jutsu work, yes, sparring, yes. NO DESTRUCTIVE JUTSU is written extra bold. Who is allowed to book it is checked as genin and above. The whole thing looks to have been drawn by hand and then copied.

Kakashi eyes the list. Later in the afternoon and evening it's full, but right now, at what he estimates around fifteen hundred hours, there are a few hours left blank. He grabs the sad pencil stump sitting inside the cubby and scribbles henohenomoheji at the current slot, ignores the empty box for a rank marker, and pushes open the gate with a rattle of metal that sounds exactly the same as chain-link in the other world he remembers.

-

"What are you doing?" Sasuke cuts in as he's stretching, going through light mobility work before warming up proper. He’d heard the kid approach and ignored him, waiting him out.

The afternoon sun is brutal, and the packed earth of the open area he’s standing on kicks up clouds of dust with the smallest movement. Trees ring the space, too far away to give shelter. Kunai targets and stacks of pre-cut logs are spaced beneath them.

"...Training. I booked the training ground, you know," he says reproachfully. "Why are you here?" He’d signed the form; Sasuke should have seen that in the little glass frame. Maybe that’s why he walked in, instead of respecting the rules.

"Training," Sasuke says, sounding terribly unhappy about it. "Meeting Asuma's team here in two hours."

So... He decided to start training two hours early, is what Kakashi gets from that. Oh, to be young and overambitious. Not that Sasuke's reason for it isn't justified, it’s just also horrifying.

"Well," Kakashi says, "I've got the training ground. Sorry kid."

"You can't do that!" Sasuke snaps as Kakashi moves to stretch again.

He freezes. "Maa, I think you'll find I-," he's interrupted by a pamphlet in the face.

Sasuke stands turned away, arm extended up and back, in what is clearly a twelve-year-old's idea of a cool and authoritative pose, holding the pamphlet up in front of Kakashi. Tan dust from Sasuke’s sliding step settles in the air around them. Sunlight shimmers near blinding on glossy paper.

Kakashi's eye strains to get a clear look. If he'd had two eyes open he'd be going cross eyed.

Chronic or repetitive chakra depletion induced myalgic encephalomyelitis, the pamphlet reads.

"Ah, Sasuke, where did you get that?" he clears his throat awkwardly.

"The hospital." The nerve of this fucking child. He doesn't know whether to be proud or despairing.

"Well, I think it’s-"

"You didn't read it."

Kakashi cringes. The audacity. The fact that the kid is right is worse.

"Maa..." he hedges.

"You need to rest more, and take at least another week's worth of your medication before you go back to physical exercise," Sasuke says, turning around to face Kakashi. "And only then if you do not use external chakra, avoid lactic acid build-up and take it easy, so that you don't experience post-exertional malaise afterwards. You should also do at least one, preferably several treatments of the recommended chakra transfusion protocol."

"Chakra transfusion...?"

Sasuke finally turns around, glaring daggers. "You need to take this seriously!"

He doesn't know how. Fuck. He hadn't read past there is no known cure in the pamphlet before deciding he's not going to follow that. He has things to do.

"Well," he breathes when it seems Sasuke will finally give him the chance to talk. He crinkles his eye and shrug, hands coming up at his sides, then shifting into hands up for innocence. "I do need to train if we're going to kill your brother."

Absolute silence follows. He cracks his eye open. Sasuke looks shell shocked.

"We...?"

"Of course," Kakashi says.

"But," Sasuke is fumbling, "it's.” He swallows. “Me... I'M the one who has to avenge my clan!"

"Sure," Kakashi says, “Of course you are.” He's had time to think about this, and fact is that whether Itachi is actually showing up after the chuunin exams or not, whether his broken memory has any truth in it or not, he's gotten too damned attached to let this actual real literal child go through the fucked-up bullshit that happened to him in the story. He's had enough trauma. More of it is for adults to deal with. He borrows a line from one of the greatest fictional heroes of all time. "And I'm coming with you."

They wait each other out. Kakashi is pretty sure Sasuke is having a well-disguised panic attack, or a flashback. Eventually he sees a flicker of presence in his eyes.

"So…" Kakashi speaks again. "I'm going to trai-"

"NO!" Sasuke points at a nearby rock. "Sit there! You can train me instead, sensei."

"Maa, I don't know..." At Sasuke's look he raises his hands again, and sits on the rock.

"Teach me something cool," the murderous brat says.

"All right, all right," he acquiesces, "so demanding."

Sasuke looks shocked at that too, but gathers himself quickly.

Kakashi taps his lower lip with a finger, considering. What is appropriate to teach a twelve-year-old? Sasuke obviously doesn't know Chidori yet, but there's no way he's putting that in the hands of a kid. Although... He has been working on something, just theoretically so far.

"Okay, Sasuke," Kakashi begins. "I have been working on this new jutsu," Sasuke's eyes go big with excitement even as he tries to hide it. "And you're lightning natured like me, so it should work for you."

"...How do you know that?" Sasuke looks surprised, but not like it’s news. Oops. Guess that chakra paper stuff was after the Wave mission, then. But also… information confirmed?

"Teacher's intuition."

Sasuke looks unimpressed.

"Now, I call this technique… Pika-chu-no-jutsu!"

He can see the kid repeating the word quietly to himself. Excellent.

"First of all," Kakashi raises a finger, "after the hand signs, instead of calling the name of the jutsu to focus, and this is very important, you must call out pika-pika! Got it?"

Sasuke nods sharply.

"Very good. Now, these are the hand signs, observe:" he demonstrates the signs, then makes Sasuke back up to try it himself. Kakashi is not about to be right next to him and get electrocuted, thank you very much, lightning natured or not.

Thank you Obito, he thinks, for letting me remember how to do this.

The jutsu is spectacular.

He still can’t quite believe this magic ninja stuff exists.

At the final hand sign blue-bright arcs of electricity start shooting across Sasuke's body, cracking as they go into a building whine and- "Pika-pika!" Sasuke calls out and the charge explodes, frying everything in a small radius around him, shorting out as it hits dirt. It kicks up a cloud of dust and chars the earth beneath Sasuke’s feet.

It's not quite done, since the goal is to also be able to hold the charge, either until touched or choosing to release it.

Sasuke is now also sporting impressively spiked and singed eyebrows, and his hair is all standing on end, but yes this will do very well! It probably won't seriously harm a high-level shinobi, but it uses little enough chakra to be used several times, and a bad enough shock should give one enough chance to gain distance and regroup.

Now no one will be able to touch Sasuke against his will without a serious blast. Especially not Orochimaru.

"Well done, student mine!" He calls from the sidelines.

Sasuke gives an uncharacteristic grin and a thumbs up, then flops backwards onto the ground, subtly twitching.

Ah. Maybe it needs a bit more work, still.

-

Asuma’s arrival is heralded by a miasma of tobacco. Nicotine and burning tar on the air has Kakashi take notice well before the man is in sight. He considers disappearing like the coward he is, but he should… probably show his existence, with how Asuma had apparently either visited or at least sent something to him at the hospital.

He and Sasuke have been discussing the Pika-chu-no-jutsu (and if he cackles internally every time the name is spoken, that’s okay. He can do that. As a treat.), looking over the mechanics and how Sasuke should cycle his chakra to hold the charge, and not fry himself. The kid is obviously clueless to the details of jutsu development, but he is soaking up everything Kakashi says like a surprisingly intelligent little sponge. He doesn’t know if it’s just a thing children do or if it’s Sasuke-specific, but either way he makes a decent sounding board. And a decent test subject, going by the two more times Sasuke has been willing to try it, each time marginally better.

When Asuma arrives at a casual stroll he does a double take, clearly taking in the view of a singed, dirty Sasuke sitting on the ground in front of where Kakashi still perches on the rock, gesturing as he talks about voltages and currents and how he’s pretty sure lightning-natured chakra safeguards their nervous systems to prevent damage.

Kakashi pauses and waves, Asuma smiles, and that’s when the kid finally notices his other (proper) teacher’s arrival.

“Kakashi,” Asuma says, “It’s good to see you conscious.” He nods to the two of them in turn. “Sasuke.”

“Hn,” Sasuke greets.

“Maa, it was just a little blip.” Kakashi waves off what they all know was not a blip. “Thanks for the card.”

Asuma lights another cigarette, and looks around the training ground. He seems to be weighing up the space in his mind, probably going through whatever exercises he has planned.

“Aand I think that’s my cue to leave,” Kakashi stands and stretches, looking for the burn in his aching body, which thankfully doesn’t seem to have gotten much worse. He turns to Asuma and crinkles his eye. “Sasuke was just telling me how great your training is. Keep it up, sensei!”

He has so wanted to try this- he focuses on one of the distant logs, and pulls with the twist of chakra and intent he remembers thanks to Obito’s gift, and Asuma’s pleased and surprised face and Sasuke’s annoyed expression vanish from view, neatly replaced with a quiet copse of trees.

Fuck yes.

He dashes off before either of them can follow, feeling an odd pang of fatigued strain hit him like a punch. Maybe Sasuke was right about resting more after all, but it’s hard to care when he just fucking teleported.

-

He’d had the idle thought to explore more in the late afternoon, but he finds himself unable to muster the will as his thoughts turn sluggish and an unfairly violent stab of pain shoots behind the Sharingan. Instead he retraces his steps past the Academy, and from there he can by the angle of the sun-soaked Hokage mountain make a reasonably straight path back to the apartment.

As he walks he’s unpleasantly aware of the looks people are giving him. Some, especially civilians, look at him the way they seem to look at all shinobi, but those with Konoha headbands and vests all watch him like they know who he is. A couple call out greetings, but from most it’s just… watching. Like they’re waiting to see what he will do. It’s awful.

He turns his eye to the signs above people’s heads, then to the clouds. By peripheral awareness, sound and sense of smell he manages to not crash into anyone, but it’s not exactly a comfortable way to walk.

“Yo! Kakashi!” He knows that voice. He doesn’t stop, but does turn his head back into a sensible position and looks over. Genma, together with a lanky guy wearing round sunglasses. Kakashi hesitates, then drifts over in their direction.

They’re beneath the awning at a stall selling various fried foods, seeming to be waiting for orders. The smells make his nose want to take a bow and give up; cloying, greasy, and he can tell the oil has not been replaced when it should have been.

“Yo,” he replies when he’s stopped by them.

“Doing better I see,” Genma says, senbon twitching between his lips and fingers flicking idly. Status?

“You could say that,” Kakashi smiles and scratches the side of his nose, twisting his fingers in reply. No change. Estimation: safe.

The guy in sunglasses huffs. Genma leans on the guy’s shoulder and continues, “Ebisu thought you’d be in hospital longer!”

Thanks, Kakashi’s hand twitches. He appreciates the subtle introduction. He recognises the name from Naruto the other day, and it’s vaguely familiar from the story.

“Ah. Well.” He crinkles his eye. “How’s Naruto treating you?”

Ebisu pushes his sunglasses up with his middle finger and sighs. His bandana-tied forehead protector covers most his dark hair, and light glints off his sunglasses. “I can see why you quit.”

Kakashi feels his attention sharpen, wilfully trying to force away some of the fuzz in his head. It somewhat works, though it’s painful. “Excuse me?”

“No offense meant of course,” Ebisu laughs awkwardly. Next to him Genma is dubiously raising an eyebrow at his friend. Then the guy decides to dig a deeper grave. “I just specialise in training those with elite potential, and Naruto, well… you have met him.”

“He’s a good kid,” Kakashi deadpans.

“Well, I’m not sure-,” Ebisu tries to deflect.

“No. He has potential. Your failure as a teacher sounds like an issue with you, not him.” Kakashi gives an insincere smile, as two paper tubs of reeking tempura shrimp are placed on the greasy stall counter behind the others. “Maybe you should look into his file. Or reconsider your specialisation, if you’re so bad at it.” He makes sure to say it casually, though he’s seething inside. Naruto may be a lot, but he’s twelve.

Ebisu looks stunned.

“Bye.” Kakashi says, and nods to Genma who shakes his head in exasperation but waves. Then Kakashi walks off, keeping to a casual stroll.

“Dude,” he hears Genma say to Ebisu as he’s almost out of earshot, “Naruto carried him when downed, almost half the way from Wave, under pursuit.”

-

Sasuke was probably right, Kakashi has to concede the next morning. He feels rough, but not an awful lot worse, just some increased ache twinging as he shuffles around the apartment. He also feels jittery, like there’s somewhere he should be even though he knows the only thing on his supposed agenda is rest.

When he tries to lie in bed, every time he shuts his eyes there is Minato-sensei, or Rin, or Obito, or a nameless dead stranger who used to be a person.

Well, he decides at six in the morning, he can just as well rest somewhere else. It’s not his guilt to deal with. (Liar, Obito’s memories accuse.)

As weird as he’d found it snooping through the original Kakashi’s wardrobe, he’s enjoying not having to make a single decision as he gets dressed. Outside the sun has just risen, and the number of people using the roads haven’t yet picked up. Even from inside he can smell dew and surface earth not yet sun-dried and the ever-present trees.

He quickly finishes off an uninspiring breakfast of a ration bar, too sick to his stomach to want to deal with any of the real food. Then he pokes his chin, and comes to the conclusion that Hatake Kakashi does not really have to shave every day. A win, in his book. A day where he doesn’t have to look in the mirror sounds like a bonus.

It was interesting, at first, and now it’s mostly distressing, to see what feels like not himself in the glass, and be faced with the monster looking back. He pulls on his sandals, makes sure there are no postal workers in the vicinity, and goes to explore.

One attempt to sit down at an outdoor café later he gives up. In public he just feels even jumpier, all the time. There is this persistent, niggling awareness of where anyone and everyone nearby is located, and how much of a threat they could be.

He’s wandering what seems a near-dead shopping street, places not yet opened, when he hears them.

“WELL DONE, Lee-kun!”

That’s Gai’s voice. He’s not sure if he should interrupt, but he finds himself walking around the corner before he has made the conscious decision.

“Thank you, Gai-sensei!”

Gai and Rock Lee are facing each other in a small park between residential buildings, the early morning casting them in soft shadows. Their jumpsuits almost blend with the greenery, orange leg warmers making them stand out visibly anyway. Gai’s suit is some kind of tougher material, while Lee’s looks like sports compression leggings, just… extended to cover the whole body.

“All right! That was a most Youthful Effort! We have twenty minutes until morning team training starts, let us run to get there!” Gai makes a thumbs up at his student. Kakashi can’t see his face, coming up from behind him.

“Understood, Gai-sensei!” Lee’s eyes are very big and very round, looking less comical in reality bug still distinctive. The lack of blinking is a bit disconcerting though. How are his eyes not hurting. If he’d been a participant in the contest of not-blinking, he would have won for sure.

The kid starts to put his water bottle into a backpack when he spots Kakashi. “Kakashi-san! IT IS AN HONOUR TO SEE SENSEI’S GREAT RIVAL ON THIS BEAUTIFUL AND YOUTHFUL MORNING!” He stops putting the drink away and instead bows with it half shoved into the bag, clutching both to his chest.

Gai turns around, and his smile widens. “GOOD MORNING DEAR RIVAL!”

Kakashi… is way closer than is necessary for that kind of volume. And there are sparkles in the air around Gai, little flares of light giving him an otherworldly aura. What the fuck. At least the noise doesn’t hurt him anymore, and if the people in the buildings around them want to sleep before seven in the morning… well. Kakashi is not about to stick around to find out.

“Morning,” he raises a hand in lacklustre greeting, but smiles. It’s nice to see a friendly face, and someone who knows. “Maa… Would you mind if I tag along to watch your training?” It’s a split-second decision, mainly driven by the way he feels his own anxiety start to loosen in Gai’s presence.

Lee’s eyes virtually sparkle - he can almost see the anime glimmers. Gai gives another thumbs-up. “Of course, Rival! It is very Youthful of you to Observe other Practitioners to Improve yourself!”

“Right. Sure.”

“So Hip and Cool!” Gai does a theatrical little sniffle. The glitter in the air has faded. Lee nods in agreement, fast enough that Kakashi feels his headache spike just looking at him.

“Will you be running with us, Kakashi-san!?” Lee is bouncing on his toes, and finally swings the bag onto his back. It’s an almost perfect colour match to the weighted leg warmers. (He doesn’t know for sure if they’re weighted, but the way Lee moves makes it look like they probably are.)

“No, no,” he waves a hand. “You go ahead, I’ll follow.”

“Lee-kun! Kakashi is still healing and must not overexert himself! When injured or exhausted recovery is very important!”

“Yes, Gai-sensei, I understand!”

The two of them make Kakashi count down from three, and then they’re off, little clumps of dirt flying off the packed earth path of the park as they rush away.

This is the first time Kakashi has thought about it, but he’s so relieved they’re not actually ‘Naruto running’. He doesn’t know what he’d have done with himself if they did.

For a very short while he follows them visually, and then they disappear between buildings and scent takes over. It’s a fun challenge, made harder by the increasing presence of people in the streets. At one point he has to pause and peel the mask from his nose, covering his face with a hand as he does for the sake of it.

There. Two trails of their unique tinges of fresh sweat, both with what must be the same minty toothpaste or deodorant. Onward.

A few minutes later he loses the trail again. Unwilling to go around obviously sniffing the air like a dog, he tries to shift that awareness of chakra to his nose, concentrating past the headache on the scent of Gai.

It works too well. It feels like he’s been punched in the face with smell. Gai’s one is there among them, but there’s also drying street-dust, multiple people’s perfumes and shampoos, people themselves, plants, damp earth, steaming laundry, harsh cleaning chemicals, baking bread, mould, plastic packaging, spices, tea, human and animal waste, rotting food, leather, cotton, metal, cut wood, recent paint- he drops the focus and fights the nausea that hits from the sensory overload, and hurries along the path he’d smelled Gai on. For a second he wonders if it’s always that bad, and Sharingan-pure memories promise that no, he just did it wrong.

He does eventually find them, a mild nosebleed later and through asking random people if they’d seen ‘the green ones’ passing through.

Gai is running his three genin through warm-ups when Kakashi arrives at the small, taijutsu-only training ground. He receives an enthusiastic wave from Gai and various acknowledgements from the kids – a nod from Neji, a shout of greeting from Lee, and a wave from Tenten. Neither of the others react much to his presence, so either Gai had let them know or Kakashi kicking around isn’t too unusual behaviour.

He means to watch the training and learn from it, he really does, but only a little while in he finds himself dozing on a bench, back to a stone wall and arms crossed over his chest.

-

Before lunch Gai sends his team off with a D-rank mission scroll and announces that he is going to show Kakashi around.

He’s amazed at not even having had to ask. Gai just expects him to fall into step, and as they walk at a comfortably sedate pace Kakashi finds himself guided to the main landmarks of the village, and receiving directions to various training areas and resources.

Gai is a wellspring of information. He doesn't hold back, he doesn't hesitate to answer, and he doesn't judge Kakashi no matter how inane the questions. After a while, it becomes clear that Gai has no idea how much Kakashi has or hasn’t forgotten, that it’s mainly Konoha, shinobi life and who he is, not everything about life in general, and Gai is still very happy to help out.

He tries to push it, to see how far Gai's earnestness will go.

"What's this?" He points at a streetlight. Gai launches into a spirited explanation of how lighting up dark areas make them feel safer for civilians and reduces crimes of opportunity. Then at Kakashi's wide eyed, gullible look he explains light bulbs. And electricity. Kakashi nods thoughtfully, and Gai goes on to light switches and wall plugs and he finally has to say, "I live in a house, Gai, I know how light switches work." He smiles, making sure to squint and tilt his head.

Gail laughs. "Ah! So hip and cool, Rival! Teasing me like this!" He's hiding it well, but Kakashi can tell there's some uncertainty there. He feels his heart sink. He doesn't want to make Gai sad. He already body-snatched his best friend.

He takes a slightly longer stride as they walk and bump Gai's shoulder with his own. "Yeah, I'm just teasing."

Gai's smile softens.

"And I do appreciate the explanations, ne? Some things make sense, but I'm lost on others." He says this to the sky, not wanting to see Gai's face.

"Well, it is my honour to assist you," Gai replies.

-

Chapter Text

“Hey, HEY KAKASHI SENSEI!” There are a few solid bangs on the front door as Naruto knocks, and then the door opens. “KAKASHI-SENSEI WHY ARE YOU TEACHING SASUKE COOL JUTSU AND NOT ME, HUH!? I WANT TO LEARN IT TOO BELIEVE IT!”

Kakashi freezes, toothbrush precariously dangling between his teeth, pinched by slightly too long canines. He… should probably start locking the front door. It doesn’t do shit against actual threats, but it would slow down overenthusiastic brats. Maybe there should have been caveats to come here any time. Ugh. Eleven in the morning is too early for this. He doesn’t even have a shirt on.

“NE, KAKASHI SENSEI! ARE YOU HOME!?”                                                                             

He leaves the toothbrush in the sink and cycles his chakra to his hands and feet, feeling its strange buzz as he uses it to stick to the ceiling. Naruto’s steps pass, moving into the kitchen.

Kakashi uses a fancy technique, one he by Obito’s grace remembers learning in ultra-HD from ANBU Ram, and vanishes from near anyone’s perception. A little bit of genjutsu disguises the bathroom door opening and closing.

He sneaks into the bedroom and pulls an undershirt with its attached mask over his head, followed by the long-sleeved overshirt and his forehead protector.

Finally decent, with only his right eye and bare hands exposed to the world, feet covered in really ugly dog shaped slippers, he goes to the kitchen.

Naruto is sitting on the countertop eating Kakashi’s cold noodle salad. “KAKASHI-SENSEI! You’re home!” he points with the hand holding chopsticks, half-chewed noodles spraying across the room.

“Maa, Naruto,” he watches the bits of food go all over his relatively clean floor. “Finish chewing first.”

Naruto swallows a big gulp, then chugs a glass of water. “Why are you teaching Sasuke still and not me, huh!?” he says accusingly. There’s less of the desperate insecurity there, but Kakashi can still smell some of it on him.

“Because, Naruto, there are gross pervs out there who want Sasuke’s body, and I want to give him all the tools I can to help him stop them.”

“Eh? I know all the girls are all oooh, Sasuke-kun, and Sasuke-kun is so cool and handsome and Sasuke-kun likes long hair, but they’re mostly pretty weak, sensei! Besides, it’s not as many now that we’re away from the Academy, believe it.”

“Not Academy kids,” Kakashi shakes his head and steps up next to Naruto, grabbing a ration bar from the cupboard. “Older people. Adults.”

“WHAT!? Like all the old guys when I do the Sexy-no-jutsu!?”

Oh. Ew. He’d forgotten about that one.

“Mm, sort of.” He keeps his tone serious. “And once he has the Sharingan they’ll want to take his eyes.” He sighs, not ready to touch the fact that Naruto sometimes traipses around as a naked adult woman to get a rise out of people with a ten-foot pole. Orochimaru’s body snatching deal, if true, is wild and unbelievable, but doujutsu thieves and those who would love to get some Uchiha babies are no doubt plentiful. Naruto’s eyes have gone wide. Kakashi finishes, “And they wouldn’t be polite about it. So… now you see?”

Naruto nods seriously. “Yes, Kakashi-sensei! Though… I think you should teach me too, so I can help watch his back believe it!” Naruto haphazardly drops the takeaway bowl of noodles to the side and punches his own palm.

Kakashi hums. “How is training with Ebisu?” He deflects.

Naruto’s legs hit the cupboard below where he’s sitting with a steady du-du-dum, du-du-dum.

“Maaan he’s so annoying,” the kid huffs. “But yesterday wasn’t as bad, believe it! I had’ta do a boring D-rank in the morning and he wasn’t around, and then he made me do a bunch of tests and it was all filling in like yes or no on the papers and he even explained stuff believe it- and he didn’t roll his eyes so many times and now we’re gonna walk on trees like real ninja believe it! And then Iruka-sensei came and got me ice cream!” The du-du-dum shifts to dudu-dudu-dududu-dudum as Naruto speaks, adding an interesting beat to go with the ringing in Kakashi’s ears. “And Iruka-sensei somehow found out you’re not really my sensei in like the office anymore, I don’t know how, but he was kinda mad at me for not saying.” Naruto puts his hands behind his head and groans. “We’re still Team Seven ya’know so I don’t know why everybody gotta make such a big deal about it!”

Kakashi glances at the kid. He doesn’t know how to coax children into talking to him, but Naruto does do a lot of talking on his own, and it doesn’t even seem to occur to him to hold anything back. “So, you’re okay?”

“Yeah believe it!” Naruto grabs the noodles again, and Kakashi watches his own lovely leftover-breakfast be eaten by this brash child, and can’t bring himself to feel too bad about it.

Kakashi leans back against the countertop, slowly peeling open the ration bar. “You don’t have training today?”

“Not until like late! Ebisu’s ‘doing research’,” Naruto says with his mouth again full of food. “M’gonna go see if Sakura-chan or Sasuke-teme are free and then we can train too until then! Man, Sasuke is such a bastard, he won’t let me learn the Pika-chu!”

The kid’s hair is so bright he basically could be Pikachu, Kakashi contemplates for a little too long. Naruto gives him a concerned look, and he shakes himself. “Maa, Naruto, you’d need to be lightning natured to learn that one anyway.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Everyone has different elements that work better for them, Sasuke’s is lightning.” He almost adds that Naruto’s is wind, but remembers last minute that he hasn’t tested that yet. “It could be dangerous to do the wrong one without proper training.”

“Why?” Naruto finishes the last of the food, and starts looking covetously at Kakashi’s newly acquired and decently full fruit bowl.

Uh. He knows it’s a thing, and it does something with how they perform jutsu, but Kakashi can use all of the elemental types. He has theories about how the nature might insulate against damage, just going by how in the manga and anime he can not remember anyone without lightning nature ever using those techniques, and the fact that his own right hand is fully functional. He theoretically (he does, the Sharingan assures) knows how to use them, some coming easier than others. But why? He has no idea.

“Ask Ebisu. He’ll be excited to teach you.”

Naruto groans dramatically and flops off the counter, grabbing an orange as he goes.

“Whatever, Kaka-sensei. Can I do the rest of my papers here? Iruka-sensei’s working right now…”

Rest-of…? Did he get homework?

“Sure.”

“Hell yeah! Thanks Kakashi-sensei!”

He scarfs down the ration bar while Naruto dashes to the raggedy blue backpack lying next to the fridge, and they both end up seated at Kakashi’s table.

Mr Ukki and the daylight, bright blue sky and fluffy little clouds outside the window, makes it a very cheery tableau. Kakashi is tempted to get the camera, but this is also just… nice. He cradles a cup of jasmine tea and watches Naruto chew the back of a pen.

The ’papers’ are some kind of diagnostic survey. Kakashi doesn’t quite have the energy to parse it, but he’s happy to explain the occasional word Naruto doesn’t understand. At least it seems like Ebisu might have taken his words to heart, if he’s trying to learn where Naruto is at.

A few hours later they say goodbye on the landing outside, Naruto running off to find the rest of the disbanded Team Seven.

Kakashi sets off for T&I.

-

Arriving at this place under his own power seems somehow more surreal than the chakra he’s started to play with. His memories are muddled with large chunks missing, lost in the haze of fatigue from the time he spent here before.

At two in the afternoon sunshine still hits the building, and aside from shinobi moving in the vicinity it seems people avoid the general area – it’s not empty, but there is none of the lively bustle that fills many of Konoha’s streets. People walk with purpose in, out, and past the building. The two bottom floors have no windows.

Kakashi walks in through the main entrance, and discovers that Genma had taken him somewhere else before. T&I intake and the Intelligence Division headquarters, while the same building, are apparently not the same. It still looks like the lobby for a generic, outdated office, but the scent of blood is nowhere near as noticeable. There are open doors leading to hallways and sets of stairs. In the middle of the entrance hall there’s a desk, where a bored looking chuunin with purple hair is keeping a disinterested eye on the room.

He raises a hand in greeting and approaches. The chuunin, dressed in a standard uniform, is young and of indeterminate gender, wearing their forehead protector slung around their neck.

“Appointment with Yamanaka Inoichi.” He is torn between the natural, straight and proper posture his back wants to settle into, and the affected slouch he’s been adopting for the last few days. The chuunin’s eyes widen. He settles on slouching.

“Uh, right, Hatake-san!” They snap to attention. “Let me just… ah…” their eyes flit between a folder on the desk (Kakashi is politely not looking) and Kakashi himself.

When it starts to feel awkward, Kakashi raises his eyebrow.

“Sorry, sir! Just… come with me.” They pop their head into an adjacent room, calling for someone else to take the desk, and then guide Kakashi into the building. This time three floors up, and there is a small waiting area at the end of a hallway. “Please wait here, Hatake-san, Inoichi-sama will be with you as soon as he arrives.”

“Thank you,” Kakashi says, and sits in one of the scuffed pink chairs. This floor smells like offices and maybe like there’s an archive somewhere, paper and ink and glue. There is a sad, dying plant in a large pot in the corner. The window has iron bars.

From there he waits.

And waits.

And waits.

Every now and then someone passes by the stairwell, or comes and goes from a room, but they all seem busy and don’t pay much attention to him.

When what feels like an hour and a half has passed, he is strongly regretting not bringing a book. Is he even in the right place? The chuunin could have taken him anywhere, but a boring end of a hallway seems less than nefarious. For the first time since waking up in what may or may not be a coma dream, he finds himself truly missing technology. A smartphone would have been pretty nice right now.

He brings his hands together and whispers “Kai!”, but nothing changes.

Did they forget him?

This is ridiculous.

He decides to wait a little longer, and then go searching if no one shows up.

It takes what is probably another half hour before Inoichi arrives, cheeks flushed and huffing slightly. He must have come from much further away than somewhere in this building.

“Apologies, Kakashi-san.” The Yamanaka clan head comes over and takes a satchel off his shoulder. “I have to admit I was not expecting you to be on time,” he laughs a little apologetically.

“Maa,” Kakashi smiles with a crinkled eye. “Next time I’ll bring a book.” Seems like Kakashi always being late… really is a thing, and he’s now the one suffering the consequences. He makes a show of tapping his chin. “Or should I start arriving late?”

Inoichi cringes, “Please don’t.” Then he seems to think about it. “Or do, but please,” he sighs, “for the love of sages, be consistent?”

Kakashi huffs a tiny laugh through his nose. “I’ll think about it.”

“I do hope it was not too bad of a time.” Inoichi seems to be over it, back to calm professionalism. “Come on, the room I booked is this way.”

They end up in a room very similar to where they had spoken that first time, when Kakashi was brought away from the mirrored interrogation room.

“It’s good to see you in a better physical state,” Inoichi begins as they sit down, placing his bag next to himself and pulling out the familiar clipboard. The camera up under the ceiling buzzes steadily.

Kakashi nods.

Inoichi puts two cups on the side table, and gets out tea.

“I’ve been thinking,” Kakashi says before Inoichi says anything else.

Inoichi raises an eyebrow, but finishes pouring the tea for both of them. He’s using a thermos with a printed pattern of Sakura petals and razor wire. Green tea.

“The whole mindscape thing, you would have seen it in… my memories?”

He gets a minute nod as Inoichi leans back.

“Is it real?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Why did we not use it? Couldn’t it help, and reveal more?”

It might also reveal the less than patriotic views he has, he thinks with a sense of supressed dread, but it might still be worth it. As much as exploring a world of his childhood stories, he does not want to be… this. He thinks of the meeting with Danzo, and shuts it down. T&I was not so bad, he got through it. You are a self-destructive idiot, he can almost hear his sister say.

Inoichi raises a hand, palm out. “We are not going to use it.”

Kakashi is about to protest, but is cut off.

“It could help,” Inoichi admits with a sigh, “but I am not about to enter the true mind space of a Sharingan wielder, no matter how new it is to your experience. It would be incredibly risky for both of us.” He shakes his head. “I will continue to look into things, but that is not an avenue available to us.”

“All right.” Kakashi has to concede that the guy who does this professionally probably knows more than someone who watched an anime one time.

Inoichi asks him how he’s doing, how recovery has been, how he finds the village. He laughs at Kakashi’s recounts of fascination with ‘crazy ninja magic’ and shakes his head with a pleased smile when Kakashi hesitantly tells him how kind Gai has been.

He asks if there have been any other mental symptoms, and Kakashi has to work up to it, but tells him about the flashbacks brought on by Obito’s eye, the persistent images of blood and death that press in at the slightest prompt. Inoichi looks thoughtful but doesn’t try to give him platitudes.

“It is interesting,” he says, “how much influence the Sharingan seems to have. We will keep making these observations in the coming weeks, so please remember if there are any instances that stand out to you. Write it down if you have to, but it is better for security reasons if you don’t.”

Kakashi says that he understands. “Have you made any research progress?”

Inoichi hums. “Nothing I’d call relevant. But a seal expert on assignment has been recalled to the village, to also take a look at you. Hopefully that will give us more answers, or at least the opportunity to rule out some risks.” He frowns. “Unfortunately it will likely take him quite some time to arrive. I would again urge you to focus on recovery, and if you remember things don’t ignore it – it could be signs of something done to you deteriorating with time, or that the brain is healing.”

“I thought there weren’t signs of damage?”

Inoichi snorts. “Yes, but the mind is incredibly complex. Don’t spread this around, but even we Yamanaka don’t know everything.”

“Right.” Kakashi nods. “Is it Jiraya?”

Inoichi raises his eyebrows. “I can not confirm that.”

Right. Seems like it’s need to know at this point, and they’ve decided Kakashi does not.

As the meeting starts to wind down, he asks what has been at the back of his mind since he found the real Kakashi’s camera. “If I, hypothetically, was to walk around the village in disguise, would that be a problem?”

Inoichi makes an aborted snort at hypothetically. “To look less like Hatake Kakashi?”

"…Somewhat. I'm... getting more used to it. But I'd-," he hesitates, "I would like to learn about the village without people always watching me. I don’t know if I can- If I want to be him, like this, all the time."

"All right.” Inoichi doesn’t seem pleased, but does seem to consider it, pen drumming on his clipboard in what must be a conscious choice to put Kakashi at ease. “Make sure to carry the forehead protector. Be prepared to reveal your identity should anyone on duty request it."

That… was less restrictive than he’d thought. Not that he had expected a general ban, but he is surprised at the level of trust they are showing him.

"Any policy on photography?"

Inoichi smiles, a little strained. "Ah, it does make sense with your memories... Well, doing something familiar is only likely to help you. Am I right thinking Hatake Kakashi also made a hobby out of it?” The false Kakashi who he is nods again, and Inoichi continues. “Avoid shinobi-only facilities and you'll be fine."

-

The majority of people in Konoha are clearly civilian, but the town is built around shinobi. There are shops open at awkward times, who offer discounts for those who can show an engraved forehead protector. There are odd scaffolds and ledges on buildings, designed to hold people’s weight in spots where few civilians would ever attempt to climb. There are training facilities and equipment sellers and so many themed products.

He can’t imagine Konoha gets a huge amount of tourism, so either the civilians are also massive ninja fans or there’s some kind of background incentive. There are toys and interior design and regular clothing all styled after the looks and objects of ninja life.

It’s probably both, he thinks, dubiously eyeing an all-fishnet outfit. He has seen the actual ninja mesh, reinforced with metal wire and coated in something hydrophobic, and this is not that.

Celebrate the military, get more recruits. Tale as old as war.

He's slowly wandering the aisles of a small civilian clothing shop. There’s an abundance of stuff that better matches what he has been seeing everyday people wear, but also more ninja chic items scattered throughout.

He picks up a heavy, Konoha-green woollen coat, estimating the size. It will do. A tan scarf. He’s on a roll.

It’s not until he is in the strange little hole in the wall dubbing itself Solid Henge that it hits him.

The place is just a single room, but from floor to ceiling it displays wigs (all human hair and lace-topped), the counter is a display case for contact lenses, there are stands of prosthetics and make up, and tools to modify any of it behind the proprietor.

The wig he has taken down to take a closer look at is the exact shade of Rin’s hair. Add a spatter of blood and his hand is inside her chest her heart struggles and he can feel the final beat from within her the sheen of sweat on her skin the red smearing and flowing as she speaks and see the light fade-

He stands frozen, until the clearing of a throat pulls him out of it. He smiles at the old woman behind the counter. She looks fabulous, dark hair perfectly styled, a worn headband accenting the blue obi over her red kimono and wide waist. She smells like makeup powder, and nothing else.

“Sorry, sorry,” he puts the wig back, and takes the curly one in just a shade lighter next to it.

Sukea looks like Rin.

He remembers Kakashi’s disguise in the anime. He hardly remembers Rin from it, but the over-sharp, too real memories of her he has now makes it easy to see. How he got this far without catching it… He brings the wig to the counter, selects contacts, asks for advice on makeup, getting what the woman suggests without thinking too hard about it. The purple tabs of easily removable clan markings almost send him back into disassociation.

The real Kakashi seems even more messed up now, for all that it seems Sukea never actually existed, here.

He wanted to wear a costume and be someone other than Kakashi. He did not want to try to look like he thinks he should from his delusions, too distressed by the thought that it would not actually look like himself. Sukea had seemed like a good choice.

He’ll have to think about it.

-

There is someone in his apartment.

It is obvious before he enters – the strand of hair tied to the lock is broken, the strategically strewn grains of sand on the door mat outside disturbed, and the leaf that rests on the top of the door beneath the frame has fallen out and sits on the wooden landing. He locked it when leaving, but enough ninja can pick locks that it hardly means anything.

He pauses for a moment. Breathes in. Whoever it is wears no perfume, and uses unscented laundry detergents. No one else is present, so he lifts the edge of his mask.

Human. Young, male. Incense. Natural fibres and reinforced metal weave. Tomatoes. He knows who this is.

Kakashi unlocks the door and steps inside, casually setting his bag of shopping (of Sukea’s parts) down by the doormat.

Pulling off his sandals, he listens. A faint rustle and the flip of a page. He wasn’t quiet entering, but it seems the intruder either hasn’t noticed or doesn’t care.

At the entrance to the kitchen he pauses, crosses his arms and leans on the doorframe.

Sasuke stands by the counter, bathed in the brilliant afternoon light from the small window, Mr Ukki soaking up the warmth next to him. The kid is holding one of the cursed hospital pamphlets.

“Ne, Sasuke, don’t you know breaking and entering is illegal?”

Sasuke jumps and makes a tiny squeak, and Kakashi would laugh if he didn’t seriously think he might never ever see Sasuke again if he did.

“Kakashi-sensei!” Red-faced is a rare look on Sasuke. “I was just-”

Kakashi raises his one visible eyebrow.

“TAKE YOUR MEDS!” Sasuke barks instead of saying anything sensible and throws one of the little pill bags at Kakashi’s face. It’s telegraphed a mile away.

Kakashi lets it hit, smack in his forehead. It slides to the floor with a pathetic little thud.

He lets the moment drag on. Then says, voice dripping with unimpressed lethargy, “What meds?”

If a real person’s ears could steam and whistle like a kettle, Sasuke’s would be.

-

“When you got out the hospital,” Sasuke starts a little while later, when they’re seated at the kitchen table. Sasuke is sharpening kunai, Kakashi is mostly zoning out, head feeling the strain of a busy day, “what did you mean, when you said the nepotism,” he says it like a foreign word, something he’s just learned. Shit, he’s twelve, it probably is. But Sasuke continues, “was not just me? And looked at the monument?” The kid is frowning, face pinched as if it hurts him to ask. Ah, maybe it even does. Not like it seems this place encourages open discussions.

Kakashi picks up one of Sasuke’s weapons and twists it in his hands, watching the gleam. “Maa, I don’t know what you learn in history in the academy,” or what you learned at home – don’t say that, “…but do you know who was Sandaime Hokage-sama’s sensei?”

Sasuke nods. “Tobirama Senju, the Nidaime.”

“Good,” Kakashi smiles. “And who did Sandaime-sama teach?”

“…The Legendary Sannin?” Aw bless him, he sounds so uncertain, even though he clearly knows the answer. Kakashi nods.

“And who was taught by Jiraya of the Legendary Sannin?”

Sasuke frowns. Kakashi can see him straining to remember, glancing outside. The mountain is not in view from Kakashi’s window. “The Yondaime?”

“Correct.” Kakashi stands, the wrenching pain in his joints protesting, though it feels good to move. “Now, this next part, it’s probably best if you don’t talk about too much, when it’s not just us.” he crinkles his eye and goes into the bedroom, and grabs the two picture frames off the bedside table.

He puts them down in front of Sasuke, between the still spread-out kunai and sharpening tools, with two distinct clicks of metal frames on the wooden surface. He points at Minato. “The Yondaime Hokage, Namikaze Minato.”

Sasuke’s eyes flit across the photographs from Minato-sensei to Kakashi to Kakashi at nine years old to Minato to Kakashi. Then he looks up, eyes wide with surprised wonder.

“Maa, don’t be so disappointed in your old teacher,” he jokes. Then he makes a snap decision. “More importantly.” He points to Minato-sensei in the photo, smiling proudly as Rin makes happy victory signs and Kakashi glares and Obito tries to look stoic. “His wife, was named Uzumaki Kushina.”

Sasuke finally looks at Naruto’s picture.

He can see the pieces fall into place in Sasuke’s mind.

“Now, it’s very illegal for me to tell you who Naruto’s parents are,” he says seriously. “I’m pretty sure it still has a death penalty.” Sasuke’s eyes boggle at him. “So don’t tell anyone I showed you, ne?” He crinkles his eye.

Sasuke is silent for a long moment, then croaks the question of the day. “Does Naruto know?”

-

They make tomato soup for dinner.

He does take the medication, and falls asleep on the floor, sitting back against the side of the bed. He vaguely recalls Sasuke perching on the chair. When he wakes up in the night there is a blanket over him, painkillers on the bedside table, and a glass of water next to him.

He spends the next few hours washing his hands, blood in the grooves of his palms, under his nails, soaking his fingers, settling into the ridges of scars. No matter how much he scrubs, the skin turning pink, the cold water stinging, they don’t get clean. He tries to pause, goes to dry them, and finds there is still more there. If he touches the towel that will be stained too. He turns the tap back on.

-

The next day he hardly leaves the bed. It is nowhere as bad as it has been, but light and sound and the slightest touch hurt again, and over the day the excessive sluggishness is creeping back up, like a tide slowly drowning him.

The bag filled with a disguise that was supposed to be a break sits by the door like an accusation. Kakashi rolls over, and presses his face to the pillow. He longs for his own world, for being awake. For Pakkun. He sighs, and goes back to sleep.

-

Things fall into a kind of routine. Kakashi starts familiarising himself with actual training - too much, too fast; he sleeps for near two days after his first session

It turns out that while he (thanks to Obito) remembers ANBU drills, Hatake Kakashi is currently not in shape for them. He discovers that he on the other hand seems perfectly capable of using the jutsu Kakashi copied with the Sharingan. He tests it only with very minor things, and it is such an overwhelming realisation he hardly knows what to do with himself. Ninjutsu is still a novelty, as much as he recalls seeing it plenty in the crystal-clear memories Obito has saved, from before he lost his mind.

Still, there is a joy and ease of strength to moving that he’s never experienced before. The closest thing in his broken memory outside the Sharingan’s contributions was back in his first round of university studies, before he chose to set aside sport for academia.

He does his best to eat well and takes his medication when he remembers.

He reads the whole Icha-Icha series, and starts it over again.

He has a follow-up at the hospital scheduled, and can’t wait for the all-clear to use more chakra dependent techniques and summon the dogs again.

Every few days Naruto or Sasuke come over, and it’s weirdly domestic.

He has another meeting with Inoichi. Nothing new. He’s told to continue his recovery, as if there is something to recover out of the dregs of what he’s become.

Every time he leaves the apartment he feels like he’s being watched, cold prickles at the back of his neck.

Almost every night he wakes in a cold sweat. Sometimes he ends up sitting at the kitchen table, spinning coins and kunai and dog bowls and plates, seeing if this time they will stop obeying the laws of physics. Sometimes he catches himself washing his hands for much, much longer than he should. The empty surfaces in the apartment fill with knick-knacks he can count and count again at the corner of his eye, when he startles to consciousness, the dreaming dead accusing eyes and empty sockets following him into the darkness of the bedroom.

He spots Sakura once, from a distance, and lifts his hand to greet her. She doesn’t see him, and hurries off behind a blonde woman walking with determined strides. Her new sensei, it seems.

The first time Gai drags him to the apparent shithole called The Tipsy Leaf Kakashi almost turns in the door to leave.

You’ll like this place, Gai had promised, all wide, glinting smile and genuine excitement in his eyes.

It smells of smoke, alcohol, acrid sweat and frying oil. It’s packed with people, nearly all ninja - chuunin and above from what he can tell, and they are noisy. His head suffers an unusually violent stab of pain before he is even properly inside.

Gai somehow reads his mind, and pulls him along before he can make his escape.

It’s okay, he tells himself. He can suffer through this for Gai’s sake, and then he can go back to the apartment and pass out with Icha-Icha over his face.

The place looks worn, but not dirty beyond what you’d expect from the occasional spilled drink in a room full of people. The smell of oily food is cloying, but nothing smells rank.

Gai brings him past the bar, past the open tables, to an area with rows of booths with opaque, paper screens between each one. The screens are patterned with images of different crops, richly coloured and framed with dark wood. Some of the booths are occupied, but there are a couple that are free. It’s not quite as busy, over here.

He slides onto the bench, and watches quietly, trying to will his ears to stop ringing from the din of too many people talking and music playing in the background. Gai sits on the other side, and very obviously slaps the bottom of the table by the open side of the booth.

It is like a muffling door has closed. The noise mutes, the scent of smoke becomes a faint reminder instead of a head-splitting cloud, and he couldn’t catch what anyone in the rest of the place was saying even if he tried. He looks at Gai in surprise.

“It’s an Akimichi establishment,” Gai grins, “they have the most Youthful Consideration in their planning! Every booth has a permanent privacy seal!” He leans down under the table, and Kakashi follows on the opposite side.

Huh. There’s a neat, quite beautiful array carved into the underside of the table, swirling lines filled with some type of metal, almost disappearing against the wood with a near-perfect colour match. He touches it, and it’s perfectly smooth in setting, too. Must have been expensive. But, he thinks, it probably gives them a lot more high-ranking shinobi clientele. A little burst of chakra, letting his energy flow into the energy of the table, and the sensory nightmare returns.

Amazed and a little bewildered, Kakashi pops his head up again and looks around. Gai follows, smiling triumphantly, his bowl cut on end until he vigorously shakes his head, and it falls back into neat perfection.

“I don’t even want to know,” he hears a stranger drawl. A probably-Nara man is looking at them from the nearby end of the bar. His companion, a middle aged, clearly Inuzuka woman who smells enough of dog that it almost hides the alcohol on her breath, laughs and looks at him and Gai with a bit too much interest.

Kakashi slaps the privacy seal, sending them back into blissful near silence.

-

Over the evening their table somehow fills up with other people. Genma and Raidou are first, sitting down and squishing Gai further into the booth without hesitation, Genma subtly watching Kakashi. Asuma and Kurenai show up a little later, happily joining. As if by some silent agreement all of them scoot around so that Kakashi is not boxed in, and Gai is the one next to him.

He'd had a vague idea to try one drink and then leave, but Gai challenges him to see who can build the tallest tower with emptied cups and glasses, and of course one has to empty them first. He cheats, stealing any empty cup anyone at the table has finished to add to his masterpiece, while Gai throws back an alarming amount of alcohol.

Kakashi is staring at the top of his tower. Twelve high. He can do one more. Easy. Everything has narrowed to the sake cup he’s holding and the martini glass precariously balancing below it, just above eye height. Gai is practically vibrating, just having let go of a metal mug of his own – reaching thirteen.

Genma whispers something to Asuma, and Kurenai is watching the towers grow taller.

There’s a throat clearing next to Kakashi. He jumps. No one reacts like it’s dangerous, and he relaxes the hand suddenly poised to strike. The tower sways, Gai’s hands are there catching glasses before they smash and Kurenai is doing the same from across the table.

“A-Hah! I win again! Ninety-seven to Ninety-five in my favour!” Gai gloats. Asuma gives Genma money under the table.

He lost. Emptied glasses and cups are dropped gently all around. Kakashi groans and lets his face thump down on the sticky tabletop.

Without lifting his head he turns, rolling sideways, feeling the fabric of the mask want to stick to the surface for a moment as it’s pulled away. Gross. He has to crane his head awkwardly, the Sharingan is covered and on the side toward the outside of the booth. He peers up.

Ebisu.

“What do you want?” he says despondently. The guy was an asshole about Naruto and made him lose to Gai?

“Ah,” Ebisu seems taken aback. He’s even wearing sunglasses inside the dimly lit bar. “I just wanted to…” he trails off.

Kakashi scoffs. Gai jabs him in the ribs.

“Come, Ebisu!” The Great Blue Beast, the traitor that he is, says from Kakashi’s other side. “Join our Youthful Evening!”

Kurenai laughs, Asuma makes a noise of greeting, and Kakashi finds himself pressed up close against Gai as everyone shuffles to make room, and Ebisu sits opposite him.

Kakashi sits up and slumps back, eye narrowing.

“I’ll talk to you when you are sober,” Ebisu says haughtily. “Or you’ll pretend you don’t remember.”

He might not remember anyway. His memory is a wasteland of murder and a delusional other world. Kakashi’s look turns into a glare, but he’s interrupted when Gai pinches him.

“Why?” he whines at Gai, who just smiles at him, so he has to roll his eye in response.

They leave in the small hours of the morning, Kurenai and Asuma the first to go citing morning training with their teams. Kakashi’s mellow mood has dropped into something tired and fatalistic, zoning out from the conversations around them, and he only pays attention again when the two of them leave.

“I’m off too,” he says with a lazy wave, and he doesn’t protest when Gai immediately follows.

Out on the street, warm, buzzing electric lights throwing everything into a play of shadowed shapes and yellow hues. Gai grabs him by the scruff and doesn’t let him spiral. He wanted to go back to the memorial stone, but instead finds himself on Gai’s sofa, an electrolyte drink in hand and a bowl of crunchy edamame between them.

Over the next little while Kakashi sags as Gai tells him stories about Lee and Tenten and Neji. He finds himself leaning against Gai’s shoulder, comforted by the lull of his voice and being somewhere that isn’t the empty apartment.

"Why are you so good to me?" Kakashi finally asks. "I told you before, I don't even properly remember you."

"My beloved Rival," Gai says, somehow keeping his face entirely straight. "Eternal means forever. Not just when its easy."

If Kakashi, head woozy with alcohol and still tilted against Gai’s shoulder, pulls off his headband and lets Obito's eye weep openly, no one else ever needs to know.

-

The next day he physically feels like absolute shit, but he doesn’t count the senbon spread on the desk or the pens on the windowsill or even the number of tassels on the rug.

Maybe if things are like this he can learn to cope.

He makes sure not to think about the blood on his hands.

-

When Sasuke and Naruto eventually run into each other at Kakashi's apartment they have some kind of prepubescent pissing match he can only watch in bewildered amusement. They fight about who gets to sit on which chair, both wanting the same wooden kitchen chair, and the much nicer desk chair Kakashi grabbed from the bedroom sits neglected. They fight over the 'best drinking glass' (it looks the same as the other one) and about which task to take on when they both decide they're staying for dinner. Kakashi would be tempted to just leave them to it and get out of there, but it's honestly pretty entertaining.

"Maa," Kakashi leans back in the other kitchen chair, which the brats seem to have decided is his spot. There are a lot of items all over the kitchen, but they haven't gotten further than deciding that water needs to boil for rice. "If you can't do it, just put everything away-"

He's interrupted by two loud "NO"s.

"Sensei you basically live off ration bars believe it!" Uzumaki I eat ramen for every meal Naruto says judgementally.

"Or nothing," Sasuke scoffs with a pointed look.

"So we have to make sure you stay alive and can teach us cool moves believe it!"

"Hn."

So united, the two of them actually succeed in making a meal.

They are clearly conspiring against him.

-

Mostly-edible food out of the way, the three of them slump in various degrees of digestive lethargy around the table.

Kakashi had in the end told them they had to work out the chair situation or he’d throw them out the window, and both had magnanimously offered to take the desk chair, almost sparking another round of bickering, until Kakashi mandated a jan-ken-pon match and it thankfully worked. Kakashi regrets it when Naruto ends up in a chair that can spin, but is too proud to go back on it when they finally have peace.

Evening light is breaking through the cloud cover of a so far overcast day, hitting Naruto square in the face and lighting him up in glowing warmth, while Sasuke blends into the shade at the side of the table, a dark shape against the muted green of the cupboards behind him, as the angle of the sun just misses him. Kakashi tries to not consider that an omen.

The boys are discussing what they’ve been learning from their respective new teachers, actually talking through techniques. Sasuke is demonstrating a particular grip on a chopstick in lieu of an opponent’s hand, and Naruto is nodding thoughtfully. Ebisu has apparently moved him on to water-walking and chakra control, but they mix it up with taijutsu.

Kakashi is pleased that they’re progressing, and feels comforted by the knowledge that they’re in better hands. But someone is missing, and it grates at the back of his mind like a pebble in a shoe.

"Have you two seen Sakura lately?"

They both go quiet. Then Sasuke scoffs. “She’s never around. Not using the grounds either.” She has given up, the judgement in his voice is saying.

“Shut up bastard!” Naruto sits up properly, chair rolling sideways beneath him as he braces against the table. “She’s just super busy with her new team believe it!” He’s pointing at Sasuke as if the kid said something unforgivable. “She’s still Team Seven!”

Sasuke makes a quiet huff and looks away, out the window. Kakashi turns from one to the other in confusion. The three of them had seemed quite set, and working together, last he saw all of them at once.

“Maa,” Kakashi holds up a placating hand. “Her new sensei might be strict with training. It just seemed a bit empty with just the three of us.” He squints a fake smile he’s sure will be convincing to the kids.

“I saw her running past on a D-rank the other day,” Naruto sighs and leans his cheek against a hand, elbow braced on the table. “She’s so busy she didn’t even wave back.”

“Well,” Kakashi says. “If you run into her, let her know she’s still welcome?”

-

Chapter Text

"Where you... remember yourself growing up," Inoichi says, "Information was readily available." It's a statement more than a question, and Kakashi knows that Inoichi is well aware of that, from the days of rifling through his memories. Today they are in the exact same room as last time, and Inoichi has brought a black tea that smells of caramel.

"Yes," Kakashi confirms, "with some exceptions depending on where you were, but overall I'd say you could learn almost anything at the flick of a finger."

"Here it is not."

Inoichi doesn't sound reproachful per se, but it's a close thing.

"...sure?" Kakashi says, frowning. He's aware. There's a lot of stuff people just... Don't know, which seems like a major oversight to him.

"Uzumaki Naruto's parentage is an S-class secret."

Oh. Shit.

He tenses up, feels the internal readiness to act as outwardly he does nothing but still, watching Inoichi intently.

"Don't do it again."

Before Kakashi can respond Inoichi leans back and flicks a small switch on the wall. The camera's whirr goes silent.

"Maa," Kakashi says, "am I under watch?"

"Not per se," Inoichi sighs. "You would presumably be aware of it and become more secretive instead. The last Uchiha, however... Him suddenly showing an uncharacteristic interest in the Yondaime Hokage after spending time with you has not gone past notice."

Kakashi cringes. "Right. Sorry about that?"

Inoichi smiles, of all things. "Not everyone in the village agreed with the decision. At any rate, I think we can chalk it up to confusion due to your damaged memory. But as I said. Do not do it again. Even the Copy-Nin's status is not unassailable." He sighs again and makes a note in his documents, for the first time Kakashi has seen him do so.

"I'm keeping this off recordings so that you may speak openly in here, but anything relevant will still be reported," Inoichi says with a pointed look. Today alongside the regular flowers and earth he smells like miso and burnt sugar. "And I want you to come to me first if you have questions. Don't do anything reckless."

Him, reckless? He shrugs. "All right, Inoichi-san."

"Anything immediate you want to ask, before we close today's session?"

Is Danzo what I think he is? Immediately pops into his head. He grasps for something else.

"Why don't we have firearms?" They're not complicated, especially basic artillery. He knows there are fireworks.

"They exist, but are rare and illegal," Inoichi smiles serenely. "The shinobi system seems to be our counter point to the... methods of warfare in the society you remember."

He nods. That makes sense. People with the power of overwhelming violence would not want that available to anyone else, would they.

"Will you be using things that..." he waves to his own head.

"Maybe some of it, if it proves to have any basis in reality," Inoichi says. Right. That makes sense. "If they do… there are interesting parallels and diversions, but Konoha is not in the business of life-altering technological development, outside what is relevant to our own needs."

Kakashi hums in agreement.

Inoichi speaks again. "Human industry changing the climate of the planet is terrifying."

Ah. Yes. Yes it is.

Inoichi continues. "If we can do anything to prevent that, I think we will have done very good job." He looks at the clipboard, his voice is calm, but he smells anxious. He's been thinking about this. The overwhelming, dreadful things no one growing up where Kakashi in his misplaced memories did could forget.

His own familiar worries come to rise. He thinks of the horrors of war, the fourth shinobi one that may or may not come. The very visceral images he'd seen in school and on the news. The constant, overhanging threat of global superpowers. What Obito has given him of the tail end of the Third War, here in the Elemental Nations. The Sharingan-clear view of the Kyuubi in the distance, Kakashi helpless to stop the destruction as older shinobi died in droves. The stories Granny told. He has to bring it up or it will eat him alive.

"Nuclear bombs."

Inoichi puts his pen down, and looks Kakashi in the eye, expression grim.

"I have never heard of such a thing," Inoichi says. "And neither have you."

He has never been so relieved in his life.

-

Leaving the Intelligence Division, the feeling of being watched is stronger than ever. Here, by an administrative headquarter, there are not as many eyes of the kind that stick to him wherever he goes. Inoichi had said he was not under watch.

Using the Sharingan is an active, threatening display. He shouldn’t do it on the open street.

Kakashi moves, sandals silent over the paved street, and as he moves into an older district cobblestone instead, and the feeling doesn’t dissipate.

At the end of an alley, with an acupuncture studio on one side and a grimy looking convenience store on the other, he leans in the shadow of the buildings and pretends to have an intense stab of headache. Red stucco sits against his back, dirty white on the building across the way, a stripy, sagging awning covering his good side from the view of the larger street adjacent.

He lifts the headband, pressing fingers into the bridge of his nose, and blinks.

Back in the direction he’d come from, two floors up, adhered to the wall by a small balcony. Blue chakra sits like a heat mirage, shaped like a short, slender person bent in a crouch.

He gives it another moment, eyes closed, and lowers the forehead protector again with a sigh.

Either Inoichi was lying, or someone else is watching.

-

It is not until later, when he’s run through simple strength and mobility at one of the smallest training grounds, that he realises it’s the first time he has looked through Obito’s eye since the fuzzy, terrifying few days after waking up in Wave.

It was less than a split second, but felt a little bit like settling into his own body. Kakashi’s body, not his, he tries to tell himself. Mine, he thinks immediately after, I’m just insane.

-

Sasuke shuffles into Kakashi’s apartment without a word, a smug look on his face and fresh bruises just shifting from red to purple. He must have been home before deciding to come over, smelling very faintly of unscented soap and clean clothing.

They decide to make a slow cooked stew from scratch, and Sasuke has brought fresh root vegetables.

Naruto is off on an overnight mission, and Sakura still has not shown her face.

Kakashi has been on edge all day, after a restless night of nightmares and a long morning at the memorial stone. He has been dreaming of Danzo's cursed Sharingan arm and the ROOT facilities below ground, the latter's Obito-clear recollection somehow bleeding over to the body horror that the anime flattened into much more palatable two dimensions. In the dream Shisui's eye came out with a squelching pop that his Sharingan preserved memories tell him really is what eyes pulled from sockets sound like.

"If something should happen to me,” he says, not looking away from the unidentified not-quite potato thing he’s methodically slicing, “stay away from councilman Shimura Danzo."

"The councilman? Why?" Sasuke frowns, and from the corner of his eye Kakashi can see how he wrinkles his nose, in that way he’s coming to realise is unique to children faced with boring adult things that make no sense.

"I can't tell you that right now," he doesn't even know if it's true. (Sharingan-sharp views of ROOT's facilities are burned into his mind. Of Tenzo as a child, of the night Orochimaru was chased from the village.) "But he is dangerous, and he might come for you if he comes for me. And you can not give any hint to anyone that you know about this. Do you understand?"

Maybe he's putting Sasuke in danger, telling him things. Maybe he’s putting himself in danger too, going by the ominous warning Inoichi had given him, but Kakashi cannot shake the images of a stylized Sasuke alone and afraid, victimised by Orochimaru and fleeing the village. He's just a kid. It doesn't matter what trauma he has, the responsibility to make sure he's okay shouldn't be his yet.

Kakashi clears his throat a little awkwardly, and dials down the intensity. "Adults you can trust," he says, "if I'm not there, are Maito Gai," he can see the kid's confusion, they've clearly never met, "and Ino's father. And probably Tsunade of the Sannin." He can't believe he's saying this. He's basing it all on delusions. But Sasuke deserves Kakashi to take risks for him. "And trust your team. Naruto and Sakura."

Sasuke scoffs, as if they're beneath him.

"They would die for you," he lets his tone grow sharp. "Don't diminish that."

"Like my cousin did for you?" Sasuke spits, vitriolic and painful.

Nausea crawls up Kakashi's throat like a many clawed beast and it is very very tempting to snarl at the brat who is clearly lashing out. Or to give up and go to bed. That would be nice.

"Yes." Instead he makes sure to seem calm, and measured. He can feel his own pulse in his throat. "Like Uchiha Obito did for me. And like I would for you."

Finally the tension in Sasuke breaks.

"I don't want you to die for me!" He cries out. "I don't want anyone to die for me!" Sasuke's potato peeler goes flying, deep into the wall to the bathroom with chakra backed force and the sound of cracking drywall and crumbling concrete. "They all ALREADY DID AND I WISH HE HAD KILLED ME TOO!"

Sasuke turns and bolts, and Kakashi... has frozen, standing where he was, with no idea what to do. The front door slams and the sound of running feet slapping on the floorboards echo for just a moment, before Sasuke must have leapt off the landing.

He sits there for too long, mind buzzing, too blank.

Fuck.

He doesn't know how much time has passed, before he grabs a kunai and nicks his thumb, going through the motions.

Pakkun appears in a comforting puff. He can feel the immediate drain on his energy.

"I need to find Sasuke," he tells the pug, and fakes a smile. "I'll call you all properly when I'm more recovered, like I said before, I’m sorry to-"

"Don't worry about it boss. I've got this," Pakkun interrupts him.

Then they're going, stew pot bubbling half-filled on the stove, forgotten.

-

They find Sasuke curled on a bench by the river, facing the swirls and eddies of the current. A tree shields his back from view, but Kakashi can smell him before they reach him, the acrid tang of stress mingling with his usual scents.

Pakkun leaps onto the bench without hesitation, claws scrambling over the painted wood as he’s wiggling his small, soft head in under Sasuke's arm, huffing as he's squished between the boy's legs and his torso. Sasuke tenses, but Kakashi sees him dig his fingers into Pakkun's soft fur.

He steps around the bench, and slowly crouches in front of Sasuke. He looks up, and the kid won't meet his eye, stubbornly staring past him to the water.

Kakashi pulls off his headband, and lets it fall to the ground. He watches Sasuke with both eyes, doing nothing to politely avert the Sharingan.

There is a small twitch of Sasuke's eyes in his direction. Kakashi pulls down his mask. Sasuke's eyes widen, and he finally looks at him properly.

"I won't say I know what it's like," he makes himself say. "But I am not going anywhere."

There is a long moment where Sasuke just stares.

Pakkun breaks the fragile silence. "Neither am I, pup. You're ours now."

Sasuke somehow curls even smaller, but he also scoops Pakkun up properly and holds the dog to his chest, head lowered, face out of Kakashi's sight. The scent of tears grows stronger, and finally Sasuke's shoulders shake as he lets himself cry.

Kakashi sits next to him on the bench, and lets the sunlight glittering on the Naka river make its flawless home in his memory forever.

-

He pays for Pakkun’s summoning the following day, fatigue tearing through his bones and the aching, flu-like pain and lethargy returning. Not so bad that he can’t move though, and the fuzz in his head seems quite stable.

So all in all it was more than worth it, he thinks, laughing as Pakkun tells him about Uhei and Guruko respectively crashing through and being caught behind a knee-high fence they should easily have jumped. The pug is resting on his chest as Kakashi reclines on the bed, small body curled into a loaf and soft ears twitching slightly as Kakashi runs his nails along the top of his head and down his stubby neck.

He worries about Sasuke, but doesn’t want to scare him away by being too pushy. Instead he asks Pakkun to shadow the kid the next day, and the dog cracks an eye open to inspect Kakashi for a long moment before agreeing. They both had smelled the despair on the kid, and Pakkun… Kakashi trusts him more than anyone in this world. Maybe even more than anyone in the last one too, except for Granny. She would have known what to do with Sasuke, he’s sure.

In the meantime, Kakashi will listen to Pakkun when he says he has ‘experience with feral pups’. He doesn’t know for sure, but Pakkun is the leader of the pack and so maybe the oldest. Talking dogs are probably not too different from human children.

He spends nearly all day in bed, and before morning comes he is going to selfishly hold on to the dog, nose pressed into soft fur that smells like home.

-

For once waking without remembering dreams of bloodshed, he almost feels ready to take on the day. He says goodbye to Pakkun as the dog leaves, and then he gets up, eats, showers, takes his medication. He is almost proud of himself, to be honest, and finds himself feeling better than he has… maybe ever, in this world. The pain never goes away, but Pakkun’s help and a good night’s sleep makes him feel more mentally present.

Sukea’s parts have stayed in their plastic bag until now, shoved beneath the bed and out of sight, but not out of mind.

It’s a regular weekday, two days until his follow up doctor’s appointment, and Kakashi finally decides to bring the disguise back out.

He bought it with a purpose, and it would be a shame to let it sit, he thinks as he applies foundation to hide the triangle of tan around his right eye, as he fills in his eyebrows with brown. It’s not him who is messed up, he tells himself as the clan marking in Nohara purple is smoothed beneath his left eye, across the eyelid, hiding the scar Rin had healed. He looks like he could be her brother, he reels at the sight burning into his mind with the Sharingan as the wig settles over his hair and the contact lenses are applied.

What am I doing? He asks himself as he lowers the brush of mascara.

Obito’s eye sees every flaw in the disguise, and assures him that yes, he does look like her now, in so many ways.

Before he can finish dressing Kakashi has to sit and just breathe, for a while. Pakkun is with Sasuke, so he is all alone.

The midday light from an overcast, steely sky removes near all shadows and smooths out Konoha as if lit by an enormous soft box from above. Not his favourite conditions to shoot in, but he’s not trying for perfection. He just… wants to exist without notice, for a while.

He lifts the camera out of its box, and decides that Sukea will be like Rin. What he remembers of her, at least, which is more than he recalls of Obito but all thanks to Obito. Maybe it’s grotesque, but this way he’s carrying both of them with him. Obito’s eye to view the future and Rin’s appearance as a shield from the world. She was always more confident than he was.

Maybe the real Kakashi had come to terms with things. Maybe the real Kakashi hypothetically saw the disguise as just a fun thing to do. To this Kakashi… it has weight, and it wasn’t even he who knew her.

The second photo he takes in this world is of himself in Sukea’s guise, smiling at the camera, hand raised in a victory sign.

-

Walking around the village in an anonymous, civilian form is a revelation. He makes sure his feet scuff the ground ever so slightly as he walks, he smiles at strangers, he photographs interesting buildings and gets asked by a couple of excited chuunin if he can take a picture of them outside their favourite park. He promises to give them the photo, if they run into each other after it’s developed.

No one stares at him in that intense, curious way. A lot of people don’t look at him at all.

He goes to a café and sits at the front, his back to the entrance, and he slowly sips an overly-sweet and over-designed matcha latte, and smiles and blushes when the woman at the till openly flirts.

Maybe it's silly, to bring out the camera when the sharingan spins lazily behind its contact lens, recording every detail of every view he sees, but its not the same.

Choosing the subject, framing it right, adjusting the settings for the perfect balance of light versus depth and focus, losing himself in the image as a goal in itself. He's missed it, walking around a city (or a village, in this case, though Konoha is large and the definition seems more to do with the concept than its size) with the goal of nothing but finding art in the mundane.

He has fun, framing a man sitting alone in an open-sided restaurant like Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, lighting scheme inverted to throw the street into near overexposed daylight while the patrons inside are sheltered in cool-toned shade. Maybe he'll come back some evening, to see what it looks like in the dark.

He doesn’t stay out long, and he’s very tired returning to the apartment, but that was… incredibly freeing. He can be just like anyone else, and it doesn’t matter if it is nothing like him and nothing like Hatake Kakashi or that he’s acting the entire time. Sukea had a good time, and he is nothing like either of them.

The camera is returned to the box, and Sukea’s clothing joins it. If Obito’s eye is way for him to see the future, maybe Rin can view it through Sukea’s camera lens.

His head hurts, migraine radiating from behind the Sharingan, and he can feel the strain on his energy just keeping the eye open for a few hours, but he has no regrets.

-

He is at the hospital when he sees someone new that he recognises, entirely from the too-real memories of the Sharingan. Yuugao, ANBU Cat, sits nonchalantly, cross legged and leaning back in her chair in the waiting room, long purple hair braided over one shoulder. She is dressed in a dark coat over shinobi blues, and flicking through a creased fashion magazine no doubt from the stand in the corner.

He nods to her as he sits down, and she nods back. They don’t talk, and he’s relieved. Just being back in the building is making his insides itch and his sinuses burn with the smell of antiseptics.

The book he pulls out has a dull cover with some kind of chemical model on the front. It’s a theoretical manual on the transformation between elemental chakra, and it’s way too exhausting to actually read, so he just pretends, letting it be a buffer and something to do with his hands while he waits.

Yuugao starts to roll her eyes and then does a double take. Then looks from the book to his face, to the book again.

“Maa,” he drawls, turning another page. At least the pictures as colourful. “You should go get a camera. Photos last longer.”

She snorts. “As if you’d let me take one.”

He squints his eye into a smile.

They sit for a little while in silence. Across the room is the most hospital art painting he’s ever seen, some abstract muddle of greens and browns making a sad mess on the canvas. Stars, the little plaque dubs it.

He can tell she wants to say something. She’s shifting slightly, attention on him in intervals before she decides not to and looks away.

“Is it-,” she begins and Kakashi stands.

“Would you look at that,” he says, tucking the book away. “My appointment.”

The nurse with a clipboard who enters just as he speaks looks momentarily surprised, then nods. “Hatake Kakashi, come with me please.”

“Later, Yuugao,” he salutes her, and she gives a small wave in return, smelling like exasperation.

Following the nurse, Kakashi passes a pale, shaky man in the hallway who raises a hand in greeting. He seems familiar, but Kakashi can’t place him and just copies the gesture.

The door to the exam room shuts with an ominous click, and Kakashi only feels a little bit calmed by the fact that there’s a window. He can escape easily if he needs to.

“Hatake,” Doctor Tanaka says. Her grey hair is cropped short, and the forehead protector is riveted to her belt. She smells like hospital soap and spicy curry, and was one of the few doctors that actually explained what they were doing and took her time, during the fog-addled week he’d spent in a hospital bed.

“Yo.”

She gets him to sit, remove his vest and overshirt, and then they run through a litany of physical exams. Every time her cold fingers touch his skin he wants to be sick, but the medical chakra she runs across his back and over his head and eyes is easier to deal with.

With pleased surprise she tells him that he’s done well, all things considered, and is in good shape for a transfusion.

He lies back and stares at the ceiling at her instruction, and waits.

Chakra transfusions turn out to feel so weird. Tanaka places her hands over his heart, first with the Mystic Palm jutsu, and then as she shifts through a few hand signs the green, almost-there colour intensifies, and then it flickers once, twice, before disappearing from view, aside from the now familiar wobble in the air. She’s sweating as she does it, and the nurse is standing by, ready to step in if it should go wrong, Kakashi assumes. The nurse smells of cats, scent mostly washed off but clinging beneath the ever-present soap.

He's experienced a blood transfusion before (or maybe not, he remembers a blood transfusion, in the world that probably doesn’t exist, after an ill-advised idea to film himself and a friend doing ice-skating stunts with near zero experience), and this feels nothing like that. This feels like taking a vital part of someone else and making it part of himself. It makes his skin crawl. He does feel energised though, and refuses to complain.

“All right,” Tanaka says, after finishing a drink of water and wiping her brow. The glass thumps onto a notepad on the desk, drops of water soaking into the paper. “Let that settle for today, and then you are cleared to perform jutsu. Just be really fucking careful, all right?” She looks at him sternly, and he raises his hands in an innocent gesture.

“Of course, Tanaka-sensei,” he smiles. “But I can start training to increase my chakra reserves, yes?”

She gives him an almost Pakkun-worthy judgemental look.

“I don’t think so.”

“Training to failure is what leads to adaption…” He’s like… ninety percent sure they did that in the anime.

She sighs. “Only under certain circumstances, and not for you.”

He feels his hope deflate, and his posture shifts out of the perpetual slouch he carries in public into something more proper. What has been the point of any of it, of taking the meds and avoiding proper training until now, if he can’t improve?

“Oh.”

“Look,” she says, clearly reading him. “Suffering repeated, severe chakra exhaustion means your system has been too strained, and there is likely permanent damage. It is possible to improve, and it is not a guarantee that you will suffer a degenerative progression, but you need to be extremely careful and stay away from chakra exhaustion. It is not an exaggeration that this illness can kill you. If I thought there was any chance you’d take my advice, I would tell you to retire, and to stay on the reserves at absolute most.”

Shit.

“Your main issue,” she continues over the increased screech that lives in his ears, “aside from driving yourself into exhaustion, isn't an abnormally small capacity or an underdeveloped chakra network.” He can barely hear her. She half turns away, and he’s grateful to not have her eyes on him. “You just can't produce chakra much faster than the Sharingan consumes it, and your body is paying for years of that strain. Honestly, letting you keep that thing was... From a health perspective extremely irresponsible.”

His heart feels like it’s lurching. Taking Obito’s gift away is unthinkable. ‘That thing’ is everything he has of his team and of himself. He is so very close to dashing out the window and letting a shunshin carry him away.

“The best thing you can do for your reserves is letting them recuperate further, and work towards better chakra production. Eat right, sleep enough, calm your nervous system. Try to get out of fight or flight mode.” The last part is said with a pointed look, exaggerated enough that it would be impossible to miss unless he had his eye closed. “Disability is something many shinobi have to contend with, especially after long careers.”

“Maa, all right, sensei.” He knows his smile looks fake. She clearly knows it is. She lets him have his pride, at least, and only books him in for another follow up in one month’s time, and finally, finally, he is allowed to escape.

She doesn’t even tell him to use the door.

The first thing he does when getting back to the apartment is throw up his meagre breakfast. The second thing is to curl up on the floor next to Pakkun, and pretend that he’s part of the rug.

-

The next day he stays on the floor for as long as he can. His body hurts, symptoms worse again from the lack of food and dehydration from half a day and a whole night staying in place. When he finally moves, it is not by choice.

"Get up," Pakkun says, sitting patiently between the rug Kakashi still lays on and the door.

Kakashi says nothing, covering his face with his arm. Sunshine is coming through the window, so it must be afternoon.

"Get up," Pakkun repeats.

Instead of replying, Kakashi pulls the blanket off the bed, covering all of himself from the world. Everything hurts.

He feels a tug on the blanket. He holds on to it. Pakkun isn't heavy enough to pull it from his hands. Another tug, and another. Kakashi refuses to let go.

The tugging stops, then Pakkun says from by the front door, "If you don't take me to the park I will shit on this doormat."

"No you won't."

"I will."

"You know how to use the toilet," he grumbles.

"The bathroom door is closed. I don’t have hands."

"Fuck off." Kakashi rolls into a ball under his blanket, the scratchy wool of the rug catching on his mask.

There is a long moment of silence.

The stink is what has him finally react. He sits up and pulls the blanket from his face, staring with appalled disbelief at Pakkun and the tiny, neat and rank turd by the door. Luckily on the wooden floor so easier to clean than the mat, but what the fuck.

"I can't believe you," Kakashi grumbles after cleaning up the mess.

Pakkun lies down on the bed and rests his chin on his front paws. "Will you tell me what's wrong now?"

Kakashi sighs and sits on the floor, slumping so that his shoulder is by Pakkun's head. "I've lost my mind, and now I don’t know if I can be a ninja either."

Pakkun hums, unimpressed. "Insanity is common in the strongest shinobi. It's practically a merit."

"Right." He lets his head fall back, staring up at the flat, white ceiling. "But the doctor thinks I should retire. Then I'll just be crazy."

They sit in silence for a minute or so, and then Pakkun stands and stretches. Even as wrecked as he's feeling he reflexively thinks biiiig stretch. Even after the asshole shat on the floor he's still so damn cute.

"Come on," Pakkun urges. "Let's go. You'll feel better after some fresh air.”

Kakashi doubts it, but relents.

-

He can smell his visitors before he even reaches the door. Naruto’s fox smell and tracksuit with its tinge of old sweat and worn synthetics, Sasuke’s incense and cotton, and an overwhelming, prickly perfume both floral and with some kind of musk, almost drowning out the scent of Sakura’s shampoo. The usual signs by the door have all been disturbed. When he tries the handle, he finds the apartment unlocked. Three small pairs of sandals are sitting neatly by the mat inside.

"NARUTO! You can't just take Kakashi-sensei's food! What are you doing!?"

He unclips Pakkun’s lead, picks up the dog, toes off his sandals, and listens in.

"Ne, Sakura-chan it's okay! Sensei doesn't care!"

"Hn."

"You still can't just steal from him when he's not even home! We already broke in! YOU forced me to come and now you DRAG ME INTO CRIME!?"

"It really really is all right! Besides, me and Sasuke helped make this believe it Sakura-chan!" Naruto laughs nervously.

"Hn," Sasuke says, "he won't eat it if he hasn't by now. He lives off ration bars and miso if we don't stop him."

That's... not true. They are such brats. He cooks more when they're around, sure, but he is trying to be healthy.

"Yeah, yeah, Sakura-chan! And Pakkun -sensei says Kakashi-sensei is much happier when we're around believe it!"

He would be mad at Pakkun for giving away his secrets, the pug currently perching on his shoulder, if his heart didn't feel so full hearing the three of them together again.

He pays attention again to "-sensei is just old and needs help to take care of himself!"

He steps forward into the doorway. "Maa, Naruto, I'm only like twenty-seven.” Sasuke freezes, Naruto shrieks, and Sakura jumps.

"SENSEI DON'T SNEAK UP ON ME LIKE THAT I COULD HURT YOU BELIEVE IT!"

"Naruto, the only thing that will hurt me is that volume," he puts on an exaggerated, exhausted expression. The volume did sink what feels like an ice pick into the side of his head.

"Like twenty-seven?" Sasuke mutters to himself.

"Hi, sensei," Sakura says, looking down at her clasped hands. "Sorry for breaking in."

"SEE, OLD!" Naruto points at him.

Kakashi rolls his eye. "I was barely a teenager when you were born. I've had grey hair" since Wave "my whole life!”

"And we're almost teenagers so that means you're at least double us and THAT means you're old!" Naruto finishes triumphantly. He… probably shouldn’t be this impressed by Naruto’s grasp of basic math. The kid manages his own finances.

"Oi, Naruto, I'm already a teenager," Sakura growls.

"WHAT!?" Naruto says and even Sasuke looks concerned. "I missed your birthday!? I didn't get you a present!"

Sakura rolls her eyes and sits primly on one of the chairs, backlit by the window with a glowing pink halo as the light hits her hair. “It’s okay, it was when Sensei was in hospital.”

The three of them seem to contemplate this, and then they very seriously discuss their birth dates (Naruto: October tenth, Sasuke: July twenty-third, Sakura: March twenty-eight).

Maybe this is why Sakura has been avoiding them all? Birthdays are big deal at that age, Kakashi thinks, so maybe she believed they didn’t care when no one paid attention to it.

He finds himself frozen next to the fridge when three heads suddenly turn his way.

“…What?”

“When is your birthday, Kakashi-sensei?” Sakura asks seriously.

“Maa… that is,” uhm. He has no idea. He crinkles his eye in a smile. “I’d have to check my file.”

Wow, they are so good at looking unimpressed.

“His birthday is September fifteen,” Pakkun the traitor says. “He’s twenty-six.” Huh. He was pretty close. The only reason he had any clue about his age was because he knew roughly how old Hatake Kakashi was when Naruto was born.

“HOW DO YOU FORGET YOUR OWN BIRTHDAY!?” Naruto climbs onto the spinning desk chair still by the kitchen table and wobbles dangerously for a moment while pointing accusingly at Kakashi.

“Hn,” Sasuke agrees.

“That’s kind of bad, Sensei,” Sakura giggles.

Because I’ve either got memory loss or I’m an alien body-snatcher. “Well, when you get old things like that start… blending together,” he waves a dismissive hand. They don’t need to know about his broken mind. He also… doesn’t really care about his birthday. The three of them very much look like they don’t believe it.

Kakashi really wants to have a shower and go to bed, but he can’t bring himself to tell them to leave.

“So, Sakura,” Kakashi starts, leaning back against the countertop. Pakkun hops off his shoulder to sit next to the sink.

“WAIT!” Naruto interrupts, still standing on the chair. “What about Pakkun-sensei’s birthday!?”

“July thirteen,” the dog grunts. The kids nod seriously, taking in this most important information. Kakashi takes mental note too. He’ll have to ask Pakkun if the dogs care, and if so when the others were born.

Sasuke opens up the box of leftovers sitting on the table, and Kakashi passes out plates. It’s not enough for four, so he grabs a ration bar for himself. Naruto immediately scrambles over and snatches it from his hand.

“Wow!” Naruto holds up the wrapped bar. “My favourite, thanks Kakashi-sensei!” He laughs the most fake, forced laugh Kakashi has ever heard. But oh well. If that’s the choice the kid is making, he’ll have to live with it.

Kakashi sighs and accepts the plate of roasted vegetables, rice and seared chicken. Sasuke hands it him with such a serious expression.

He eats in small bites, standing to the side, while the kids around the table are distracted by their own meals. Naruto makes a valiant attempt to seem happy as he chews the tough bar he took from Kakashi. He is very bad at it.

Sakura… her portion is tiny, he notes with concern. He also tries not to make it show how he stands by the air vent to avoid the way her perfume makes him want to sneeze.

“So Sakura,” he finally starts again. “Any wish list for birthday gifts?” He may have missed it, but at least he can try to make up for it.

Her eyes go wide. “I…”

She looks from Kakashi to Sasuke, who nods, to Naruto who is leaning in very close with excitement.

Her list is long, but contains things from books to clothes to makeup and fresh kunai. He can work with that. From the glint in Naruto’s eye and Sasuke’s thoughtful look, she’ll be receiving a few more things for certain.

He asks her about training, and she says it is going well.

She lies.

He tells them that they are still welcome to come by whenever, and quietly decides to have keys made for each of them. Sakura’s smile is strained when she declines Naruto’s suggestion that they all start training as Team Seven again, stating that she’s too tired from missions and training at the moment. Sasuke looks like he’s judging her, but Naruto just despairs and tells her to come when she can. She does agree to a team birthday get-together for her, at least.

A little while after that, Kakashi decides to ignore the ache in his bones and summons all of the dogs.

The bedroom is filled with children’s laughter and wagging tails.

The third photograph Kakashi takes in the apartment is of the kids and dogs all together, Naruto crushed in a pile beneath five of them, Sakura hugging Bull’s wide neck beside them on the floor and Sasuke perching on the desk with Pakkun in his arms, Guruko pressed against his leg. Early evening sunlight pours through the window, giving everything a golden haze.

-

Chapter Text

Konoha Bank is a squat, grey building with no windows. It sits between the Hokage Tower and is attached on one side to the police station, the tower and station both taller and far more colourful than the sad looking bank. Kakashi is curious how policing is done – the story never addressed that, and something must have filled the void of the Uchiha. He assumes it’s ninja staffed, or civilians would be left helpless to any shinobi with ill intent.

But that’s now why he’s here. Kakashi shakes himself and proceeds up the stone steps to the glass doors, his own reflection meeting him with a jarring wrongness that feels a little less painful than it used to. He pushes the door open to the sound of a tinkling bell, his own grey hair and masked face tipping out of view. He passes through another door, this one standing open, thick metal and numerous locks on full display. The lobby… looks like any fancy bank lobby, if small. Marble floor, booths with tables along the outside wall, three receptionists behind wrought metal bars and heavy glass, with open hatches before them and a long countertop running along the room. The place smells like paper, polished wood and iron.

There is no obvious queue system with numbers or anything, so he saunters up to one of the desks.

“Yo. Hatake Kakashi. I’d like to know my balance.”

It’s smooth and quick, he has to identify himself with his ninja registration number and a drop of blood, and then gets to look at his books. His rent in shinobi housing is covered by the state, it seems, and there is a regular base pay each week as well as bonuses for missions depending on rank. Some investments are managed by his bank representative, and it looks like Kakashi was never personally involved in any of it. Going by what he spends on food, the prices he’s seen for clothing and equipment… he has a lot of savings. He has no idea what civilian life might cost, though, if he were to lose that state funded apartment.

At least he now has an idea of his resources, and the rest will be easier to figure out.

He leaves the bank with a lump in his throat but feeling more in control, and that will have to be enough.

-

The next day there is a card in his post box, the stamp of the Intelligence division familiar now, and the time on it is in later the same day. Several days before his scheduled weekly appointment.

On the way he smells Gai, and takes a different route.

-

“You’ve been to the bank,” Inoichi opens without preamble. The room is not the same, but very similar. The chairs are green instead of blue. This time the camera is running.

“Yeah. I’m not going anywhere,” he assures flatly, wondering if they think he plans to bolt. “I was just… thinking.”

Inoichi is quiet for just a touch too long. “Thinking?”

“If I can’t go back to active service again. The doctor was… hm. And with my brain… Well. I don’t know how much being a civilian costs, and I had no idea how much money I had, to be honest,” he squints a fake smile at Inoichi.

“Kakashi-san…” Inoichi says, so gently it sets his teeth on edge. “You are a clan head, with more than two decades of service to Konohagakure, more than one as full jounin. You won’t ever have to worry about those things, as long as you live here.”

“Oh.” Why does he almost feel disappointed?

“You’d stay on the reserve list for life, of course. Expected to maintain your skills.”

Kakashi’s smile is all bravado, but the gratitude is real. Reserves are better than nothing.

The future feels like an abyss.

-

The Hokage’s summons comes the next morning, delivered by a winded chuunin pounding on Kakashi’s door.

-

He has to wait in the hallway before he is let in to see the village leader.

The place is spacious, bright and welcoming, with large open windows to the gently sloping wooden roof outside. They feel like both a convenient entrance for shinobi and a message. We don’t need walls. The Hokage will not be taken by surprise. We are strong enough that there is nothing you can do to us. Look, the door is wide open, and your entry is not a threat.

He's not sure if that is the intent, or if it is just a traditional style of building here, but the way the seat of power in a city-state with such dark roots is designed to be peaceful itches at him. Maybe it says more about the first Hokage’s idealism than anything else.

There are scrolls of beautiful calligraphy on the pale walls.

Shinobi, which also reads as Perseverance. Like the print in Kakashi’s apartment.

Power.

Honour.

Trust.

He kind of hates it.

Above the door, fire.

The two large doors open to the familiar, bone chilling tap, tap, tap of a slow stride supported by a cane.

Danzo looks irritated, jaw clencing as he walks. But his expression fades into a façade of pleasant blandness.

“Hatake-kun,” he greets with a nod.

Kakashi makes himself nod back, skin crawling, and steps forward when he hears the deep voice of Sarutobi Hiruzen call his name.

The office is so similar to the one he remembers from the story that he almost does a double take. With the Sharingan’s clarity he has seen it before, from the inside of a porcelain mask, but he never thought about it until now.

He stands for a moment internally fumbling. He doesn’t know the protocol at all outside of ANBU, but he also doesn’t know if that applies here. (There are currently at least two agents present in the room. Potentially more. Hidden by genjutsu and keeping their chakra low and still.)

Kakashi closes the doors behind himself, and kneels before the desk.

“Hokage-sama.”

“Kakashi-kun.” The Hokage sighs, and doesn’t ask him to rise. Instead there is the deliberate scrape of a chair and Kakashi can smell the old man move to the side on soundless feet. There is a disapproving tinge to the tobacco and ink still on his scent. “I have been receiving some concerning reports.”

Kakashi feels cold. Inoichi had told him to be careful. Does this mean the overstep was too big?

“I had hoped, my boy, to one day perhaps be able to pass this hat on to you.” The Hokage sighs again. “And you have such potential, yet I am informed you are considering to withdraw from Konoha’s forces and forsake your duty to the village.”

What the fuck?

He clears his throat. “You are aware of… the state of my mind,” he says.

“Yes.” The Hokage’s voice sounds slightly closer, as if he is looking down on Kakashi’s kneeling form. “But that will hopefully be resolved when Jiraya has returned. I have faith in his abilities.”

Kakashi feels like the world is tilting slightly sideways. He had fully expected to be reprimanded for his laxity with state secrets, or that this would have something to do with what he thinks he remembers from that other world.

He should probably have expected this to be related to his talk with Inoichi and what Intelligence must have reported, with how soon this came after the urgent meeting the previous day. Not that he thinks he could have been ready for ‘I wanted to make you Hokage one day’.

Kakashi remains motionless, but speaks. “That is reassuring.”

The Hokage probably knows everything already, calling him in here, and he grasps for something to say, to explain himself.

“Doctor Tanaka thinks I should retire for health reasons. Citing my… chakra related issues.” Even now the edges of his mind are mired in fog and he hurts from the depth of his bones to the surface of his skin, but adrenaline is keeping the fatigue from overwhelming him. He will no doubt pay for the stress of the last few days soon.

“Do you agree?” The Hokage asks.

“Hokage-sama?” His mouth is dry, and he doesn’t understand.

“With the doctor’s assessment. Should you retire?”

The thought feels like cold water running down his spine. He knows he’s a liability. He has probably made things worse already. He keeps making decisions based on things he doesn’t know the truthfulness of. He doesn’t understand why they still seem to trust him. There is a constant feeling of a blade hanging over his head, but it just never drops. It is almost enough to make him doubt the Sharingan’s blood soaked memories.

He thinks of what it would be like, to retire, now that he’s had some time to come to terms with the idea. He thinks of the children, playing with the dogs. He could still be there for them. He could take the camera and travel, dressed in Sukea’s skin. Him and Obito and Rin, exploring this new world together. He could come home to Gai, and tell him stories of places soaked in sunshine instead of blood.

He thinks of the story that seems more and more surreal, the more time passes in the real world. Of the wars that may or may not come, of Obito who may or may not be alive, of Sasuke who may or may not leave the village and Naruto who may or may not chase him to the ends of the earth and Sakura who may or may not become impossibly strong and save so many lives, and of all the people who may or may not die.

It has to be a test, but he doesn’t know the right answer.

“Yes.” He finally raises his head and looks at Sarutobi Hiruzen.

The Hokage looks tired.

“I don’t want to,” Kakashi lies.

The Hokage studies him, then slowly turns away and looks out the wide, open windows. His hands are clasped behind his back, the pipe in one of them smoking ever so slightly.

“You are one of our more important assets, as you know.” The silence stretches just long enough to be awkward. “Remain in proximity to and maintain your relationship with the Jinchuuriki and the last Uchiha. You will return to service as soon as Inoichi deems it suitable.”

He did not call Naruto by name, who calls the old man Jiji, or Sasuke, left to fend for himself thanks to this man’s brutal mishandling of the Uchiha, and his misplaced trust in the monster that is Danzo. The Jinchuuriki. The last Uchiha. Kakashi feels sick. The Sharingan is why he is needed to be near them, to control the Kyuubi and to teach Sasuke, and to keep both of them loyal.

The order to return to duty feels like a death knell, and a salvation.

“Thank you, Hokage-sama.”

The Hokage does not turn around.

“You are dismissed.”

Kakashi leaves through the door.

-

He’s not sure how Gai finds out, but he does.

“Are you truly retiring?” The Great Blue Beast drops down next to Kakashi on the ground without preamble. The Naka river looks deceptively still, the early afternoon light making everything painfully bright and cheery.

Kakashi crinkles his eye, the rest of his face frozen out of the smile. “No.”

He opens the eye again, watching the water, and he can feel Gai studying the side of his face. How much he can grasp from a small sliver of skin and one eye fixed straight ahead is anyone’s guess. He smells worried.

“Did you want to?”

“Maa…” he waves a hand sluggishly. The idea that he will have to walk back to the apartment at some point is agonizing. “I don’t know.”

Gai turns to the river as well. “It is not like you ever had the choice to consider anything else,” he says softly.

Kakashi hums. “Did any of us?”

He welcomes the solid press of Gai’s shoulder against his own.

“Well,” Kakashi tries to sound upbeat as he continues. “Nothing to it now. It’s not like I expected anything but an early grave anyway.”

“WHAT!?”

Gai’s hands are on his shoulders, scrunching the fabric of his blues and gripping the muscle there tightly as Kakashi is wrenched sideways to face him. He feels his own eye widen in shock as it meets Gai’s suddenly tear-filled gaze. The closeness should be more uncomfortable than it is.

He’s getting used to Gai, and there has always been that steady undercurrent of unshakeable trust.

“What does that mean, Rival!?”

“Maa, calm down, calm down,” he pats Gai’s elbow.

He tells him what he can remember of what the doctor said, and the Hokage’s decision. His fellow jounin is frowning as he listens, sniffling every now and then.

“I will not criticize our Great Leader and bearer of the Will of Fire,” Gai says, and honestly, that sounds like enough criticism on its own.

“It’s all right,” Kakashi says. “I wouldn’t know what to do with myself otherwise, anyway.”

They sit in silence for a little while, and Kakashi lets himself lie down on his back in the grass. He can feel himself start to drift off, the exhaustion creeping in again and now next to Gai he feels safe enough to relax.

“I have some ideas,” Gai cuts through the quiet. “You said the doctor told you not to expend chakra or train for better reserves, but chakra expenditure is far from your only option!”

“Oh?” Kakashi doesn’t even open his eye.

“Physical discipline within your current limits as well as deep meditation! These are the things that allow one to access the Internal Gates and also establish and expand reserves without expelling the Youthful Force of Life from within you!”

Expelling the youthful force of life. Kakashi almost snorts. That line might as well belong in Icha-Icha.

He turns and squints up at Gai. “Rock Lee can’t use chakra externally…”

“Exactly! But he still has incredible potential as a shinobi, and will with perseverance certainly be able to access all of the Gates one day!”

Which… is an unbelievable thought. Kakashi doesn’t know what seeing someone burn through their entire life force at once might look like, and he doesn’t think he wants to.

“I’m a ninjutsu specialist.”

“That is not all you are, Rival, and nothing says it must be forever! If you are willing, I would be Most Honoured to Guide your path to Internal Fortitude, and if it shows results with your condition, perhaps you will be able to pick up such techniques once again!”

Kakashi looks up at the sky, grey clouds gathering in the distance across the river but clear blue above, and closes his eye again. “Sure. Why not.”

-

Gai on a self-imposed mission turns out to be absolutely terrifying.

Over the following week Gai, alongside his own training, the education of his students and the missions of his team, invades Kakashi’s apartment and reads every single one of the shitty pamphlets (including the extras Sasuke has been sneaking in). He also makes Kakashi a meal plan, cooks said meal plan, so that it will last him the week, makes an exercise and activity schedule, and fits in daily training and meditation slots that he drags Kakashi into. On some days training is restricted to ‘sit in sunshine for ten minutes’ and on others it is gentle physiotherapy. He plans out a long-term plan for gradual increase in activity as well as chakra generation. The same mind-boggling focus and determination is still applied to even the most minimal of details, which Kakashi doesn’t have the energy to even begin contemplating.

He doesn’t know how to express his gratitude, so he just makes sure to follow each step and to be where and when Gai asks him to. Most days, it helps keep the spiralling despair from creeping back in.

Aside from the training, he starts taking note of where and when and how often he's being followed, looking for patterns. It’s not always, but it is regular. His paranoia grows worse. It makes him conscious of everything he does and it makes the fatigue harder to deal with, as exhaustion limits how long he can maintain constant vigilance, but it’s not like he has much of a choice.

The genin still come by Kakashi’s apartment, watching him suspiciously when he is actually following a ‘healthy routine’. They are such brats. (There is also a worrying glint in Sasuke’s eye when Kakashi tells them a friend is helping him with chakra recovery.)

He hasn’t given them keys yet, instead he starts making harmless traps for them to disarm to get it. On the days Naruto arrives first they are always resolved quickly. If it’s Sasuke it is still hit or miss whether something will be set off or if he will end up waiting for Kakashi to come home or Naruto to arrive.

Sakura is dragged along with the boys two times, still seeming not quite herself whenever she shows up, but relaxing during the times the team spend together.

Kakashi keeps wondering what has happened, but she is a teenage girl, and she does have parents. He isn’t officially her sensei. All he can do is make sure she knows she’s welcome, he tells himself. Sasuke and Naruto have been seeking him out, and since they don’t have many adults in their lives, that discrepancy does make sense.

They meet at Yakiniku Q one afternoon, table booked in Sasuke’s name and decorated in sparkly pink and red streamers that on a second look turn out to be made from folded duct tape.

Kakashi arrives only an hour late, mind tired but pleasantly clear from Gai’s guided meditation.

Naruto is bouncing in his seat, Sakura is smiling, and even Sasuke seems pleased, when Kakashi sees them across the restaurant. There are starters spread on the table around the covered grill, most finished off, and a small pile of wrapped presents.

Shaded daylight streams in from the open windows off to the side, making the colourful kids and the table decoration feel cartoonish even in reality. He can so easily imagine them animated still.

“Hello, team,” Kakashi greets, smiling, when he comes up next to their booth. The restaurant is almost empty, during this awkward hour between lunch and dinner rushes, and aside from the sizzling scents of barbeque the place mostly smells of cleaning products.

“KAKASHI-SENSEI!” Naruto bellows. “YOU’RE LATE! I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’D DO THIS TO SAKURA-CHAN ON HER BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION DAY!”

Sasuke rolls his eyes and Sakura… looks happy.

“Maa,” Kakashi gestures at Naruto to settle down, “I had to meditate on the Youthfulness of the Cosmos.”

Their disbelieving looks are so hurtful! He didn’t even make this one up.

He smiles again and motions for Sakura to move further into the booth, so that he can sit next to her with the open window behind them. He is choosing his seat so the smell of her perfume won’t hit him right in the face.

Kakashi adds his gift to the ones on the table, green wrapper with orange paw prints next to what must be Sasuke’s gift, traditionally tied in a cloth of blue silk. What he assumes are Naruto’s five presents are covered with white copy paper and an abundance of pink glitter duct tape, all the exact shape and size of kunai.

“Did you order mains?” he grabs a laminated menu off the table.

“We were waiting for you,” Sasuke says, leaning his chin on a hand. “But we’ve decided.”

“Yeah, yeah!” Naruto agrees, and announces that he’ll have the cheapest thing on the menu.

“Don’t worry about cost,” Kakashi says. “I’ll cover this one.”

Naruto’s eyes go wide, and he grabs for the menu in Kakashi’s hands to rethink his decision. The kid reads out the words to himself, restarting when he gets something wrong. Sakura scoffs and rolls her eyes, but Sasuke surprisingly says nothing.

They order from someone who seems to be the head chef, an Akimichi clan member smelling of spices and cooking smoke, with a prosthetic leg that thumps as she walks and who does not even blink at Naruto’s presence.

Instead of the wide choice of meats and sauces, Sakura opts for the single available salad, and Kakashi makes himself not comment on it. It seems concerning, for a kid training as hard as she must be, but he tells himself that it’s not his place. He’ll just be grateful they’re all here and safe.

It is a nice afternoon and early evening, and Kakashi finds himself tired but without the painfully dragging exhaustion as close to the surface. He ignores the feeling of eyes on his back.

Sakura eventually unwraps her presents, and Kakashi feels a childish joy with the kids as they delight in the ceremony. The gifts from Naruto are indeed five new kunai, second hand but lovingly refurbished and sharpened. The kid who gifted them looks just as excited for each one Sakura unwraps, and when she thanks him he smiles like the sun. Sasuke’s present is an introductory book on elemental chakra and a beautiful, vintage case holding a spool of very high-quality ninja wire. That was not bought on a genin’s salary, and Kakashi wonders if Sakura has any idea of what she’s holding, when she mostly looks daunted by the weapon she has little experience with.

“I’ll show you how to use it,” Sasuke says, while refusing to look at her. Sakura blushes bright red and stammers a thank you.

Kakashi’s gift for her is a pair of armoured gloves, from the maker that does his own, and a gift card to Solid Henge since she’d mentioned makeup before.

She smells slightly disappointed inspecting the gloves, and the realises that maybe standard uniform blue wasn’t the option he should have gone for. She still smiles and thanks him though, and when she puts them on the fit is exactly right.

Kakashi pays the bill and treats them all to dessert from the dango place down the road, and his and Sasuke’s presence even manage to keep the girl at the till from giving Naruto too obvious of a stink eye.

He returns to the apartment soon after, and summons Pakkun so that he doesn’t have to be alone.

-

Kakashi follows Gai down the street, a for once regular, comfortable ache in his body from exercise rather than the sickly ache that has become so familiar.  Gai had run them through something very similar to yoga but not called that here. For the first time Kakashi has also tried leaping through the trees like they do in his anime memories, and it was fun. Chakra is… incredible, as much as he wishes his system wasn’t as near destroyed as it is.

It’s mid-afternoon, and Gai’s genin are taking care of a D-rank on their own while their sensei went to teach Kakashi instead. He had asked about it, since Team Gai is signed up for the coming exams, and Gai had told him while Neji would rather focus on training alone, Lee needs the income of missions and the teamwork and additional experience will only be a help if they are to rank up. Field promotions are also a thing outside of the exams, he confirms, but exceedingly rare in peacetime.

The day is humid and overcast, the kind of weather where everything feels sticky and close, and his headache is not agreeing with the pressure.

They are only a block from the academy when a stampede rushes past, child after child after child, shouting and leaping and laughing at the front and more following sedately behind. As they get closer to the school buildings there are parents and older siblings picking up younger children, walking home with them after the final classes. He thinks he recognises that kid who always followed Naruto around in the story, the Hokage’s grandson.

Another wave of children are let out the gate, these slightly older. The only mercy of the day’s humidity is that there is hardly any dust kicked up.

“Why are there so many kids in the academy anyway?” Kakashi sidesteps a tiny missile in bright blue with a backpack half the size of their own body.

“Of course the children must go to school, Kakashi! Education is very important!” Gai raises his voice to be heard from the other side of the street, where he’s retreated from the horde. He is a tall, green silhouette against the grey wall behind him.

When there are fewer children and they start walking again, Kakashi continues. “No, no, I mean, the class of, well, my team. There are what, nine of them? There can not be only nine graduating each year?” He jerks his head back in the direction of the academy.

“Ah, well,” Gai says, “not all are assigned jounin-sensei of course, and some go back to the academy for another term...” he hesitates. “Come, Rival! I will tell you at my place!” Gai starts walking faster. “Lee and Tenten are coming for dinner, and I must prepare a most Youthfully Nourishing meal!”

Kakashi can’t quite be bothered to hurry, so he follows at a slower pace.

It's either secret, or something Gai thinks will freak him out.

It turns out to be both.

It is not that there are a boom of children becoming ninja now, it is that he kids of Kakashi’s Team Seven and of Team Gai are both from exceptionally small academy graduation years, for a number of reasons.

Low birth rates and high rates of miscarriages at the end of the younger year. Unprecedentedly high numbers of infant and young childhood deaths. Unusually few parents enrolling their children. Unusually high numbers of children too anxious and unable to complete the curriculum, also an unusually high number of orphans in the system, but many of the younger ones without opportunities or fortitude to become ninja.

All of it leads back to the Kyuubi disaster.

Both the trauma of it and the immediate destruction, but also the poisonous, demonic chakra that washed over the whole of Konoha.

Kakashi feels sick hearing it. He'd known it was bad, but the average villager's fear and disdain of Naruto makes more sense, now. As much as the kid should be hailed a hero for being the only reason it stopped.

They had ended up talking standing in Gai’s entrance hall, and now Gai nudges Kakashi’s shoulder. "Come Rival, I challenge you to see who can grate the most carrots in one minute! If I lose, I shall do twelve hundred push ups without pause!"

"If I lose," Kakashi says, “Hmm… Or if I win,” trailing after Gai into the kitchen, a large room with pale wooden cupboards and a proper dining table set up. There are garish, ruched yellow curtains with pink roses printed on them. "I'm reading the whole Icha-Icha series from the start."

Gai laughs, and Kakashi wins by a miniscule margin.

He still feels like his perception of the world has warped with what he just learned. As dark as the story was, a lot of things were glossed over. As dire as shinobi battles are, what can you do when the air itself turns into poison. And how can you blame parents who lost their children for fearing who they think is the creature that did it, when it’s illegal to tell them the truth.

By the time there's the sound of a key in the front door to Gai's apartment, Kakashi has half-heartedly finished cooking Gai's planned meal, packed a box of it for himself, and watched Gai get through four hundred push ups.

"Later, Gai!" He waves and climbs out the window before any children can come barging in.

"I SHALL SEE YOU SOON, RIVAL!" Gai booms as he disappears out of view, shifting into a one-armed position so that he can give a youthful thumbs up and wide grin without stopping.

-

“Aren’t your students reassigned?” Genma asks the next evening, senbon clicking between his teeth.

Kakashi nurses an expensive sake (he knows now that he can easily afford it), leaning over the bar top at the Tipsy Kunai. It’s still early enough that it’s very quiet, and they have not yet started taking orders for food, so the smells are not more offensive than the old smoke that has set into every surface and seat in the building.

Genma is waiting for Raidou, and the blue uniform jumper he wears beneath the standard issue vest smells like his partner. Kakashi doesn’t think he’s even noticed he’s not wearing his own.

The smiling woman behind the bar is the only one within obvious hearing range. Anko is present, but she’s so engrossed in some kind of paperwork she pays them no attention. She’s muttering to herself as she chews on a finished dango stick and scribbles in the margins.

Kakashi has just finished telling Genma that he has no idea how to deal with teenage problems and been rightfully laughed at.

Kakashi sighs. “Mm, but they don’t seem to agree with that. Well, Sakura tried, but she seems so… unhappy.” He swirls his drink. “Not that it’s my job to fix that anymore.”

“Well,” Genma takes the needle from his mouth and spins it between his fingers. “You know we’d be happy to have you back on the force, if it comes to that. You’d get a break.” Even as he says it he has a knowing look.

Kakashi rolls his eye. “Yes, because I am clearly fit for that.” He leans his chin in a hand. “Honestly I don’t think I’d even want them out of my life at this point,” he confesses. “They’re…”

“Your team?” Genma raises his glass, and Kakashi knocks his own cup against it.

“My team.”

-

He is surprised when for once Sakura arrives before either of the boys. Dinners at his place have become a semi-regular thing, and he’s been relieved that she is there at all.

Kakashi has had a rest day today, training too hard the day before last had kicked away what finally felt like progress, and the aches and fog and fatigue are once again worse. Gai had at least not seemed dejected, and just told him that setbacks are opportunities to learn. (He had grumbled that it’s an easy thing to say from the outside, but been relieved nonetheless.)

“Come on in.” He steps back after opening the door, no traps set this time.

Sakura looks almost worried to be here on her own, and his heart feels like it cracks a little. What happened to the girl who made sure he lived through Wave, and who so confidently dragged him away from the memorial stone?

Guruko breaks the awkwardness and happily distracts Sakura, the small dog soaking up all the attention and ear scritches he can get.

Kakashi is already feeling itchy and strained, so it’s harder to hold it back this time. Despite the mask he sneezes. And sneezes again.

“Ne, Sakura, I… didn’t want to ask, but what’s with the perfume?”

She looks embarrassed. “Ino-pig always says kunoichi have to be feminine perfection, and Moriko-senpai let me try hers, so I bought the same one.”

Kakashi sighs and supresses another sneeze. He doesn’t know who Moriko is, but he has beef. Who would corrupt a perfectly non-stinky child like this?

"Maa…” He realises he knows nothing about Sakura's parents, just that they're alive.

“What track are you on?” He is done with being subtle about the problems he has with the perfume, and the hand pressed up underneath his nose is pretty obvious. The limited food intake and olfactory choices aren’t exactly giving him the best impression.

“…track, sensei?”

"Well, what’s your sensei training you for?” He sits by the desk, and Sakura sits down cross legged on the floor, hands still occupied with Guruko. “For example… Ino is from a clan whose members rarely leave the village, and she's training under an illusionist. Her specialties will probably be in intelligence, maybe infiltration and information gathering. She's been set up for that her whole life." She’s keeping her hands busy scritching, but is watching him and listening intently. “You were previously put on a squad with myself."

He raises a finger. "Specialising in versatility," another, "stealth," a third, “ninjutsu.” ANBU, he doesn't say. "Together with Sasuke, who can probably go into most fields, if he applies himself," he wiggles the three raised fingers, "and Naruto." Fourth finger raised. "Frontline combat."

Sakura looks like no one ever explained any of this to her. Underneath the underneath in all honour, but you need to actually tell people things before you can expect them to apply it. He wants to roll his eyes at original-Kakashi, and the academy teachers too.

"So, Sakura, what are you going for?"

Nothing, a corner of his mind begs, that he tries to get a stranglehold on before it can speak. Please retire. Do anything else. He smiles and ignores the roiling in his gut. Sasuke and Naruto don't have much choice, but you can get out. It is not the place of his delusions to dictate the lives of people who belong here. Especially when she really does have potential.

"I, eh, I-," Sakura stammers, but she doesn’t answer.

"Think about it," he tells her. "And in the meantime, learn enough so that the choice isn't taken from you." He awkwardly scratches the side of his face and looks to the side. "And eat enough to keep up with the boys, ne?"

She twists her mouth and her jaw tenses, but she doesn’t protest.

Her caginess, her insecurity… she has taken such a big step back.

Kakashi… He dropped their training as soon as he could, and while the boys seem to be getting on well and keep coming back to demand more from him as well as their new sensei, he has avoided all the hints that Sakura is not getting the support she should be. He sits looking down at this perfume-reeking little girl, guilt bubbling up inside. He will look into this, and stop being such a coward.

-

For once he shamelessly uses ANBU stealth techniques, clinging to rooftops and hiding in trees, twisting people’s minds away from his presence and hiding his own scent and sound.

He follows Sakura from just after dawn, when she says goodbye to her parents and leaves their apartment. She is carrying a kunai pouch and a bento, but no other equipment. She has ditched the perfume, instead smelling of the same detergent and floral shampoo he remembers from Wave (without the layers of aging sweat and dust that had accompanied their flight back home).

They cross Konoha before the village properly wakes, Sakura entirely clueless to Kakashi’s presence. The sun starts to rise, casting pale yellow light on treetops and tall buildings while the rest still lies in shade. The earliest birds start quieting down, their noise replaced by the songs of other species.

At one point they pass a hidden ANBU operative, And Kakashi greets them with a whistle, mimicking a bird native to Grass with a specific trill. He does it before he even thinks about it, almost reflexive. The hidden ANBU shifts, and taps a quick staccato on a windowsill. All clear, no issue.

Sakura finally finishes her journey at a construction site, and Kakashi settles on top of a nearby building. He waits, the morning sun stinging his eye but warming his bones.

It is clearly a D-rank mission, but he can’t see much of team structures going on. There are plently of civilians, and about ten genin – all older than Sakura. There is a woman with blonde hair who seems to be calling the shots, alongside a round, middle aged civilian man with thinning hair that Kakashi thinks could do with a shave. After a little longer he picks out the woman’s scent, tinted with the same perfume he has become all too familiar with over the last few weeks. Is this Moriko-senpai?

He studies them from a distance at first. Time goes on, and instead of finishing a limited task or breaking off to train in the afternoon, they just continue working after a lunch break. A long-term D-rank is not that strange, he supposes, but without halting for training it doesn’t seem to follow the patterns among the other sensei.

Sakura is working quietly and diligently, but without much enthusiasm. The part of him that remembers child labour laws is horrified. The team missions are one thing, some extra income and work experience alongside education isn’t too shocking. A thirteen-year-old nailing down boards and carrying buckets of concrete all day? What is the goal here.

Eventually he decides that silent observation is not cutting it, he needs confirmation. No hidden watchers are in the vicinity as far as he can tell, and a quick henge hides his identity. Thanks to Gai’s regimen the use of chakra barely scrapes the surface of the eternal fatigue, and hopefully it won’t be too bad tomorrow.

“Hi, Shinobi-san!” Sukea pitches his voice higher, calls out and waves to the blonde woman. He walks up to the gap in the wide-slatted wooden fence that has been temporarily raised around the site.

Maybe-Moriko says something to the civilian foreman, and then she saunters over. She’s in her thirties, wearing a close-fitting, low-cut dress in a clear blue colour, with shinobi mesh leggings underneath. It seems like a very strange choice of clothing for a construction site, though the sleeves are rolled up and she’s partially covered in dust, so at least she seems to be participating in the work.

“How can I help you, sir?” The perfume is not as overly strong as when Sakura wore it, but it is just as grating.

“I saw that the pink haired genin is working here, she helped me out a while back and I just wanted to let her sensei know!” He smiles and even remembers to make his whole face join in the expression.

“Oh,” the woman looks taken aback, and looks to where Sakura is just putting down her tools and walking over to a tap with her water bottle. “Well, I’m her team leader, so thank you!”

…Moriko-senpai is team leader?

“Wonderful! May I ask your name, I’d love to give both of you a good word when I write about Konoha for my paper, I’m a reporter you see…”

“Tamaka Moriko,” she smiles and laughs in a terribly fake way. “You’re a reporter? That’s so interesting! What’s your name?”

Back by the water station Sakura hasn’t noticed them, rubbing her forehead with a tired frown.

He laughs awkwardly, “Ah, please just call me Sukea! So you’re the jounin in charge then?”

“Oh no Sukea-san, I’m sorry, I’m not a jounin! We’re an all genin team, we guard sites like this and provide additional labour, it’s an essential village duty.”

“I see, I see,” he pretends to be interested while a heavy weight is sinking into his stomach.

Moriko continues telling him about the intricacies of genin-civilian joint projects, and he’s absently pleased to note that she at least isn’t spilling high security details to a random reporter. Behind her Sakura stretches and goes back to her task.

“Thank you so much for telling me all this, Moriko-san! I think my editor will be very pleased with this for a nice slice-of-life article.”

“It was my pleasure, Sukea-san,” Moriko gives a shallow, polite bow, which he returns.

“I wish you a good rest of the day,” Sukea says.

From another high perch he watches Moriko speak to Sakura, who looks confused but plased by the praise. At least they seem to get along, he thinks, as if that makes up for his own neglect.

-

He has lived as Hatake Kakashi in Konoha, out of T&I custody and free from the hospital, for just over two months when he learns that his security clearance has not been revoked or altered in any way. He would have expected at least some kind of suspension, but maybe watching and seeing what he does access is more valuable to the powers that be.

The Shinobi Current Records is a section of the Hokage tower. One walks in, signs in, and gains access to the part of the building one is cleared for. If one doesn’t have clearance it’s possible to apply for specific files, which if access is granted are brought out by staff. Kakashi has free access to all of it.

He is certain there are other sections not available here, files only for the Hokage and his closest advisors and for specific departments. Fucking Root probably have their own entire equivalent, unless they’re as disorganised of a mess as he fears they might be.

Pulling up the files on Sakura’s parents is the first thing he does.

He wants to look up Danzo, Orochimaru, that grey-haired asshole with the playing cards from the chuunin exam arc. Uchiha Itachi.

The part of him that these days is one hundred percent paranoid bastard makes him refrain. Nothing here will have anything damning in it, and looking will no doubt alert people that he is. Inoichi and therefore the Hokage know of his memories, but he doesn’t know if Danzo does. If he does not... Well. Kakashi is not about to give that fucker any ammunition.

He stands between the shelves flipping through pages, not bothering to take the files back to the available desk area at the end of the floor.

Haruno Kizashi is retired from the shinobi forces, on the genin reserve list, and has 612 completed missions during his entire career, a good four fifths of those D-rank. His highest ranked mission is a single B-rank completed at the age of twenty-two, when a C-rank courier mission went sideways and was later re-evaluated. He is noted as a fair worker with a positive outlook, but not leadership material.

Haruno Mebuki is on active duty in the Genin Corps. She has completed 762 missions, roughly half of them D-ranked. She has never taken a mission ranked above C. In notes on her character she is listed as a serious and calming influence, with experience leading genin-only squads and a fair taijutsu specialist for her rank. Current assignment is as assistant Team Lead of Genin Corps team G12.

Neither of them ever trained under a jounin sensei, and both started their careers in the span between the second great shinobi war and the third.

Sakura is included under both their relations, and there seems to be a number of civilian relatives, with a deceased chuunin uncle, Mebuki’s younger brother. Sato Touri, he recognises the name from the memorial stone.

Sakura’s file is slim, which is unsurprising with how young she is. It contains her exam scores, which note her as top kunoichi of her graduating class, lists her completed missions (twenty-four, with all being D-rank bar the one A-rank that was Wave), and notes her character as ‘spirited and temperamental’. Previous team: Seven, under Hatake Kakashi. Satus: disbanded. For active duty, she is placed… In the Genin Corps, team G86 under Tamaka Moriko, Genin.

He had told her that she deserves better. That she has potential. And he ended up doing exactly the same thing as everyone else. As the original Kakashi in his false memories. Setting her aside. Because she is not an orphan, because she is not needy, because she is a girl. He likes to think he isn't like that, but clearly he is.

He's been avoiding the obvious, caught up in himself and his own problems, and distracted by the way the damned story, these days so prominent in his mind despite how little it mattered in the false life he remembers, centred on Naruto and Sasuke.

Sakura isn't some side character, she's a real person. Fuck, he's awful.

-

He takes Sakura’s file with him, and checks Naruto’s and Sasuke’s just to be sure. There is nothing about Naruto’s status as the Kyuubi Jinchuuriki or his parents, but overall both files are what he’d expect. Sasuke’s has a slightly concerning note about his brother’s psychological profile, and no listed guardian. Who the fuck thought that was a good idea when the evidence of a close relative going off the rails is very clear he will never understand.

Either way, Naruto is listed as tutored under Ebisu, as a two-man team pending future apprenticeships. Sasuke has a list of teachers that include Sarutobi Asuma as a main point of contact, missions under the chuunin branch of Assignments and Hatake Kakashi as a future point of contact should he develop the Sharingan.

-

“Excuse me,” Kakashi crinkles his eye in an insincere smile to the chuunin on desk duty in the Assignments office. “Would you mind explaining this to me.” He holds up Sakura’s file.

The brown haired man, somewhere in his early to mid twenties, has a pleasantly disinterested expression, and smells annoyed. “Of course, Hatake-san. What is the issue?”

Kakashi puts the file down on the desk. “Haruno Sakura. Genin Corps. What gives?”

The guy hums, and throws a glance at the file, flicking it open. “Well, her purpose on Team Seven, before it was disbanded, was to round out the skillset and motivate the boys, so as they’re tutored separately now it’s nothing to worry about.” He closes the file. There are ink stains on his hands, and hardly a callous to be seen.

“She was top kunoichi of her graduating class.”

The chuunin snorts, “Not like that’s a score that means much next to the male students.”

“Her year was filled with clan heirs.”

“Look, I don’t know what to tell you. She’s not even a clan kunoichi, of course this would be her track once her chance on a jounin team fell through. Maybe if she fills out nicely Intelligence will want her in a few years,” he chuckles.

Kakashi’s insides twist, nausea pressing up the back of his throat. “You can not be serious.” He could hide how angry he is and choke back the rumble in his voice, but he doesn’t.

“Hatake-san… there’s nothing to be done, this is her official assignment. And these are not supposed to leave Records without authorisation, please put the file back where you found it.” The guy has turned back to the other file he’d been reviewing, but Kakashi can see a small bead of sweat gathering at his hairline.

He forces his jaw to unclench. “Who do I talk to, to fix this?”

“I don’t know,” the chuunin snaps defensively, he smells afraid now, the sharp tinge overwhelming the annoyance. “Head of Assignments make final decisions on Genin Corps and Chuunin Division directives!”

“Fine. Don’t speak of her that way again.” He slowly picks up the file from the desk, darkly pleased by how the chuunin leans back away from him in his chair. “Have a nice day,” he smiles, and swears he hears a little whimper in only reply as he walks out.

-

As it turns out, there is nothing to be done, unless an active duty jounin personally volunteers to take her as an apprentice, thereby pulling her from the Genin Corp roster.

No one brings up the fact that neither Sasuke nor Naruto had even been considered for the Corps.

-

That evening he stands alone at the memorial stone, tracing the names of his lost team over and over and over again. His memories are a joke, but the visceral reality of the Sharingan’s knowledge is dug in deeper than any other part of him.

He doesn’t know what to do, and he doesn’t know what to say either. Both Obito and Rin were victims of war. Minato-sensei was Hokage, the one who sent people out to fight. Is it absurd, that he can’t help but think that Sakura might be safer if she just stays a genin?

The sun is about to set, warm golden light fading into grey as the trees block the lower rays from reaching him. The electric lanterns come on automatically, or maybe someone somewhere in the village flipped a switch just now, and it’s a dreamlike view.

Crunching steps and fast-paced, strained breathing pulls him out of his thoughts.

“Kakashi-sensei,” Sasuke comes to a halt, panting, bent over resting his hands on his knees as he tries to continue. He smells like blood and fox and fear.

Kakashi is by his side before he even has time to form the thought, bending down to see his face. There is a streak of blistering red across his jaw and cheekbone, and his lip is split. Dirt and grass cover one side and shoulder, and there’s a nasty scrape along that leg.

“Report.”

Sasuke draws another heaving breath. “Naruto ran away.”

-

Chapter Text

Sasuke looks guilty and afraid, dark eyes flicking away from Kakashi’s as he waits for the kid to speak.

“I told him- I didn’t think he’d-,” Sasuke is shaking slightly, from adrenaline or exhaustion Kakashi can’t quite tell. “He just-”

“Show me where, he went. Tell me what happened on the way.”

Sasuke nods. He wipes his brow, wincing as it brushes the burn on his face, and then they are leaving at a fast jog. Kakashi falls into step easily, the regular pain is there but it’s easy to push through. Whatever eyes are supposedly kept on Sasuke are currently gone. They must have stayed on Naruto or left to report the incident, Kakashi thinks. His own erratic shadows are not currently present.

“I told him what you showed me,” Sasuke says. “About the Yondaime.”

“I see.” Kakashi doesn’t know what else to say. “Where were you?”

“Training ground seventeen.”

“You’ve done tree jumping?”

Sasuke responds with an affirmative “Hn” and they take to the trees as the last lingering remains of daylight fades, cutting across the area faster than roads would allow them to. Guilt and stress hangs over the boy like a cloud.

“What happened?” Kakashi prompts again. It’s tempting to just grab Sasuke and run faster.

“He - just - exploded,” Sasuke says, each word on a beat of a step on the limb of a tree.  Kakashi can tell that he’s holding something in.

“What did you say?” He tries to keep his tone calm and to the point. Whatever happened, he can’t imagine Sasuke meant for this to be the outcome.

“He was upset, when I told him who they were. I don’t get why though! He wants to be Hokage and his-”

“Don’t,” Kakashi cuts in, “not in in the open.”

 Sasuke snarls but doesn’t continue that line of thought, instead he snaps “I said he should be happy!”

What the fuck kid?

He just slows down for one pace to glance at Sasuke, who picks up on the look.

The kid looks away, as if he’s focusing hard on their route. His dark hair and shirt blend into the growing darkness, pale shorts glaringly bright in sharp contrast. Begrudgingly Sasuke continues, “He should be happy, because never knowing them is better than having parents and losing them.”

They leap out of the trees as they hit an open area and run across the dusty ground, grass long worn away.

“Then he just… I could see his chakra.” Kakashi can hear the frown in Sasuke’s voice. “He beat me. Easily. And then he ran. I couldn’t even keep up, but I saw him clear the wall.”

“All right,” Kakashi breathes. He supresses his own emotions. The part of him that wants to lash out or ask what the hell Sasuke was thinking sinks like a rock beneath the surface of battle-ready calm. “You did the right thing, getting an adult you trust.” He looks at Sasuke, whose face is carefully blank, with a twitch in his jaw beneath the reddened skin.

They reach the training ground and from there it’s a straight line to the wall, past the inner path cleared for visibility and security. They stop past the edge of the training ground, before the wall. Kakashi can smell Naruto, the kid’s usual scent nearly gone beneath a sharp tang that burns in his nose.

“Stay in the village,” Kakashi orders, and he can tell that Sasuke wants to protest. This is not the time. “I’ll bring him back, and then we’ll talk.” He waits a short beat for Sasuke’s reluctant nod.

Then Kakashi breaks the orders he himself is under, and leaves the village over the wall.

-

It’s a relief when Naruto’s trail, scents of acrid fox and dry ash and something that smells wrong, wrong, wrong, heavy over the smell of human boy, soon twists south along the wall instead of going off straight into the wilderness of Fire country. He’s confident he would catch him either way, but he hopes deep in his bones that Naruto doesn’t actually want to leave.

The heavy shade of dusk quickly approaches the blackness of night beneath the trees as Kakashi runs, south past the perimeter the wall as it curves away and skirting the bottom of the cliffs that rim the plateau atop Hokage Mountain.

He pauses when he notices a presence to his left. East, twenty metres. There’s a strange, almost off-putting scent, if only in that it’s lacking humanity that should be present. Sweat should not smell like pine and fresh water. He feels tension in his back and neck reflexively relax. Ally, something in the back of his mind assures him.

The near glowing white mask of an ANBU operative melds out of the shadows. Tiger. Tenzo.

"The others?" Kakashi asks.

"Establishing a perimeter. The Hokage is being notified."

Kakashi nods.

"Can I approach?" He looks at Tenzo from the corner of his eye, turning slightly with his bad side in the ANBU’s direction. It feels right, to keep him on his blind side. Safe.

"Affirmative. Please do what you can. The jinchuuriki has caused no harm to any persons since he knocked down Uchiha Sasuke without serious injury, but the demonic chakra has yet to subside.” Tenzo reports as if there is nothing wrong with Kakashi being here. He’s hit with the realisation that the younger man might be loyal to him, before even Konoha. Too many of Obito’s memories just about confirm it. “Be careful, senpai."

"Understood. Thank you."

Nothing looks wrong about the forest ahead, large Hashirama trees and tangled underbrush angling up the steep slope, cast into near blackness in the late evening.

It feels wrong, and not just in Naruto’s scent trail. A crawling dissonance in the air that brings about primal fear, a prickle at the back of the neck. Like when as a child having to turn off the basement lights before running upstairs, irrationally knowing there is something with you in the dark.

He thinks his vision wobbles ever so slightly, like a sickening heat mirage, reminding him of the visual effect of medical chakra in the worst possible way.

Lifting a hand to his headband, he slowly raises the forehead protector and opens the sharingan.

The forest in the distance, glimpsed up the mountain slope and between closer trees looks like it's burning, but the colour is just a step wrong, closer to neon than natural flames. To the Sharingan’s view here's an almost invisible orange haze in the air around them this far away too, swirling past trees and slowly seeping into the plants around them and into him and Tenzo both.

Kakashi continues.

-

Naruto stands on bare bedrock high on the far side of the Hokage Mountain, on a cliff above a steep drop toward the valley below, facing away from Konoha. The rising moon casts the view in dim silver, and the stars are very bright overhead.

The village wall, across the mountain, at Konoha’s southernmost point is out of sight two kilometres north. Not far at all.

The Nine-Tails jinchuuriki is wreathed in not quite flames that form not quite tails, flickering in and out of existence as they lash and curl around him.

The noxious chakra seems to have created a zone where no nocturnal animals will stay, and it's been unnaturally quiet during Kakashi’s approach. It still is, discounting the faint rustle of wind in the leaves.

Kakashi has no idea how Naruto had learned about his parents in the story, but it was with years to come to terms with the demon sealed inside him, at the very least, and many people who loved him. It definitely wasn't through Sasuke telling him he should be glad to have never known them.

He deliberately scuffs the ground, the sound jarring in the silence.

Every instinct screams to run and hide, but Kakashi is turning out to be very good at ignoring that feeling.

Naruto makes a noise somewhere between a gasp and a sob, but doesn't turn around. He just tenses up, and the tails of chakra lash more quickly around him.

Kakashi approaches slowly, then stops a little ways behind and to the side, hands in his pockets as he looks at the view. The sharingan is still bared, and the flickering chakra only visible to his left eye causes a strange dual image.

Naruto looks over his shoulder, still tense and hunched. The pressure in the air makes Kakashi’s ears pop. "Why didn't anyone tell me?"

There are things he could probably say; that its illegal and that the Sandaime did it to protect him, that ninja clans would have wanted to use him, probably more if the thought about it, but Kakashi thinks that's all bullshit.

"We should have."

“Does Iruka-sensei know?”

“I don’t know. He was young, when… when the fox was sealed.”

"Why didn't you tell me?" Naruto hardly gets the words out around a wrenching sob, and then he’s flying at Kakashi.

He leaps to the side, shocked at Naruto’s speed as a chakra-wreathed, black-clawed hand rakes past the front of his vest.

Anything he could say would be an excuse.

"Because I'm a coward," he breathes, dodging a swipe of a half-dissolved tail, a feeling like the sting of a sunburn in its wake.

Naruto's tears are flowing freely now, and he screams.

"I don't- sensei- why- you knew my whole life!" There is a bloodcurling reverberation to Naruto's voice when he raises it, almost like two voices speaking as one and the other is deep and rasping and barely human at all.

Kakashi forces himself to move closer, though his hands want to twist into hand signs and fight if he cannot run. He doesn't know how to handle this, doesn't know how to talk to someone he has wronged so badly for so long. The thought crosses his mind that it’s not his fault, he doesn’t remember it. It wasn’t he who stayed away. It would be so easy to decide that.

He doesn’t want to be that person. He watches, tense and wary as Naruto growls but still Kakashi crouches a few paces to Naruto's side. It’s just like the time he’d found an injured dog by the roadside, he tells himself. Gentle, non-threatening, comforting. That’s the way to do it. Naruto is scared and defensive and lashing out because he doesn’t want to be hurt.

It’s very, very hard to keep that mindset when he meets Naruto’s eyes and they are slit and yellow and entirely inhuman.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Kakashi says, and flinches when a tail lashes just past him, leaving a trail of burning, swirling orange through the air to the Sharingan’s view. “If you want me to go I will.”

“Just tell me,” Naruto sobs, rubbing across his eyes with the dirty sleeve of his tracksuit. The speed of the lashing tails gradually subside, and several fade out of view and don’t return.

He can imagine the real Kakashi's reasons for not telling Naruto. There are a lot of memories preserved by Obito's eye from the time, filled with numb despair and a self-destructive amount of blood soaked missions in ANBU. He, now, so often can't even touch a towel with clean hands because he's convinced he will stain it with blood. How could he have touched an innocent baby back then, when everything was even worse?

"What would you do," he says around the lump in his throat, "if Sasuke and Sakura and Iruka-sensei and I were all dead, and there was only a baby left?"

"I'd take care of the baby!"

Kakashi closes his eyes. If Naruto wants him out of his life after this it's what he deserves. He doesn't care what the Hokage says about staying close. There’s an immediate relief and vertigo when Obito’s view is cut off by a scarred eyelid.

"You're braver than I am," Kakashi says. "And kinder."

Naruto thumps down to sit on the ground, just out of Kakashi’s reach, and curls small. The concentration of noxious chakra decreases little by little.

"Why didn't Hokage-ji tell me?" Naruto's voice is hardly above a whisper, the reverb fading to a dark, rasping hoarseness.

"I don’t know.” He won’t pretend he understands the Hokage’s logic, though he can speculate. “Maybe he thought it would keep you safer. Like not saying anything about Kurama. That it would keep Konoha's enemies from targeting you."

"Kurama?" The confusion seems to momentarily distract Naruto from his despair.

Oh.

He can't even muster the feeling of a tacked on no for fucking this up.

"I think that's the fox demon's name. I could be wrong though." He could have made it up in chakra exhaustion induced fever dreams.

Naruto sighs, sniffling. "I wish I wasn't a monster." The tears are increasing again and Kakashi doesn't know what to do. "Then my parents would be alive and you wouldn't have to deal with me and the village wouldn't hate me."

"You are not a monster," Kakashi insists, urgency raising his voice. "Your father sealed the fox in you because he knew you were the only one strong enough to keep everyone safe." And it was an awful thing to do, he doesn’t say, he left both of us by doing it, he doesn't say.

"Jiji said something like that,” Naruto sniffles, “when I first found out about the Kyuubi. But how could he even know that if I was just a baby?"

"He was the best seal master in the world. And your mother… she was so strong. She kept the fox sealed before you did. It would have killed everyone in all of Konoha and continued outside it, if you hadn't been there to help them stop it."

He again wonders if the story he remembers can be trusted, if there really was someone there making the fox to turn its ire on the village (if Obito was there). Not that it matters here and now or that the outcome could have been different.

"I hate it," Naruto cries. By the way he claws at his stomach it’s no stretch to think that it is the Kyuubi.

"That's okay," Kakashi sighs. "I think I used to."

"You don't hate it now?"

"No." He's mostly just tired. And he doesn’t properly remember living it.

In the moment, with the lingering haze in the air and the pressure of bijuu chakra bearing down on him, Kakashi feels separate from himself, like maybe this world is fake after all. It’s easy, natural, to keep his hands from shaking and the fear he feels at the thought from entering his voice. Maybe this conversation won’t mean much, in the future, but maybe it could tip the scales of Naruto’s choices.

He doesn’t have the right to turn Naruto hateful because he is afraid.

Kakashi speaks again. "I think... In some ways I guess I understand it."

He has the benefit of seeing a flatter, even brighter version of Naruto befriend the giant fox. In two dimensions it had been awesome. In this maybe-reality he can’t quite grasp if awe or terror is the better response. But over the last few months he’s gotten to know Naruto as a person and not just a character. The kid is loud and brash and demands attention like no one else Kakashi has ever met, but beneath that surface Naruto is caring, and so very kind.

He wants to believe in something other than the world he knows through Obito’s eye and the nightmares that won’t leave him alone and the blood on his hands.

"Minato-sensei... Couldn't let it destroy the village and kill everyone, of course not. Sealing it again was the only option." He thinks of the memory the Sharingan keeps preserved, of the view of the fox in the distance as the young of Konoha’s forces are shut away in relative safety, and of what Gai told him about the horrors that followed. He forces away the nausea. "But the fox was in prison for a hundred years, because it is big and dangerous and people are scared of it. And even more because people want to use it against each other. Anyone would be angry, treated that way."

He finally turns to Naruto fully, who is staring at him with an unreadable expression. His hands are still twisted into the fabric of his tracksuit. The lashing tails have faded entirely, as has the orange glow in the air. The synthetic fabric of Naruto’s clothing has turned crunchy and brittle from the exposure to the fox spirit’s chakra.

“Everyone’s been hiding so much,” Naruto whispers. “I don’t think I want to go back.”

Kakashi closes his left eye again, feeling the burning headache and thick fog pressing in on his mind.

“You have friends and teammates who cares about you, and they didn’t know. Sasuke found out and told you, didn’t he?” He sees Naruto twitch at the name. Despite the explosive result, Kakashi doesn’t think Naruto’s trust in Sasuke is broken. “Your generation have all been kept in the dark. And a new teacher is coming for you, ne? From outside the village? A fresh start.” He has no idea how Jiraya will be in reality, but someone who can help Naruto is better than no one. "If you don't want me to be around anymore I get it. But I meant what I said before. We're still a team, if you want to be."

Konoha sucks, but elsewhere, for a twelve-year-old alone without contacts, strong but a glaring target as soon as who and what he is gets out? Kakashi can’t imagine it would turn out well, even if he himself dropped everything else and ran with him.

Naruto is shivering slightly, and Kakashi tentatively reaches out to put a hand on his head, ruffling the fluffy spikes.

He doesn’t know how long they stay there, watching the stars and the distant landscape, but it’s not very long. The taps of two people courteously letting them hear their arrival draws Kakashi’s attention. He pulls down his headband and looks back over his shoulder. They are masked and silent, but he knows them. Genma and Tokuma - Tanuki and Cranefly. The Hokage silently steps out into the open between and behind them.

Kakashi stands, and Naruto startles beside him, looking back to what Kakashi is watching.

A small hand grasps Kakashi’s sleeve as he turns.

“It’s okay, Naruto. I’ll see you later.” He gently pries the fingers from his clothes, squeezing Naruto’s hand in what he hopes is a comforting gesture. “You can ask him too, now.” He doesn’t think Naruto is in any danger of physical harm, at the very least. He’s too valuable.

“Okay, Kakashi-sensei.” Naruto doesn’t seem happy about it, but complies, and Kakashi steps away from the most valuable asset Konoha has. He bows to the Hokage, then walks over to Genma.

“Return to the village,” Tanuki says. “You have an appointment at the Hokage’s office.”

“Understood. Uchiha Sasuke?” He had told him to wait for him, back where Naruto left.

There is a pause long enough to be almost uncomfortable. From behind Kakashi can hear the Hokage’s voice. He makes himself not listen.

“Currently in an interview,” Genma finally reveals. Kakashi tenses. “Don’t worry, captain. The overstep was yours, not his.”

Kakashi nods. There’s nothing else to say, and he leaves without a backward glance.

-

For some reason the top floor of the Hokage tower at night feels both more surreal and less threatening than it did in daylight. Maybe because the yellow lightbulbs throw a cozy glow over everything, or maybe because he is so very tired. Though, maybe most likely of all, it could be that the Kyuubi’s noxious scent and chakra are no longer all around him. Kakashi shifts where he stands, and leans a shoulder against the wall.

The Hokage is not present, the doors to the office closed, but Kakashi has been told to present himself here and so he will. He crosses his arms, and feels vulnerable doing so. His hands are his greatest weapons, and any split-second extra to move them is a detriment.

Adrenaline is still buzzing in his veins and he is too wired to relax, probably would be no matter where he was. He wishes he could see Granny to ask her advice, or even his sister. But they don’t exist, and they couldn’t help him deal with a fantastical ninja dictatorship if they did. In their absence, he longs for the memorial stone. The names of the dead may not have advice, but they very much do bring a painful kind of comfort.

A door downstairs opens, the soft click of a well-oiled handle and sudden footsteps audible from the stairwell. There are voices, and he recognises Sasuke’s. He doesn’t move.

Quiet motion and a displacement of air too large to be his student is the only warning when someone arrives at the top of the stairs. Kakashi looks up, but doesn’t shift other than to lift his head.

Shikaku Nara is unmistakeable, in his standard blacks and standard vest, sharp scars healed too quickly long ago raking the side of his face. He looks very much like his son, who Kakashi has only seen in passing but remembers from the story.

“Commander.” He hopes the rank is a safe assumption to make.

“Hatake. Sandaime-sama is seeing Naruto-kun home. You’re welcome to wait in my office.” Shikaku gestures to the stairs.

Kakashi… would like to say yes. Inoichi has been kinder to him than he’d thought possible, and this is Inoichi’s friend. But he is also one of the most powerful people in the village. Kakashi doesn’t know what he knows, and he now has a track record of putting his fucking foot in it.

On the other hand, it might not be just an offer.

He’s too tired for these damned games.

Kakashi nods, and straightens up. They walk downstairs in silence, and Shikaku holds the door open for Kakashi. The room contains an empty filing cabinet, a flimsy looking desk, four chairs and stacks of documents by a tag that reads out. On the desk’s other end the space designated in is empty.

Shikaku smells like clean cloth, paper and dust, and Kakashi could swear the shadows writhe beneath their feet as they pass from the light of the hallway into that of the low lamps placed around the room. The window shows a vast view of Konoha, streetlights and other distant windows glittering in the night.

“Go?” Shikaku sits and doesn’t wait for Kakashi’s agreement to pull the game board out from inside the desk.

Kakashi nods, and pulls up one of the simple but solid wooden chairs to face Shikaku. It's been a long time since he played, but he used to be decent and welcomes the excuse to think about anything other than his own mistakes.

Shikaku sets up the board like a practiced master, and Kakashi knows he's going to lose. Probably badly.

To his surprise the game runs smooth and longer than expected, and he's sure Shikaku is just using it to study him. He finds he minds this less than probing questions or conversation that leaves him flailing for social cues he has no reference for.

"Your son is a genin." Kakashi is the first to break the comfortable silence, aside from the methodical clicks of stones on wood.

Shikaku hums in confirmation. "I've also trained a genin team of my own."

Kakashi loses a significant portion of the board.

"How do you deal with knowing they're all shinobi… what they’ll have to live through?" He can't bring himself to meet Shikaku's eyes.

He closes off a group of his opponent’s most threatening pieces, knowing its a trap but not sure how to escape it.

There is a halt in the rhythm of the game, and Kakashi finally looks up to see Shikaku studying his face and not the board.

"Haruno Sakura?" The jounin commander asks, and with it confirms that if not surveilling Kakashi himself, they are taking note of what files he has accessed. His disruption at the assignments office probably didn’t help.

"Maa," he says, "just a thought."

Shikaku turns back to the board between them and puts down a piece that will force Kakashi to abandon one hard fought area in favour of another.

"It's not a choice you can make for someone else,” Shikaku says.

Kakashi loses.

Is it a choice? When they're all children who grew up with the propaganda of the state telling them to die for the village? His head hurts, and he doesn’t want to think about this anymore.

"We do our best to incrimentally change the system," Shikaku says, leaning back. "But we do need graduates. One day I hope none of them have to be kids at all." He resets the board, and starts again. "As long as I live, with the backing of our clans, I won't let the graduation age reduce again. Even for special cases." The thread of bitter tension in his voice is almost inaudible, but Kakashi hears it.

"To prevent another Uchiha Itachi," Kakashi says.

Shikaku doesn't place down the first piece, and Kakashi looks up from the board again.

"Or another Hatake Kakashi," Shikaku says, the tension gone from his voice as he puts the piece down.

Kakashi holds a smooth, black stone between his fingers, feeling the cool material quickly warm. Every joint in his fingers, his wrist, his elbow, his shoulder, ache with sickness. Physical or mental exertion, he remembers the doctor telling him to avoid.

"Good," he finally replies. The piece clicks against the board.

There is a polite rap on the door not much later, and Shikaku sees Kakashi out. They part ways in the hallway, the jounin commander heading to the stairs leading down, and Kakashi following a masked agent, who he thinks might be Raidou, up and back to the Hokage’s office.

-

"You have gone against orders, Hatake Kakashi.” The Hokage sits behind his desk, and he looks tired. He’s flanked by Danzo and an elderly woman, with four hidden ANBU present in the room. “I do understand that tonight’s situation was the consequence of an illegal act committed before you had quite grasped its severity.” Kakashi kneels in front of him, back to the double doors. “Even with your mistakes, your actions on the mission to Wave and tonight have display loyalty to Konoha, which is why this is a conversation and you are not in a cell.” The pipe rests on the desk, forgotten in a ceramic ash tray but gently seeping the cloying scent of burning tobacco into the room. “We have given you time to recover and significant leeway in compassion for your mental difficulties, but this is your final warning. Your security clearance is on probation until further notice, and to access any archives you will need to request specific files. Measures will have to be taken if you again speak classified information. Just as they will be if you leave the village again without express permission. If you try to pass the borders of Konoha’s immediate territory, you will be retrieved."

He knows what that means. Either he would return voluntarily for incarceration, or in a body scroll.

"How do I know?" He says through dry and splitting lips.

The night has been very long. He knows if one of his genin are in danger again, he would follow them, even if it meant leaving the village for good. They're the reason he's here at all, really.

"Know?" Danzo snaps.

"What information is classified?"

There is a ringing silence in the room.

The Hokage finally breaks it. "If you do not know. Then do not speak."

Kakashi bows his head. "Understood, Hokage-sama."

-

Once he leaves the tower Kakashi makes his way to Naruto’s apartment. From a perch across the street he looks through a lit window, not quite ready to knock.

Anbu Deer makes herself known as a courtesy when he arrives, and then vanishes from sight again, positioned over the roof to the balcony.

The view inside is framed with darkness. The stars above are dimmed by light pollution but the home he’s peering into lies in a dark spot, with a flickering bulb on a nearby façade the closest spot of brightness, aside from the warmly lit scene Kakashi watches.

Naruto sits on his bed, against the headboard, orange cover pulled up around his back and head as he huddles, talking. His face is scrubbed red but not covered in tears and snot, and his fried tracksuit has been replaced with a worn, blue t-shirt proudly displaying Konoha’s swirling leaf. At his feet, also on the bed, Sasuke sits cross-legged, still in his grass-stained clothes and with some kind of cream smeared over the burn on his face. His back is to the window, and Kakashi can tell that he speaks from the shifts in his posture and Naruto’s replies.

He's glad that they’re talking, and can’t bring himself to interrupt. He salutes Deer and takes his leave.

His aim is the memorial stone, but he ends up on a meandering path through the village first, hands shoved deep in his pockets and frustration and exhaustion fighting in his bones and tight in his chest. He gets to the park where Danzo had ambushed him that day he left the hospital, which feels longer ago than it is.

Somehow he’s not surprised to see the old man seated there, despite the hour of the night. Angry, afraid, nauseous, but not surprised.

“Hatake-kun,” Danzo says, without turning around. “I’m glad I managed to catch you.”

I’m sure you are, Kakashi thinks as he steps closer, and stands before the bench. He can’t quite bring himself to sit, though he slouches and makes himself look relaxed. His pulse beats hard in his throat. It’s funny how he just faced off with the traces of a demon and this is many times worse.

“Danzo-sama,” he acknowledges.

“It is not a thing that is comfortable to think about,” Danzo begins, his one eye watching the empty park, dots of streetlights along the main path. “The way this village mishandles its assets.” That single eye darts up to meet Kakashi’s, the look held steady between them. “You did the right thing bringing the jinchuuriki back into confidence, and ensuring his loyalty to the village.”

Cold sweat runs down Kakashi’s spine.

Danzo continues. “You should not be held on a short leash because of the Hokage’s short-sightedness. But there are opportunities still to make a difference in Konoha.”

There is a breath. Kakashi is acutely aware that the performance of weakness Danzo usually puts on is absent right now.

“I am aware,” the monster says, and Kakashi wonders if Danzo can feel the eyes in his arm beneath the bandages moving, or if they are static and dead. Can he see through them? Probably not. “That you may not recall it, but we have worked together in the past. That door is still open to you my boy, should you decide to shake the… limitations you are held to.”

“Thank you, Danzo-sama.” He really, really, really is not interested, thank you very much! “I will keep that in mind. It’s… reassuring to know you stand by me.”

Dew is clinging to his hair and making the small gaps of exposed skin, around his right eye and his bare fingers, feel clammy, even in the warmth of the early summer night.

“Of course, Hatake-kun. As I said before, you can come to me any time.”

Kakashi bows politely, choking down the crawling beast of nausea that wants to shape into a scream. “Good night, Councilman.”

-

The next day he spends mostly in bed, Uhei a warm, curled up presence at his sternum beneath the covers and Akino guarding the door, a solid weight at his feet.

A heavy knock wakes him near six in the evening, and he only has time to groggily sit before there’s a confident scratch of the lock and the door swings open. Akino is there wagging his tail and bouncing, Naruto’s scent announcing him to the dogs before Kakashi noticed.

The kid doesn't wait, just heads straight inside. He doesn't even pause to greet Akino or take off his shoes, and his tracksuit is missing. Naruto is wearing a once-white t-shirt that has been laundered wrong and turned dingy, with dark trousers noticeably too short. Kakashi clutches the shuriken-patterned blanket against his chest, glad he fell asleep in his undershirt and mask, as Uhei wrenches himself free and wiggles out of the bed to watch Naruto with big, round eyes.

The door is shoved shut by Akino’s paw and Kakashi watches how Naruto carefully, reverently pick up Kakashi's genin photo. His tanned hands are shaking, ever so slightly. Sunlight brightens the room, breaking through Kakashi’s thin curtains.

Naruto sinks into a cross-legged seat on the floor, eyes fixed to Minato's smiling face.

Kakashi throws his legs over the side of the bed, and Uhei leans his lanky body against his legs.

"Come on," Kakashi says eventually, voice raspy with sleep and fatigue, "let’s make some tea. I'll try to answer as many questions as you want."

Naruto nods, and they bring the team photo with them, resting it in the middle of the table. The genin curls up in the desk chair that hasn’t moved since the last time he was here. A new, mis-matched folding chair leans against the wall, for the times the whole team is around.

“Why’d you tell Sasuke?” Naruto doesn’t look away from Minato’s face, while Kakashi heats up the kettle on the stove.

“It came up.”

That earns him a suspicious look.

“Really,” Kakashi insists. His voice stalls, faltering as he goes, “I… kind of forgot… How serious a crime the Hokage made it to talk about it.”

“Sensei-,” Naruto sputters, “how do you even forget something like that!?” The kid forgets his mood for a second in appalled offense. “You literally NEVER TOLD ME my whole life and then you FORGOT!?”

“Maa… I hit my head in Wave you know.”

That brings Naruto up short, but his eyes narrow in suspicion. Then he mutters “I don’t think you did though, believe it?”

“Comas are bad for you,” Kakashi says, and Naruto’s head falls back with a groan. At least there’s no violence?

The tea bags quickly turn the hot water dark and fragrant, the comforting scent of jasmine filling the room. Akino quietly comes to look through the open doorway, and then goes back to the bedroom. Kakashi commits sacrilege and dumps a whole portion-packet of sugar into Naruto’s cup, then sets it down next to the genin photo, his own childhood self glaring back at him. Rin’s and Sensei’s smiles, Obito’s serious expression. It’s a study in how they wanted to be seen back then, Kakashi thinks.

"You can keep it, for now."

Naruto's eyes go very round, and sits upright again. Kakashi gestures to the picture.

"I've looked at it with the Sharingan," he taps the forehead protector over his eye, "so I will never forget it. And we can go have a copy made later, yeah?"

Naruto nods, looking at the frozen image of his father, and his hands curl around the cup. “Thanks, Kakashi-sensei. I’ll be super careful.”

After a little while Naruto asks about them, Minato and Kushina both, and Kakashi does his best to answer. He hates how little he remembers, but he talks about Minato’s strength and leadership, seen through Obito’s eye in the years between their deaths, about Kushina’s rage and her kindness, and how he is sure they would have loved Naruto with everything they had.

Minato’s memory feels twisted and rough, and Kakashi knows he’s been refusing to think about it, old perspectives fighting with new values from another place.

He remembers the dread when Sensei sent him away, to go fight the Kyuubi without Kakashi there. The smile on his face and tick of tension in Minato’s jaw as he projected confidence over fear, and the way each hair shifted as he moved, the Sharingan’s perfect clarity never letting him forget.

He remembers the Yondaime Hokage ordering him as ANBU Hound to commit acts he could never tell Naruto about. Endless hours guarding the office, more than anything else.

In his odd and distant memories of teenage years spent watching flat and unreal versions of the people of Konoha, he knows Minato was listed as flee on sight in every Bingo Book except their own, that he decimated enemy ranks with a casual ease that with the context of reality makes him want to be sick.

But he doesn’t tell Naruto that. Instead he talks about how Minato was there when Kakashi lost is father and taught him how to live, even though he doesn’t remember it. It doesn’t matter, he tells himself, because Minato is dead and Naruto is alive and he needs to feel like he came from something good.

He talks about how Sensei and Kushina loved each other, and tells Naruto the story about Kushina and the crib he had to build with the Sharingan’s help.

It gets late, and Naruto tucks Kakashi’s genin photo into his pocket with the type of careful precision Kakashi has only ever seen from children.

"Naruto, before you go, I need to tell you something important,” Kakashi says, leaning against the wall by the door as the kid scratches Uhei’s ears and Akino’s back in goodbye.

Naruto looks up and smiles, and it’s like sunshine breaking out between heavy clouds. “Sure, Kaka-sensei!”

“There are… a lot of people who do and will want to convince you to listen to them, especially once all this gets out,” he makes a diffuse gesture, referring to Naruto’s lineage. “A lot of people who will want to use you. The more people learn about the fox, too. So be careful, okay? Decide for yourself who deserves your loyalty, and always keep in mind who benefits when they ask something of you.”

“Okay, sensei,” Naruto agrees, and Kakashi fears he doesn’t understand.

Still, he doesn’t press, and waves goodbye as Naruto leaves. Kakashi goes to meditate, he’s been slacking, and Gai will be disappointed if he doesn’t try.

-

“Tamaka-san,” he greets Tamaka Moriko from where he has been waiting by the entrance to the construction site. She had arrived earlier than Sakura last time, and he's glad he was right in his assumption that she would be again.

"Hatake-san!" Her eyes are wide and she makes an aborted bow that ends up looking like a strange twitch. She clears her throat and then rests a hand on her jutting hip. Her long hair is braided back. The dress she wears today is just as low cut as the last but a muted green instead. He tries to politely not look down, even as she stands closer than he's entirely comfortable with and pushes her chest out. The perfume is as unpleasant as ever.

"I wanted to ask you for a favour," he leans back against the fence, making distance in a way that hopefully isn't too obvious.

"Me? Of course!" Her pose falters a little with surprise as she agrees before she even knows what he'll ask.

"Maa," he tilts his head with a smile, "you shouldn't agree to things without the details."

She blushes but hides it well, smooth foundation on her skin masking the redness while he smells her embarrasment.

"Right, of course," she agrees, and he thinks he's finally hearing her real voice, deeper and softer than just moments ago. "So, ah, what do you need, Hatake-san?"

"Haruno Sakura," he begins, and sees her eyes immediately narrow and her lungs fill with a tense breath, "was on my genin team."

Some of 'Moriko-senpai’s tension leaves her, but she still frowns. "Oh, right. And?"

"The team broke up because of my medical leave. I'd like to continue her training."

“What am I supposed to do about that?”

“Well,” he scratches the bare skin next to his exposed eye. “I’m not on active duty. I can’t officially take her as an apprentice.”

“You’d do that?” Her suspicion hasn’t faded, but mixes with clear surprise as her eyebrows rise high on her forehead.

“That’s what I said.”

“Right. Well. And?” She crosses her arms defensively, and he wants to nudge her posture so she doesn’t hamper her own ability to perform jutsu quickly. Not that she needs that, he kicks himself internally.

“I have no authority over her missions, or her assignment on your team. That’s the favour. We could work out something with her schedule, so she’s not too worn out to train, and when I’m back on duty we can… revisit her formal status.”

Moriko taps her foot against the freshly laid tiles that will make up the path to the building still being raised. The dawn light is warming with the sunrise, and Kakashi knows Sakura will likely be here within the next ten minutes.

“Okay,” Moriko breathes. “Okay. Give me a day to confirm this in the records.” She squares her shoulders and points a finger in his face. “If you’re being shady about this I will find out.”

Kakashi takes back every bad thought he’s had about her. She may have made Sakura stinky, but fuck it, she cares enough to stand up to a fairly famous jounin about a kid she hasn’t known for more than a couple of months.

He bows as deeply as propriety demands. It’s a little bit awkward, he has to sidestep first because Moriko still has her hand raised. “I’ll be in your debt.”

-

Moriko gives her approval that same evening, spotting him by chance when he’s picking up takeaway. Steam warms his hand from a bag with containers of miso eggplant and rice noodles.

They greet each other with professional politeness, and quickly get to the topic.

“But ask what she wants first, Hatake-san,” the kunoichi insists, and he agrees with a nod. “I’ll be checking in with her too before you start. And then we’ll work out the schedule.”

“That sounds good,” Kakashi looks at the sky for a moment, clouds gathering for an early-summer thunderstorm that makes his blood buzz underneath his skin. “I have to be honest, I’m not… the best… at time keeping. So, I apologize in advance. Any future tardiness on Sakura’s part is likely to be my fault.” He smiles at her.

She looks taken aback, like she has no idea what to do with that, but finally rolls her eyes. “Jounin are what you are,” she says, and Kakashi doesn’t know if he should be offended, so settles for amused.

“Exactly! All right, if we’re to work together, please call me Kakashi.”

“Moriko, then, Kakashi-san.”

-

Insanity is not a suitable base from which to teach anyone anything. Especially not with how much he keeps fucking up.

It's not a choice you can make for someone else, his own nagging thoughts insist in Shikaku's voice. The commander was right, damn him, as much as Kakashi still kind of wants to force Sakura out of the bloody field of the shinobi profession it's not his choice to make.

He steels himself, and approaches the door, cheerily painted in cool red against yellow stucco. There are flowerpots hanging outside the window. It’s the kind of door that would be on a postcard. Local Konoha quaint, cheery and bright to cover up whatever the fuck Danzo is doing with tacit approval through the Hokage’s inaction. Beauty to forget state sanctioned murders. Morning sunlight hits the front of the building, the Haruno’s apartment a decent section of the two bottom floors. It is already warm, dew from the earlier morning quickly drying up in the shade and entirely gone in the sun.

Earlier, he briefly considered waiting out Sakura to talk to her away from her home, bypassing her parents entirely; she's technically an adult by Konoha law and doesn't need their approval for anything. Not so technically, she's still a child, and he's well aware that as an adult man without familial or professional ties to her he really shouldn't approach her about potentially life changing decisions without her guardians at least knowing about it.

He stands on the first if two steps up to the door. Sakura's family seems... so very normal, as far as this place goes. Two parents, no dark secrets or twisted histories aside from the fact that they’re war veterans, as is every other shinobi in their age group.

Has the real Kakashi met them before, he wonders, and if so will it be a problem that he doesn't remember? What if they want to small talk? He's a stack of mental issues loosely held together by a standard issue vest and he knows it.

He tells himself to stop being ridiculous as he dithers, and raps the door with his knuckles. Maybe he should have brought Pakkun? Shit, he definitely should have.

There is no response.

Maybe no one is home? But that would be strange. It's seven in the morning, he knows Sakura has the day off, and he hasn’t seen anyone leave the house yet.

His hands itch for something to do, so he pulls a small paperback from the pouch at the back of his hip. The Seven Paths - a Sage's Guide to Chakra Meditations sounds like a dry and painful textbook adjacent to what Gai has been teaching him, but it's worse; it's a self-help scam barely above the quality of AI slop. Page fifty-eight has an illustration that he's pretty sure depicts a kama sutra position with one of the partners removed. Chapter four details a method that tells the 'sage-adept' to gargle ginger juice for mental clarity. He bought it for independent study. He's now reading it for material to annoy Gai with, despite the headache reading something new induces.

Two minutes pass, and he considers leaving. He tried. He'll run into Sakura again soon anyway.

The sound of steps thudding down stairs from inside the building halts him as he starts to turn, and a moment later the door swings open.

“Sorry, sorry!” The middle-aged man who stands in the door is smiling and laughing, wearing a brown dressing gown haphazardly tied around himself and threadbare slippers, exposing pale, bony knees and shins covered in scraggly pink hair.

Kakashi blinks, and slowly raises a hand in greeting.

“Ah! Sakura’s sensei? Good morning!” Haruno Kizashi has the fluffiest hair Kakashi has ever seen, a greying, dark pink that stands around his head like a cloud. “Did you need to talk to Sakura? I hope everything is all right? Come on in! My wife is just getting up,” he laughs, “she has a bit of a hard time with mornings.”

Bewildered, Kakashi follows Sakura’s father into the house, as a shrill female voice calls from above the stairs “I do not Kizashi! Stop spreading lies! Just because YOU HAVE NO SHAME!”

“I… can come back another time?” Kakashi tries.

“No, no, don’t worry about it,” Kizashi insists and presents a pair of neat guest slippers. “SAKURA!” He calls immediately after, turning his back to Kakashi and walking into the living room. “YOUR SENSEI IS HERE!”

Sakura… clearly did not tell her parents about her change in team assignment.

He carefully places his sandals on the shoe rack and tucks his feet into the slippers. The normality is straight up disturbing, after a few months on ninja life.

Mebuki shouts again, asking Hizashi what he’s done with the hair dryer, and her husband in turn replies with instructions to find it so convoluted Kakashi is convinced the man has no idea.

“Coming!” Sakura’s voice finally joins the cacophony of her parents, though she sounds choked. Good, Kakashi thinks vindictively, knowing he has no reason to. If he has to be subjected to whatever madness is going on here, she can be embarrassed about her lying. He doesn’t mean it, really, but it’s hard to have a stranger slap him on the back and laugh too close to his ear and tell him Sakura loves her team when he’s been letting her down so badly.

By the time Sakura comes downstairs, objectively not much later and subjectively after an eternity, Kakashi sits on the edge of the sofa with a plate of neatly cut sandwiches (no crust), a cup of steaming coffee (the scent of which is burning his nose), and too much knowledge of the next-door neighbour’s cat’s toilet habits. Mebuki has not shown herself, but the sound of a hair dryer is clearly audible upstairs.

“Sakura!” He puts the plate down in relief. “Great. We need to talk. Team business.”

“Kakashi-sensei, I can-“

“No need! Let’s go. Thank you, Haruno-san,” he bows to Sakura’s father and walks very casually to the door, ready to bolt.

“Slippers!” Sakura hisses, and Kakashi doesn’t miss a beat as she swaps out the shoes he had entirely forgotten about.

-

“So,” Kakashi says, fifteen minutes later outside training ground three.

“I’m sorry Kakashi-sensei! I didn’t want them to be disappointed in me,” Sakura hangs her head. “I know I shouldn’t have lied, I just-,”

“Maa, calm down,” he waves at her to settle, and sits down on the stump of a cut tree. Sakura nods and wrings her hands, and finally leans on a rock strategically placed to mark the path to the next training ground across bare earth.

“You know, don’t you,” she says, smoothing down the dress over her legs and looking off into the distance, not meeting his eye.

“If you mean I know you never corrected the rest of us about your reassignment, and didn’t tell the truth when asked how training was going, and that you’ve been working at a construction site on a long-term Genin-corps mission? Yes, I know.”

Sakura sinks in on herself even more.

“Now,” Kakashi changes the topic. “Did you think about what I asked you a while ago, what track you’re on?”

She glances up, and nods reluctantly.

“Good. Since it’s now clear your current track is manual labour, is there something else you’d rather do?”

Her confusion is clear.

“I…” she hesitates. Then she sets her chin higher. “I want to become a strong shinobi.” Finally there’s a spark in her eye that’s been missing… most of the time Kakashi has known her. “I’ve been working toward this my whole life, since before I even knew who Sasuke-kun was… He is the best of course!” She’s quick to add the last part, as if he’d be disappointed in a thirteen-year-olds lack of commitment to a one-sided romance. “I know I don’t want to be a career genin like mom is. I- I want to be someone. But I don’t know how to pick a speciality.”

“Well,” Kakashi says, “Your worth as a person isn’t just in what you can do.”

He can see her temper rising, jaw clenching. She has forgotten about her demure posture as she tenses up. Honestly, seeing her annoyed is an improvement to the quiet resignation.

“Well, I suppose,” Kakashi continues slowly, raising a finger and smiling just to be extra frustrating. Takes a breath as her face scrunches up. “…You do have exceptional chakra control for your age.”

“What does that even matter?”

“It lends itself to genjutsu, as well as healing, and allows you to perform ninjutsu with more precision and less chakra waste.” He watches her expression gain a thoughtful edge. “You can choose to specialise now or later; you are very young so there is time.”

“Sensei I can’t though,” Sakura’s voice wobbles, “I’m just a genin in the Corps.”

“Maa, independent study and self-drive to improve are very good qualities you know,” he says. “But you should know… I had a talk with Moriko san, and she’s agreed to adjust your tasks and schedule.”

“What?” Sakura’s wide eyed look is kind of endearing and very funny.

“I know I haven’t been the best sensei, and I’m still not on active duty, so nothing can be official yet, and if you want to once I am you can be moved from the Genin Corps. But we can start here, aiming for a well-rounded skillset. If you’ll have me back for a sensei?”

She nods jerkily, several times, and he pretends not to see the tears at the corners of her eyes as she launches forward and crushes her forehead to his vest, arms coming up around him.

“Thank you!”

“Maa, I’m literally doing less than I should have.” He awkwardly pats the back of her shoulder.

-

OMAKE

“Sasuke-teme, Sakura-chan, you won’t believe it,” Naruto hisses. “You know how Kakashi-sensei used to talk about looking underneath the underneath all the time?”

The other two nod.

“Well I think Kakashi-sensei faked memory loss so he could tell Sasuke about my parents, and he totally would have known Sasuke-teme would tell me so I think he DID want to tell me the whole time! Even though it’s like super illegal for old people to talk about it believe it!”

Sasuke looks thoughtful.

Sakura wrinkles her nose. “I’m not sure Sensei’s that smart, Naruto-kun.”  

“No,” Sasuke says, shaking his head. “I think Naruto’s right. Kakashi-sensei has told me some other stuff…” He looks around suspiciously, even though they’re definitely alone right now. “I’ll tell you guys later. Let’s go to my place after training.”

Chapter Text

Chakra is weird. In a sense it's just like any other metabolic process, or like the blood in your veins. It cycles through the body and has an obvious presence, one that would only be noticed when something goes wrong, but then with focus and practise the mind can control it. It’s unique and bizarre, and the coolest thing ever.

Kakashi feels chakra gather in his chest, surrounding the fourth gate, as he breathes deep and wills the power that is his life force to settle, then along the spine and down into the abdomen where it surrounds the fifth gate. For quite some time, here in the real world after Wave, he's been using chakra on auto pilot. Physical memory and the Sharingan's preserved knowledge does reach very far, as it turns out. It's easy to mould the power at his disposal, and even when it's almost all gone it's so natural that he's repeatedly realised too late that he shouldn't continue.

Ever since Gai took on the task to drag Kakashi away from the brink of wasting away, with the near-daily meditation and conscious effort, he likes to think that he’s become more aware.

It's a revisitation of basics he can't remember learning, to cycle chakra through his hand, nearly out the tenketsu of the fingers but instead holding it there. It creates a static churn of energy, a current pulling at the ambient chakra of everything around him, stronger the closer it is, with an ambient buzz in his fingertips. He concentrates the motion to just the index finger, and gently taps a fallen leaf. It sticks.

Kakashi raises his hand, the leaf held fast with only chakra.

"We're starting with tree walking," he tells Sakura. "Do you know the leaf sticking exercise?" He smiles, leaf still on his finger, then presses it against his cheek and sticks it there instead, energy running through and below the skin of his face. It's theoretically harder through cloth (or the soles of cut-resistant sandals), but he honestly can barely tell.

Sakura sits across from him in the dirt of the small open area in training ground nineteen. The breeze across the nearby pond cools the warm, late afternoon air and brings the scent of fresh water, lush greenery and rotting plant matter.

She has swapped out her typical dress for a zipped-up, short sleeve jacket in red. Instead of shorts she wears black uniform leggings, wrapped below the knee. She looks more shinobi than he's ever seen her, in reality. On her hands the metal plated gloves glint in the sun. Her hair is still loose, reaching low on her back, forehead protector on its blue band over the top of her head. She looks like she means it, being here, not that he'd really doubted it.

"We did it in the Academy," Sakura confirms with a nod, resting one hand on her thigh and she sits on her feet. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. "I was the second to succeed after Sasuke-kun." It doesn't sound as braggy as he'd have expected, and she smells of uncertainty. Her confidence has been shredded, but he doesn't really know what else to do than this. It would be one thing talking to an adult, but even as great as the kids are, Kakashi still feels like he has no idea what he’s doing.

Something he does know, at least, is ninja basics.

"Fantastic. Take this." He picks up another leaf, green and fragrant, by his fingertip, and holds it out to Sakura. She hesitates, but then presses her own finger to his through he leaf. He lets go, and the leaf stays with her. "Good."

She sits up a little straighter at the praise.

"Tree walking is this, through your feet. The best way is trial and error." He pulls out a kunai and flips it around, passing it to her handle first. If she'd been one of his ANBU trainees he would have thrown it at a vital point, but that might be excessive. "Run at the tree, cycle your chakra as you go. Mark your progress with this."

Sakura stands and brushes herself off, then eyes the tree in front of her with determination.

The light breeze catches her hair and makes it shift and wave, a stray leaf falls and is carried in a gentle diagonal between the girl and her target. Kakashi can virtually hear the twang and whistle of a spaghetti western standoff, watching from the shady spot below another tree.

A breath later, Sakura shoots off, dust kicking from her heels as she launches herself at the tree. The first step catches, she rises, sandals and chakra scuffing the bark. The second grips, she moves higher. The third step slips, the fourth loses grip entirely and she cries out when her cheek scrapes into the trunk with her forward momentum. She slides down a little and is about to topple backwards, when she lets go of the kunai and instead slaps her right palm to the tree. Her descent halts, backside hovering half a metre above the ground, feet braced against the bark and hand glued to the trunk above her head. She's breathing hard, arm shaking slightly from the sudden wrench of stopping her fall.

From his side-on view Kakashi can just about see her concentrated frown before pink tresses fall forward as she flings herself upright and closer to the trunk, left hand coming up to sick to the tree, out and level with her right in an awkward looking hug. Her feet scramble for purchase.

Kakashi holds back his laugh at the sight and a moment later Sakura lets go, kicking off to land on her feet a step back. She eyes the tree again, then goes and swipes the kunai from the ground.

"Okay," he can hear her mutter to herself. "Let's do this. Come on. Prove you deserve it."

Who told her she doesn't?

Kakashi can smell blood from where the hit of her cheek against the bark left a shallow scrape.

Instead of rushing, this time Sakura slowly places the sole of one sandal on the trunk, dark blue against muted, mottled browns. She pulls back, and her foot comes off. She does it again, and this time her attempt bounces off before she even makes contact. On the third try, the shoe sits as if glued to the tree. Slowly, with a deep breath, she starts walking.

The occasional step slips or bounces, but she never takes a solid foot off the surface before the other grips, and very soon she reaches the top of the tree, swinging onto a branch.

"Sensei!" She calls down. "I did it!"

"Well done, Sakura." He moves out from under tree cover to where she can see him, and smiles up at her. "Now you just have to get down!" He opens his eye just in time to see realisation dawn and her eyes widen.

Kakashi's neck cramps as it’s held in any way other than careful balance, and his shoulders ache as he looks up at Sakura. Well. Every part of him aches, as always, but worse again since that recent night at the back of Hokage Mountain. As if a too large portion of progress had been wrung out of him, and today it feels like gravity is insisting on pulling his arms out of their sockets.

“Don’t worry!” He reassures her, “no matter how long you take! I brought reading materials.” From his kunai pouch he grabs the weapons catalogue he apparently subscribes to.

The teasing turns out to be unnecessary. Sakura walks down with the same determination she used to get up, and enthusiastically high fives the palm he holds up once she joins him on the ground.

"Keep practising until you're not slipping at all. Then, if we have time, we’ll move to the next step."

Sakura nods and calls out an affirmative, already turning back to the tree.

She is months behind her peers, but hopefully at this rate, that won't be for long. He barely had to do anything. Whether it was Kakashi-before-him or the Academy sensei who got her this far, he’s grateful. Both Sasuke and Sakura are knowledge sponges, and as far as he’s been able to assess Naruto, their last teammate has so much raw talent it makes up for anything else.

Sakura is on her sixth go up a second tree, this one a pine with looser, rougher bark, when Kakashi smells the approaching group. Stigning tobacco smoke, potato chips, fresh wood and something vaguely animal and herbivore, incense, smoke and ozone, expensive shampoo, fresh flowers and faint perfume, young teens and tweens with their smelly feet, and an adult man.

Kakashi shifts slightly against the log he leans on, but doesn't get up. He turns another page of the catalogue and keeps half an eye on Sakura, four metres above ground and not yet noticing their guests.

"These grounds are booked!" He eventually calls out. Sakura startles a little but catches herself.

Next, Kakashi thinks, it's time to start throwing things at her while she's walking. Or maybe it would be safer to start with water and then do it on the pond? Yes, he decides, as Choji and Sasuke come into view, quickly followed by Ino, Asuma and Shikamaru.

"You drew one sloppy henohenomoheji over half the page," Asuma snorts. "Figured there was a fifty fifty chance you hadn't shown yet." He glances up at Sakura, then smiles.

Kakashi rolls his eyes.

"Well, we're here." He stretches and stands slowly, tilting his head side to side and feeling the world swim for a moment, ignoring the way muscles sieze over his ribs. "What are you up to? Might as well stay, if it's compatible." He throws Asuma a glance before looking back to the genin.

Sakura scrambles to the nearest branch and looks down on the others with a smug façade over genuine uncertainty. Below her, Ino is berating Choji for eating while walking and clearly, deliberately ignoring Sakura. Choji is waving up to the treetop and ignoring Ino in turn. Shikamaru sighs and shoves his hands into his pockets, looking like he'd rather be anywhere else. Sasuke pauses, looking torn whether he should stay by their teachers or go to join the students. Eventually he raises a hand to Sakura, before shoving it back into the pocket of his shorts. The burn Naruto left on his face is healing well, and doesn't look like it will scar at all. 

"Was planning for physical conditioning." Asuma takes a last drag of his cigarette before putting it out on the back of his armoured glove. "But some chakra walking practice wouldn't be amiss. What's your next step?" The cigarette butt is tucked into a pack, which disappears into one of Asuma's pockets.

"Water walking or dodging on the tree," Kakashi scratches the side of his face.

Asuma hums. "I've got an idea."

Sakura carefully makes her way back to solid ground, to Ino’s scoff.

“Aw Sakura-kun,” she mocks with a hand on her hip, “you look like a boy in those rags.”

Sakura turns bright red. “I look like a ninja,” she snaps, crossing her arms. “And I don’t smell like a common civilian either. Not like someone who’s destined to stay in Intelligence and never go on serious missions.”

Kakashi twitches. That’s not what he meant, Sakura!

Ino grits her teeth and then flips her ponytail over a shoulder. “I have an essential specialisation, but you have clearly given up, if that’s how you think you’re going to get Sasuke-kun’s attention!”

Now it’s Sasuke’s turn to twitch, his discomfort clear to see for a moment before he shuts it behind a blankly serious expression.

“Sasuke-kun likes competence, idiot, not vapid brainless beauty magazine stuff!”

Ino and Sakura’s bickering grows in intensity, Sakura throwing out; “Well you’re just a giant pig! What have you even been eating!?”

And Ino claps back with “I’ll have you know I’m a size extra, extra small, what have you been eating billboard head? Though it’s not like dieting can fix that face of yours!”

Kakashi cringes internally. That’s so bad. They’re not only growing children, but expected to train nearly every day. The weird rivalry… thing… doesn’t seem great, but the food thing? He looks over to Asuma, who is pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I’m working on it,” Kakashi’s fellow sensei mutters without much enthusiasm.

Choji and Sasuke share a look, while Shikamaru has closed his eyes with an expression of agony.

“You’re so annoying together,” Sasuke finally blurts. Sakura somehow grows even redder, while Ino huffs and glares at her. In the moment of silence, Choji steps up and asks Ino something, loudly crunching as he does. Ino makes an exaggerated eyeroll and wrinkles her nose, but turns her back to Sakura.

Kakashi can’t see his own student’s face from where he stands, but he sees Ino’s fall for moment. The girl looks heartbroken, before she shakes herself and hides it under a thin veneer of confidence again.

Sasuke goes to talk to Shikamaru, and Sakura hovers uncertainly before she silently joins them.

Asuma calls for warm-ups, and all of the children seem relieved. Even Shikamaru doesn’t protest the effort. Asuma shakes his head a little, well-polished forehead protector gleaming in the sun.

"They'll outgrow it. I hope."

Kakashi hums in agreement.

While the genin start limbering up Kakashi and Asuma hash out a plan for the afternoon, as they keep an eye on their students.

Eventually they make the children all stay in the clearing, and Kakashi and Asuma go to rig the forested half of the training ground with ropes and mild explosive tags, gathered from the equipment storage by the entrance.

It doesn’t take long, Kakashi’s hands somehow knowing what knots to tie without his conscious direction. When he realises it and pays attention he fails, the smooth, well-worn fibers suddenly scratching over his skin, but when he lets his mind wander again he does it with no issue.

A short while later everything is set, and the kids have found some kind of equilibrium. They keep a careful distance between the two girls, while Sasuke sticks to one of the other boys at all times.

"All right, cute little genin!" Kakashi appears with a courteous puff of smoke in the middle of the group. Ino screams, Choji crushes his bag of chips on reflex, Sasuke rolls his eyes while Shikamaru sighs and Sakura folds her head into her hands. "Maa... Next time, I want at least three kunai at my neck."

“That doesn’t seem very safe,” Choji says, but he’s regained his composure very quickly.

“Sensei doesn’t care about things like that,” Sakura says. “He tells us to try to kill him all the time.”

That was something the original Kakashi said in the story, wasn’t it? Well, she’s… not entirely wrong, anyway, because it’s not like any of them can really pose that much of a risk to him, and training while holding back, if you have the option not to, just seems like a way to handicap yourself. The instinct to pull your strikes when fighting a real enemy is risky.

“Eh,” Kakashi waves a dismissive hand. “You’d have even less of a chance if you didn’t.”

Shikamaru gets this glint in his eye, and Kakashi swears the shadows beneath his feet grow darker.

"This way," Asuma interrupts as he waves them over. "This is the start," he points to an ink dot on the nearest tree, starkly black against silvery brown bark. "The floor is lava. You need to hit every ink spot along the trail and not set off the traps. You'll go through at the same time, and you may give each other tips, but no physical help. If you hinder the others you're disqualified. The first one through gets a price."

Sakura looks over at Kakashi with a nervous, questioning look.

"Try it," he replies to the unspoken question. "You’re good enough. Think about where you're going and choose your paths if you can’t jump it." He glances at the others who are peering into the trees. No one is looking at them except for Sasuke. "If you make it through, tell me a jutsu you want to learn and I'll teach it to you."

She doesn't look as motivated by that as he'd expected, but she does look thoughtful, so he'll take it as a win.

"Go join the others," he nudges her shoulder with the back of his hand, and she visibly steels herself, then turns and heads over.

"Ugh," Shikamaru says to no one and everyone, "this is so troublesome." He looks at Sakura with eyes half-closed. "Asuma-sensei will make us do it over again until everyone makes it."

Ino cracks her knuckles and looks with challenge at Sakura, who hides a flinch in turn.

"Okay!" Asuma calls. "Line up." Team ten and Sasuke snap into line as if they've done it a million times, while Sakura scrambles to get into place beside Choji. "Go!"

Kakashi shunshins away and up into a tree, high above the circuit of the course; to keep an eye on their progress. He leans low to see past a cover of bright, early summer leaves on a crooked branch and gets a good view of most of the course. Dappled light filters through, and there would have been a dreamy beauty to the scene if not for the sounds of five bodies crashing through the foliage.

Sasuke takes off faster than anyone else, and keeps his lead. He leaps nearly from marker to marker as he uses chakra to stick and propel his next jumps. There is the occasional slip, but he catches himself quickly. Ino is not far behind, though she has to pause and breathe between jumps and finds the occasional extra point to land or leap off.

The two of them are nearly a third through before Choji enters Kakashi’s view, keeping lower and carefully choosing the sturdiest branches and solid trunks to make his path, sweat beading visibly on his face, red swirls hard to see with the redness of his cheeks - though it doesn’t actually seem like he struggles.

Kakashi has little point of reference, but he thinks the three so far would just about keep up with standard chuunin pace. In the Sharingan's clarity he remembers Rin, moving along him through a dusk-shrouded forest, some time after Obito’s death.

To Kakashi’s surprise, Sakura comes next. Sasuke and Ino are nearly at the finish line by the time he gets a good look at her, but considering where she started earlier this afternoon she is doing so well. Her bright pink hair is in stark contrast to the greens and browns around her, and she walks with determination. Up and down trunks, across branches, small hops, arms or legs reaching out to make contact before she lets go of her previous perch. Every now and then she pauses to consider her route. Repeatedly and constantly she has to shove her hair out of the way. A little ways behind her is Shikamaru, shuffling along with his hands in his pockets, stepping along the exact same path Sakura takes.

At one of the trickiest passages between two Hashirama trees, Sakura hesitates long enough for Shikamaru to catch up.

“There,” the boy sighs to Sakura and points out a sturdy sapling. “Grab the top, then leap off. It’ll carry you to the next one.”

Sakura looks at him, suspicious.

“So troublesome,” he rolls his eyes. “Asuma-sensei said we can help each other, and we can’t use sabotage. But if you’re too scared I can go first.”

“I’m not scared!” Flushed but now determined, Sakura reaches for the sapling, touching a spindly branch with a fingertip and pulling it to herself with chakra. She grips the springy trunk, holds on, leaps, and makes it to the next tree in a smooth arc.

Shikamaru sends her a smug thumbs up. She grins back at him and continues on.

To Kakashi’s surprise they all make it through the course without touching the ground, and with only one minor explosion, caused by Choji’s jacket snagging as he passed through.

Sasuke receives the promise of a one-on-one training session from Asuma, after being asked to name a price, and the other genin suffer their defeat with various levels of equanimity. Asuma praises Shikamaru’s initiative to help Sakura and in the same breath tells him to try harder, while Sakura herself ignores Ino’s smug looks entirely and comes over to Kakashi.

“Good job, Sakura,” he praises. “Think about what jutsu you want, and I’ll make sure I can teach it, okay?”

“Thanks Kakashi-sensei,” she smiles up at him, wide and toothy with leaves stuck in her hair. She wobbles a little, clearly tired. Then she takes a watch out of her zipped-up pocket. Her eyes go very wide. “SHIT! My mission!”

Sakura runs and Kakashi squints at the sun. Ah. She’s meant to meet Moriko-san in thirty minutes or so.

“BYE EVERYONE,” she calls from where she’s hurriedly putting on her backpack. “THANKS ASUMA-SENSEI!”

“Remember team training,” Sasuke says, but it’s clear she didn’t hear him. Instead of trying again, louder, Sasuke just sighs.

“See you, Sakura!” Kakashi calls across the open space. “Day after tomorrow, don’t forget!”

Sakura is already on the path out of the training grounds, and turns over her shoulder without missing a beat. “SEE YOU, SENSEI!”

Team Ten gather up around Asuma, who nods to Sasuke and leads the other three genin into the open space.

Sasuke in turn stays by Kakashi, who cringes internally. He’s been distracted, lately, head foggy and focus scattered. Neglectful. And he has no excuse.

“I’m sorry,” Kakashi says.

Sasuke doesn’t even turn toward him.

“For what?” The brat says with the type of utter confidence only twelve-year-olds seem to possess.

“I said we’d talk, before. I should’ve come and found you.” Kakashi keeps his hands in his pockets, and keeps his head forward while glancing down at Sasuke, whose face is hidden by his hair at this angle.

“It’s fine,” Sasuke insists, and he does seem like he means it. “You’re just late as usual.” The kid finally turns, to show off a smug look.

Kakashi huffs a near-laugh and looks at the sky. “Maa, I guess rude students is just what I deserve.”

“I talked to Naruto.” Sasuke’s expression settles into stoic thoughtfulness. “He was never really dead last, was he?”

“No.” He thinks of the cartoon version of Sasuke, always measuring himself by Naruto’s stick, losing to the weakest genin again and again, grasping for more and more power because if he couldn’t beat the dead last, how could he ever face his brother. “Naruto… will be very powerful, one day.”

He sees Sasuke’s jaw clench.

Kakashi continues. “But he was failed by the system. As were you.” And failed by the people who should have helped you, he absolutely does not voice.

Sasuke flinches at that, and looks up sharply.

“Well,” Kakashi continues, “I shouldn’t say anything else. I’m in a bit of trouble, about last time.” He crinkles his eye and scratches the side of his face.

Sasuke looks surprised for a split second, then hides it quickly again. They stand for a moment in silence.

“How am I even meant to keep up?” Sasuke says bitterly. “I’m training all the time and he’s not even trying. I've always been useless.” That last part can’t be about Naruto, can it? Sasuke was always raised to the skies at the academy (to his detriment, Kakashi thinks).

Naruto, with the Nine Tails and his parentage and his chakra reserves, Sakura with her nearly unfair aptitude for chakra control, Kakashi who was a chuunin before he was ten. Sasuke, despite his potential for the Sharingan and status as the last of his clan, is the most average of all of them. Dedication is why he graduated top of his class, and where he shines even though Kakashi wishes he didn't have to.

Kakashi hums. “You have more than enough potential. And I have a friend I’d like you to meet.

Sasuke’s eyes widen, and there’s a hint of something almost happy there, but Sasuke immediately holds it in and hits back, “I didn’t know you had friends.”

Wow, what a burn. Kakashi sighs. “Whatever, brat. Go join your real sensei. I’ll see about showing up for team training,” he pauses, “It’s… tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow, sixteen hundred,” Sasuke confirms, which means eighteen hundred at the earliest.

Before the kid has a chance to escape, Kakashi reaches out and messes up Sasuke’s hair. “See you then, Sasuke.”

With a final “Hn,” Sasuke goes to join Team Ten.

Kakashi turns, and trudges toward the exit. When out of view of the others, he finally addresses his shadow.

“You can come out, now.”

Tenzo materialises from beneath, or maybe even directly from a nearby tree. The forehead protector with side shields has replaced his ANBU mask, and his dark eyes are very big and empty as they blink at Kakashi.

“Senpai,” he greets.

“Tenzo.”

“It’s Yamato, now.”

“All right,” Kakashi agrees. “You’re my surveillance?”

“Yes, senpai.”

Kakashi puts his hands in his pockets, letting the weight of the world bend his spine a little further. “So you’ll be stuck to me all the time now?”

“Don’t worry,” Tenzo says, completely serious. “I’ll only report what’s relevant. Don’t worry about anything embarrassing.”

“Maa, why would you say it like that?” Kakashi whines but can’t keep the fondness from his tone. Unlike most, he really does remember this kid. Side by side for years, snippets of countless missions bathed in blood or drawn out in endless waits or fighting to survive without backup in horrible places. Training at the ANBU facilities. It’s disjointed as fuck, but there’s enough of if that Tenzo is solidly familiar, in the way almost only that fake world seems.

“Tell me when you want to be alone,” Tenzo says, face still entirely blank, “and I’ll watch from a distance.”

“Wow, that’s comforting. Thanks,” he doesn’t bother hiding the sarcasm. “Isn’t it strange they’d pick you for this?” Kakashi wonders aloud. It seems like a massive conflict of interest for Tenzo.

His kouhai shakes his head in a slow, mechanical way. “Proximity to the jinchuuriki – I have the correct skillset. And it was estimated that you would respond better to a familiar face.”

“Right. Makes sense.” It really does, which is annoying. The fact that he is terrified of the Hokage and his advisors, and they still know him well enough to make decisions like this, to be kind like this, is disturbing. That it’s all on purpose, to keep him loyal and in line by using the people they think he cares about, makes it worse.

“Senpai,” Tenzo says. “Please tell me first when you decide to do stupid things.”

-

“Sensei!” His sister’s daughter comes running out the house, sparkly skirt tangling in her legs and blue trainers only halfway on and she’s skidding on the grass. Her mother laughs from the doorway, shaking her head. “I drew this for you!” She looks up at him, green eyes big and round as she holds out a sheet of paper. Her face looks like Sakura’s.

“Aw, thank you,” he takes the drawing, ruffling her dark hair. A childish scribble of Kakashi holding hands with a child, and a dog beside them, is drawn in colourful crayon. Grey for his hair, green and blue for their clothes and pink for a bow in her hair and red is staining the paper where he holds it. He tries to keep it from spreading, takes it in his other hand but there’s too much of it and it soaks across the page. A rivulet crosses the drawing of his niece, and colours her in bright arterial blood. He looks up to apologise and she’s smiling at him with red running down her face, glistening in her hair from the top of her head and she opens her mouth to speak and instead red, red, red runs down her chin-

He wakes with a start.

He doesn’t move; he never does when he wakes like this.

Bed. Apartment. Konoha. Alone. He sits up and swallows back the sickness crawling up his throat, feeling the drying blood going tacky on his hands. He lifts them high to not stain the bedding, and goes to wash.

-

It’s past midday. Outside a slow drizzle turns the view of Konoha foggy, while the bright greens of trees at the lushest time of year and the reds, oranges and yellows of stuccoed buildings keeps it far from grey.

Kakashi turns from the window, and shuts himself in the bathroom. The shower controls squeaks as he turns the water on, the harsh, cold spray on the tiled floor sharp and muffling.

A quick cut with a razor over his thumb, and a moment later Pakkun appears on top of the closed toilet lid. The pug surveys the situation, then turns to Kakashi with an eyebrow raised.

“I’m under official surveillance now,” Kakashi says to explain, and sits cross-legged on the blue bathroom mat. “Not just whatever probably ROOT were up to, before.”

Pakkun nods, and Kakashi once again tells him everything. He shifts as he talks, and hugs his knees to his chest, letting himself feel small and hidden and out of his depth.

“Not gonna lie, Boss, this sounds pretty bad.”

“You don’t say.” Kakashi presses his forehead to his knees, the metal plate over the Sharingan making his face tilt sideways, good eye hidden away against the fabric of his soft pyjamas.

“Well,” Pakkun says, “not much to it. Just try to be careful. Danzo always gave me the creeps.”

“You’re taking this well,” Kakashi turns his head to squint at the dog.

“Boss. The last time we had a secret conversation you told me you’re not yourself, but actually somebody else from a different dimension, and that I should be a cartoon. And that dogs don't talk. You spilling the beans on a secret that hurt a lot of people for a long ass time and pissing off the Hokage? Kind of tame.”

Huh.

“Okay. I guess you have a point.”

“Just don’t let them get you.”

“Thanks, I feel so confident now.”

Pakkun hums, a strange, rumbly sound that is more of a sigh, with a little bit of doggy squeak mixed in, then lies down and leans his head on his paws. Then he says “Minato-sensei would’ve wanted Naruto to know.”

“You think?” Kakashi pulls off the headband, but keeps Obito’s eye closed. Little droplets escaping through the gap of the shower curtain hit Kakashi’s back through the undershirt. He looks at the swirling leaf, and doesn’t know how he feels about it.

“Yes. And even if he wouldn’t, those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash,” the dog has the audacity to quote at him. He also has the audacity to be right.

Kakashi laughs softly. “Yeah, yeah. You know what you’re talking about.”

“As always,” Pakkun says smugly.

“Want to stay for dinner?”

The pug’s ears perk up immediately. “Summon me back in an hour. And I want the good stuff. None of that dry biscuit shit.”

“That dry biscuit shit is expensive,” Kakashi rolls his eyes, Obito’s moving beneath the lid and scar that hides it from the world. “And not that bad. But fine. I’ve got some tuna?”

“Acceptable.”

Pakkun leaves with a perfunctory puff, the barest wisp of smoke left behind. Kakashi stands, and gets in the shower.

-

He arrives at training ground three a quarter past seven that evening, hair thoroughly brushed and dried under Pakkun’s strict supervision, and with a great meal of deconstructed tuna onigiri heavy in his stomach. (They had piled tinned tuna, cheap mayo and shredded nori on three-day-old left over rice. He’s not proud of it. The macro ratios did mostly fit Gai's meal plan, at least.)

Tenzo walks with him for a while, and vanishes again at the border of the training ground. At some point Kakashi will have to introduce them, but today he’s tired and can’t be bothered.

“KAKASHI-SENSEI!” Naruto’s voice alerts everyone this side of Konoha to his presence. “YOU’RE LATE!”

The three genin are dirty and there are fresh scuffs on the ground and the nearest trees. He spots an ink splodge on one of them, a path drawn in string, and the scuffs bear a stunning resemblance to repeated climbing overuse. They continued the afternoon’s exercise, he realises with a pang of pride.

“I think he’s catching on to the time thing,” Sasuke mutters to Sakura. Kakashi can’t quite pick it up at this distance with his ears alone, but lip reading fills in the gaps.

Sakura nods to Sasuke, though she’s trembling slightly with fatigue. He’ll have to tell her to slow down if she’s not recovered well by the next training session.

“Yo,” Kakashi raises a hand in greeting. “I see you filled Naruto in.”

“Yeah, Kakashi-sensei!” There is a solemn edge to Naruto that wasn't there before the night he learned about his parents, but he covers it with cheer, bounces with energy and hits his own palm with a loud slap. “I’m crushing it believe it! That perv Ebisu has been showing me this stuff already so I’m pretty good!”

“Well done, Naruto,” he praises. The kid beams as if he’s been handed a price.

The three genin gather up around Kakashi, as the golden light of evening washes over them all. He’d love to get some nature photos in different training grounds, especially at this time of day.

“So, what are you planning?” Kakashi asks his students.

“Eh? Aren’t you supposed to tell us that sensei!?” Naruto scrunches his face in confused indignation.

“Hn,” Sasuke agrees.

Sakura looks like she’s thinking hard.

“Maa, this is your training time, isn’t it? I’m happy to help, but I’m not team leader right now.”

Naruto looks like his mind has been blown.

“Um, sensei, you said you’d teach me a jutsu?” Sakura asks and both Naruto and Sasuke home in on her like sharks. “Can you teach me and Sasuke?” she continues with more confidence.

“Eh? Sure?” Why not Naruto as well, has a a split second to wonder before-

“WHY NOT ME TOO SAKURA CHAN!?” Naruto’s wail has all of them wince.

“Because YOU ALREADY KNOW IT YOU IDIOT!” Sakura bonks the back of Naruto’s head, though not very hard, and Naruto falls to the ground clutching his non-existent injury. Sakura’s attention turns back to Kakashi, and she lifts an almost accusing finger, pointing at him. “Teach us Kage-Bunshin-no-jutsu!”

Sasuke’s eyes gleam with interest.

Kakashi stands there unmoved, until an actual, early season cricket starts chirping nearby.

“I should have specified,” he says slowly. “Pick a not forbidden jutsu.”

Sasuke deflates. Sakura gasps in outrage, and Naruto sits up.

“It’s okay Sakura-chan!” Natuo chirps. ”I can teach you!”

“No you won’t,” Kakashi says, steel in his voice.

“But why, Kakashi-sensei? Naruto-kun does it all the time.” Sakura sounds extremely sceptical.

“Besides the fact that it’s highly illegal, and I’m already under observation for breaking the law?” Sakura and Naruto glance at each other, wide eyed. Sasuke’s expression sketches realisation. “It could literally kill you! So. We are not doing that today. Ask me again in… three years or so.”

“What!?” Sakura looks even more shocked at that. “Naruto uses it ALL THE TIME!?”

At the same time Naruto goes, “Yeah right! You’re just trying to hide that you don’t know it!”

“Naruto,” Kakashi sighs, “I know it. Sakura-”

“PROVE IT!” Naruto interrupts.

“Fine.” Before he thinks it through, Kakashi has made the iconic hand sign, and feels half his chakra drain in less than the blink of his eye, stolen like the breath from his lungs when his back hits the ground from a height. He blinks away the darkening of his vision and tries to not wobble where he stands. Fuck. Bad, bad idea.

“See?” Kakashi hears himself say, and looks over to his own identical self, looking casual and aloof with the same relaxed stance he’s currently in himself. “I know it.”

This is one of the trippiest things he’s ever seen, and he has woken up in a body that may or may not be his own, thinking he’s a person from somewhere else.

“The reason,” the Kakashi who is the real one and not letting any of his feelings show, continues, “that this could kill you, is that every clone takes an equal portion of your current chakra pool. If the portion remaining is less than what’s needed to fuel your internal organs-“

“You die,” the clone finishes.

Sakura and Sasuke look at him in stunned silence, and then they turn to Naruto as one. The Nine Tails jinchuuriki laughs and rubs the back of his head.

“I guess I have a lot of chakra,” the kid from the clan with the greatest chakra capacities every seen says, with the largest collection of chakra in the known world sealed in his belly.

“I myself can only maintain one clone at a time. So,” Kakashi says with a pointed look. “Pick something else."

The kids take another moment to process, and then Sakura squares her shoulders.

“The Hell Viewing Technique,” she announces.

-

The knock on the door has him groggily open one crusted-shut eye.

There is no scrape of lock picking tools (the keys he still hasn't given the genin are tied together in a drawer at his bedside), so it's none of the kids.

Teaching them the hell viewing genjutsu had been a mistake.

Sasuke had looked shell-shocked for a moment before agreeing (while adamantly refusing to have it tried on himself). Kakashi had thought this might be good, really, a chance for Sasuke to take control of something traumatic and turn it outward, while Sakura would get to focus on something she has great potential for. Naruto would struggle, but something he can't just brute force with chakra or pure talent might be good to practise.

Kakashi had also, in his great wisdom, shown it to them, walked through the steps, and told them to practice on the clone. In the same stroke of wisdom, he (as in he as his clone) had allowed them to succeed, because how could he tell they were doing it right otherwise?

Sakura succeeded several times, Sasuke once, right before they called it quits, and Naruto has now sworn to learn at least one genjutsu by the end of the month, or he'll never eat ramen again (Ebisu has a great time to look forward to).

It had all been going quite smoothly, really, until Kakashi dispelled his clone. Chakra returning, incredible. Knowing what it feels like to be aware of your own ephemeral existence and ending it, just to blink and be yourself with a double set of memories, weird as hell. Repeated visions of the name of every person you care for carved into the memorial stone? Fucking awful. Running your sparking hand through the chest of the children you’d give your life to protect, over and over again? Worse. Waking up in a run-down rental apartment, with noisy traffic outside the window and the last two months just a dream? A fear he didn’t know he had.

He groans and manages to turn over on his side. The chakra does return when a shadow clone is dispelled, but apparently that doesn’t entirely fix the shock that having it split off does to the body. Or maybe it was the mental exertion. Fuck if he knows. What he does know is that today is not a good day, and he is not getting out of bed.

Eventually there is another knock, and he draws a deep breath through his nose, even though smells and the flow of air itself hurts.

Gai.

He tries to call come in but it catches in his exhausted throat, mashing into something like "cmih" instead.

A minute or so later a familiar hand reaches in through the cracked open window, tanned skin stark against white paint of the frame. Deft fingers unlatch the support that stops it from striking with the wind.

Gai climbs inside, bringing the scents of fresh sweat, dry earth and warm miso into the room. Eye closed again, Kakashi wiggles out an aching hand from beneath the covers to give a lethargic thumbs up.

-

Chapter Text

It is evening, and Kakashi has hardly moved at all. He sits in bed, cover and blanket wrapped around himself like a cocoon. His back rests against the wall as he sits angled sideways out toward the room. His hair is no doubt a crazed mess again and he hurts all over, the flu-like lethargy and protesting joints making him want to curl up and never move again. He knows it will pass, though it sucks right now.

Gai is still there, sitting at the foot of the bed, and it makes something warm settle in Kakashi’s chest, to be so cared for.

The last light of day is fading outside, leaving mostly shade in the apartment. A little patch of brilliant orange sunlight rays through the room, up into the corner to the right of the door. The warmth of it hits the side of Gai’s face and one of his shoulders, making him look like he’s glowing.

They are in the middle of a challenge, proposed by Gai to a reluctant Kakashi, of building the tallest card tower, no chakra allowed, on the ‘additionally challenging foundation of your place of rest!’ Also known as let’s do something simple, you don’t have to move out of bed.

Kakashi watches the tower Gai gently adds another card to, and considers. His own creation is much less impressive, but still standing. They’ll soon run out of cards, which will make the whole thing moot anyway.

“Don’t move,” he says, and Gai freezes completely. After a moment only his dark eyes shift to look at Kakashi instead of the cards. There’s a question there, but Kakashi isn’t about to explain right now. Instead, he falls forward, blanket cocoon barely missing his own card tower as he reaches out and down, hand grasping blindly.

The not-IKEA plastic tub slides out from underneath the bed with a soft scrape, and a moment later the camera is in his hand. He sits back up, covers falling off his back, again very nearly destroying his pathetic, teetering tower. He hefts the camera.

“Can I?” he makes a vague gesture at Gai, who looks taken aback for a moment.

“Of course, Rival! What a wonderfully youthful idea!” Gai collects himself quickly, and also almost knocks down the cards in his enthusiasm, grinning widely as he holds out a thumbs up. Kakashi can see his fingerprint, as the thumb settles a bit too close to Kakashi’s face and enters the beam of sunlight. It cuts a shaded blob into the shape of light on Gai’s chin. “What pose should I do!?” Gai makes to stand up.

Kakashi interrupts with his free hand grasping for Gai’s arm, and a quickly mumbled “Don’t.” Then he lets go, and leans back to where has been sitting for the last few hours. “Just…” he starts fiddling with the limited settings, hoping that the unmarked wheel he thinks is aperture actually is, or photos in this lighting won’t be much for the world. “Go back to what you were doing.”

“Ah,” Gai laughs, and if this wasn’t Gai Kakashi would think he was self-conscious. “This is some ruse, isn’t it! You are throwing my focus so that you can regain your lead!”

“No. It just looks good.” Kakashi shrugs.

Bashful, Gai finally relents and returns to the card tower, though every now and then glances back at Kakashi, who just squints a smile.

The first photo probably won’t be good. Gai looks awkward, exaggerated concentration twisting his features as he places another card on the tower, leaning forward too much and losing the beautiful light.

By the third, he’s more relaxed, and has stopped paying so much attention to the camera. The sun is back in the right place, too. Kakashi takes a fourth picture for good measure.

“Thanks.” He makes sure to crinkle his eye and puts the camera down on the bedside table, in front of the solitary picture frame. The former Kakashi and his (both of their) students disappear from view. Their companion image of Kakashi’s genin team is still in Naruto’s possession.

Kakashi is not just talking about Gai being a cooperative victim of portraiture.

“You are very welcome.” Gai grins, and the little bit of light that remains glints off his teeth.

They call it a draw when the deck of cards runs out, even though Gai’s tower is at least twice as tall.

Grumbling stomachs has Gai taking over Kakashi’s kitchen, after shuffling the cards back into a neat pile.

“Don’t you have better things to do?” Kakashi stays on the bed, turns on the lamp on the windowsill and snatches up a well-worn copy of Icha-Icha Violence.

“Today is a rest day, Kakashi!” Gai calls from the other room. “I finished my light run before coming here today, and my students all have the day off as well!”

Kakashi can practically hear the Good Guy pose from the other room, and shakes his head to himself. The sound of a sharp knife against a wooden chopping block isn’t too harsh, and he lets himself fade into the world of the book as the smell of roasting onion envelops the apartment.

It’s a short while later, with one Icha-Icha chapter read through and Gai humming something vaguely traditional in the kitchen, when noise from outside the front door alerts him.

There’s a scrape, a tumble, words too muffled to understand and then Sakura’s voice: “You can literally walk on walls, Naruto! You don’t need to climb on Sasuke-kun!”

“Oh yeah! Thanks Sakura-chan!”

Kakashi winces at the telltale crunch of too much chakra crumbling apart stucco. Will he have to pay for that? Gai goes quiet in the other room, no doubt listening in as well.

The trap wire that runs over the top of the door goes slack. There’s a muffled thump of feet on wooden boards.

“See!” Naruto. “Piece of-,” the rest is of too low a volume to be heard. There is quiet scratching in the lock, for only a moment, and then the door swings open.

Kakashi raises his hand in greeting. Naruto comes dashing forward, followed by Sakura, but Sasuke, lockpicks in hand, throws out an arm to block their entry. His eyes are fixed on the two pairs of sandals on the door mat. Kakashi’s, nearly worn out, neatly placed next to Gai’s, larger, newer and smellier.

“Eh!? Let me through Sasuke-teme!” Naruto pushes forward. “HI KAKASHI-SENSEI!” He shouts as if calling across a street, not from the other end of a moderately sized room. His tracksuit has clearly been washed, but still smells like burnt plastic. Kakashi can see a hole in it, by the collar.

“Yo, kids.” Kakashi lets the book droop in his hold.

Sakura waves from behind Sasuke, not determined enough to push past him. She lifts a heavy plastic bag with an arm that’s barely shaking. “We got stuff for dinner!”

“Hn.” Sasuke steps aside to let Sakura through, eyeing Kakashi and the room in general with suspicion.

“How wonderfully thoughtful of you!” Gai’s voice booms from the little hall to the kitchen.

Naruto shrieks.

Everyone freezes for a moment, then Gai laughs. “It is an honour to finally meet my Eternal Rival’s most Youthful Students!”

“Maa,” Kakashi sighs, but lets himself smile. “Maito Gai, genin. Genin, Maito Gai.” He flaps a hand half-heartedly between them.

“Kakashi-sensei, that’s not a proper introduction!” Sakura scolds him immediately. Then she hugs the full plastic bag to her chest and bows. “I am Haruno Sakura, it’s nice to meet you!”

Sasuke’s eyes have been flicking between Gai and Kakashi, now they glance over Sakura before landing on Gai again. “Hn. Uchiha Sasuke.” He doesn’t bow.

“YOU!” Naruto points at Gai in lieu of introducing himself. “You’re- you’re-! You have super Bushy-Brows! Bushy-Brows’ dad!”

Gai, bless him, brushes off the absolute lack of manners and shakes his head, tears in the corners of his eyes as he smiles. “Ah, that I would be so honoured to be seen as similar to my incredible student! No, young Naruto! I am only Lee’s Sensei!”

“Stop being rude, Naruto,” Kakashi says without any measure of effort. He sticks the book under his pillow and stands, pulling the blanket with him. He’s wearing full blues, but feeling shivery enough that he’s not ready to let go of the warm, fleece-y comfort. Then he turns to Gai. “How much food is there?”

“More than enough!” Gai gives them all a blinding smile and dramatic thumbs up. “No need to cook tonight, there is plenty for all of us!”

The kids are all varying levels of uncertain, but as the evening goes on they start to relax. They sit on the bedroom floor and eat Gai’s (only a little too spicy) soup out of various containers. Kakashi holds Uhei’s dog bowl close and lets it warm his chest.

Naruto chatters happily, delighted to have another adult’s attention as Gai listens attentively. The ever-present desperation is faint today, and despite the endless stream of questions and comments the kid isn’t anywhere near as disruptive as he has been.

Sasuke watches, listens, and doesn’t say much, but he eats Gai’s cooking without hesitation.

Sakura starts out overwhelmed, but soon she bickers freely with Naruto and asks Gai about the whole ‘rival’ business.

All three of them turn to look at Kakashi with incredulous expressions as Gai extols the virtue of friendly competition and the Great Value in having a Truest Rival to Measure Oneself Against.

Kakashi shrugs. “It’s good.”

“Ah, Kakashi!” Gai gasps, “so Hip and Cool in your brevity! IF ONLY I could be as collected!” He flops sideways against Kakashi, who pats his head. The silky black strands are so soft.

Kakashi hums. “I meant to ask you, Gai. When you have time, Sasuke here could learn a lot from you and Lee.” He sees the understanding dawn in the shifts of tension around Gai’s eyes, as he puts the dots together. Only a few hours ago Kakashi told him about their young Uchiha struggling as he measures himself against the innately talented powerhouse that is Naruto; and how Kakashi himself doesn’t know how to address that.

“WHAT!?” Naruto cuts in before Gai has the chance to reply. “What about me Kakashi-sensei!?”

“Maa, Naruto,” Kakashi reaches out and pats his hair too. “I was thinking you, me and Sakura could do some weapons training! Sasuke is ahead of you guys there, so it’s a good exchange.”

Sasuke looks unhappy, the tilt to his mouth tense as he moves to speak. Gai cuts in before he can.

“I would be delighted! Sasuke-kun! It would be my honour and pleasure to aid in your education!”

Sasuke pauses, and Kakashi takes the chance to speak up again. “He’s the best taijutsu specialist in Konoha.”

“Fine,” Sasuke finally agrees. It will be good for him, Kakashi hopes.

Sakura raises her hand a little, as if she’s in class but shy about it. “I want to try a sword, Sensei.”

-

The kitchen is grey and sad in the light of early morning. The green cupboards barely look cheery at all, and Mr Ukki seems almost surreal in the dim, cold light. Kakashi leans back in his chair, trying to muster the will to live. Sakura sits across from him, hair brushed to sleek perfection, and he is pretty sure she’s wearing mascara. Despite that she looks about as awake as he feels.

It had seemed like a good idea when working out a trial schedule around her Genin Corps missions, but maybe they should scrap the mornings. It’s clearly torture on both of them.

“Right,” Kakashi clears his throat. Sakura takes a reluctant sip of tea and grimaces. She had refused sugar, when he offered. “Do you know what this is?” He holds up a blank slip of paper.

Her eyes widen. “Is it chakra paper? Sasuke-kun told me Asuma-sensei showed them, it’s really expensive!”

“Correct!” Kakashi smiles. He has a stack of four, found tucked inside the cover of a rarely (if ever) opened textbook, on the shelf below the Icha-Icha series. The receipt with them was dated to the week before the Wave mission. Finding them felt a little bit like interacting with a ghost.

He hands her the slip and tells her to channel just a little chakra, and nods in confirmation when it crumbles to dust. Sakura gasps.

“Earth nature,” Kakashi confirms. “Let’s head out to practice, I’ll show you something to get started with.”

“Wasn’t today supposed to be taijutsu?” Sakura says reluctantly as she gets up and pours her remaining tea into the sink. Despite the grey, her hair remains very pink, the cool tones of the light picking up near purple hints in it, making a complimentary contrast against the muted cupboards.

“Maa, I’m too tired for taijutsu,” he grumbles, as if today wouldn’t have been one of the mornings he’d be training with Gai if not for taking on Sakura’s teaching. (Though, considering the lingering weight in his bones, it would probably have ended up yet another recovery day.)

Sakura breathes a sigh of relief at that. He considers the ANBU drills he’ll be basing her conditioning on.

“Don’t worry though,” he says, sticking his feet into his sandals. “Next week we start death week!” It’s what Shisui used to called it, when new members cycled into team Ro and Kakashi got to whip them into shape.

The girl stands frozen in apparent fear at that, while Kakashi presses his ear to the door. The wood is solid and warm against his skin. Today will be roasting. He can already imagine the unpleasant amounts of sweat that will soak every person in the village. Some of the shops have air conditioning, but it’s rare.

“Uhm,” Sakura says after a short while. “What are you doing, Sensei?”

“I insulted the post-nin,” Kakashi confesses, still trying to hear any hints of her. “I can’t run into her again.”

There is no sound that he can pick up, but there wouldn’t be if anyone was far down the landing, by the stairs. He gently cracks the door to get a good whiff of scent from outside.

“Why are you like this,” Sakura sighs.

-

"This is a good, first earth-release ninjutsu,” Kakashi explains. The sun has just risen over the trees in the training ground, an area ridiculously large for their purposes but where jutsu can be used freely. “It’s relatively safe, limited by chakra input and controlled by intent.”

He runs through the hand sighs so she can see them clearly, and a small mud wall rises between them.

“As you get more experienced, you can modify the look of it.” He repeats it, and touches the top of the wall, which rises as well into a life-size replica of Pakkun. It’s fun, and not that draining. He idly wonders if there are sculptors out there specialising in this kind of thing. There must be, considering the giant monument of the Hokage presiding over the village. "Now you do it."

"Eh?” Sakura squeaks. “I don't know how!"

"I just demonstrated it. Twice.” Slowly as well. “Try to remember what I did, and the sequence of hand signs."

"But you were talking at the same time, Sensei." She frowns, as if she hadn’t gotten the hang of tree walking in the span of an afternoon.

"Yes.” He puts his hands on his hips. “You should take in information through all senses, and decide what’s relevant."

"So… I shouldn't listen?" she smiles cheekily.

"Exactly." Wait. "Wait. No, Sakura!” He waves as if to dissipate his words, “I mean precisely what I just said!” He turns to the sky and closes his eye, thinking.

It takes a moment to order his thoughts.

“It’s… Look. In the future, you will be facing situations where you have to act on very little intel, and catching the right thing could be important to the mission, or to the survival of your team. So, we practise."

He turns back to see her thoughtful expression.

"Okay, Sensei." She nods and adjusts her gloves.

"Right. Then demonstrate what you remember of the hand signs. No chakra, just the signs."

She gets nearly two thirds of them right and in order. Not bad, for a first go.

-

“Does this look Naruto-sized to you?” He holds up the standard uniform jumper to show Tenzo, who stares at it blankly.

“I have no idea, senpai.”

“Hmm…” Kakashi grabs one size larger, to be on the safe side. He has no idea where Naruto gets his tracksuits, but the one he’s still been wearing is falling apart, and at least this will give him options. Options not usually available to genin, even. Or, rather, ones that genin usually can’t afford, with the uniforms being heavily subsidised for chuunin and above. The vests are restricted, of course, but armour weave and reinforced blues and blacks are not.

“Why are you shopping for your student?” Tenzo asks in a complete deadpan, but he smells faintly curious.

“He doesn’t have adults help him much,” Kakashi shrugs. “It’s something I can do. Besides, he won’t know it’s us!” The supply shop is nearly empty this time of day, and it’s just shelf after shelf of identically designed items, with variations in size and cut. The fact that there’s sizes smaller than what he guesses is Naruto’s makes him uncomfortable in ways he doesn’t want to articulate.

Tenzo looks doubtful – well, he mostly looks blank faced, but Kakashi thinks the miniscule squint of his large, round eyes means doubt. It’s oddly refreshing, if very disorienting, how much he knows about the guy through Obito’s eye.

If it wasn’t a classified subject, with likely no surviving answer, Kakashi would be curious about the heritage of Tenzo’s clan as well. In the terms of the maybe-fake world he remembers, Tenzo looks the most western of anyone he has met in Konoha so far.

Kakashi would readily admit he’s curious about the wider world beyond the Elemental Nations. What do other, distant societies look like, if shinobi have powers like this and creatures like the bijuu exist? Does anyone know, or are they cut off from the rest of the world? As far as he can tell the planet should be a similar size to Earth, and if so, it seems very unlikely that this continent makes up all of the inhabited land.

He grabs another set of clothes for good measure, and some of the armoured mesh. Is it favouritism, buying this much for Naruto and not the others? Does it matter if it is? About a moment later he decides that he doesn’t care. If either Sasuke or Sakura were in need in the same way, he’d help them too.

“Come on, kouhai,” he tells Tenzo as they exit the shop, Kakashi’s wallet significantly lighter. “Groceries next.”

-

“Sensei, who is that?” Sakura stares past Kakashi as he arrives for Team Seven’s self-imposed training.

Naruto is staring too. He’s wearing fresh, standard issue blues, just a bit too big, which is a very weird sight, as much as Kakashi had been hoping for it.

Sasuke’s eyes are narrowed in either constipation or suspicion.

Kakashi looks over his shoulder, where Tenzo for the first time hasn’t vanished to watch them from a distance. He looks like he always does, which to be fair is quite menacing. Not to mention the inhuman smell, which the genin might subconsciously pick up on.

“Kids,” Kakashi says, sticking his hands in his pockets. “This is Yamato. My stalker.”

Sakura growls (at him, not Tenzo), Naruto gasps, Sasuke slaps his own face and Tenzo hangs his head. Beautiful.

From there they follow up on the Hell Viewing Technique. Naruto is still working on genjutsu basics, but he’s managing short periods where the illusions don’t just shatter, now, and Kakashi is begrudgingly impressed with Ebisu’s instruction.

Sasuke says he now has the jutsu down solid, but his left hand shakes when he offers to demonstrate.

The early evening is cooler than the day was, and it’s a relief when a light breeze picks up. The sun is still bright, but the light less painfully roasting and more of a mellow gold.

"Maa, that's unnecessary," Kakashi cringes visibly and makes a pained expression. "I believe you. Did I mention shadow clones transfer their memories back to you once dispersed?"

Sasuke looks terrified at the implication.

Kakashi continues quickly, so that the kid doesn't have time to spiral. "I saw the Icha-Icha books burn, Sasuke! Let's not do it again!"

Sasuke's expression is now at least a third exasperation. Success.

"Okay," Sasuke agrees, hiding his hands in his pockets. "I want to learn more lightning jutsu."

"Maa," Kakashi says reluctantly, mildly guilty to turn him down. "These are your group training sessions, aren't they? I have another idea, but all three of you have to agree."

"Hn."

His snap decision plan is to practise breaking out of genjutsu, to help them recognise the signs better, and to try and give Sasuke some confidence. He probably should have seen it coming, when it backfires.

They all already know the basics, so he runs through sensory tells (so many people forget about smells, crafting their illusions) and brings up the spinning objects and basic counting tests - the things he’s been using so frequently since Wave they’ve become second nature. They all watch him with clear frowns after that, but he ignores it. He’s told Naruto about the ‘memory loss’, even if the kid didn’t quite seem to believe it.

He and Tenzo demonstrate genjutsu cancellations, and it still seems fine.

Then Kakashi uses a minor effect, just to make it look like the path they’re on, leading through a training ground, is actually a few metres off to the left, veering in under the trees instead of continuing to the exit. It’s not that much greater an effect on the mind than what ANBU use on the daily to stay unnoticed, though environmental instead of localised over a person. He deliberately doesn’t take the number of poles by the throwing range into account, so it should be inconsistent in the illusion.

Sasuke’s jaw is clenched so tight Kakashi worries for his teeth, when Kakashi counts down to form the jutsu.

About thirty seconds in, Sakura has triumphantly broken out, Naruto is wandering off in the direction of the false path and Sasuke… has curled in on himself, hand clamped over his mouth, tears threatening to fall from the corners of his eyes. He staggers to his feet, shaking.

Kakashi feels suddenly cold, releasing the genjutsu immediately. Sasuke gasps and chokes down the vomit Kakashi can smell on his breath.

Shit. He glances at Tenzo.

“Only one of three succeeded,” his dear, idiot kouhai says. “You should continue.”

“I can take it,” Sasuke snarls. He hides it well, but the way his hair sways betrays that he’s still shaking.

Sakura comes up, and puts a hand on Sasuke’s shoulder, which is violently brushed away.

Kakashi hesitates, at a loss. He doesn’t know what the real Kakashi would have done (probably continued, part of him insists), or if that would even be the right thing here.

They repeat the exercise twice more. Naruto frees himself through self-harm both times, and Kakashi isn’t sure he would have caught the genjutsu if he didn’t already know it was happening. Sakura throws around kai like breathing, and only lingers under the illusion to study the hints of falsehood he’s told them will be there.

Sasuke cancels it out after a minute both times, not moving at all, growing paler and paler.

Naruto points, and laughs, and crows how weak Sasuke is to be all rattled from a measly little illusion that’s not even scary like the other one.

They finish off and Kakashi goes to leave with Tenzo, guilt and uncertainty heavy in his gut. Then he looks back to the kids and stops. The three of them look so small and colourful against the vast green and tan of grass, trees and bare dirt paths. He doesn't know what to do, but he knows leaving is a bad idea.

“You go on,” he tells Tenzo, knowing it means he will only move out of sight. One of the benefits of his presence is how scarce those other shadows have become.

Sakura makes her reluctant goodbye as Kakashi approaches again, her parents waiting for her with dinner at home. Naruto lingers, and Kakashi comes to stand by the boys. He waits until Sakura is out of immediate earshot.

“Hey, Sasuke. I’d like to talk.”

When Sasuke doesn’t immediately respond to Kakashi, Naruto grabs Sasuke’s shirt, tanned hand bunching into the rich blue fabric over the other boy’s shoulder. “Ne, Sasuke, you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Sasuke says, though he doesn’t look fine. He doesn’t knock away Naruto’s touch.

“Of course,” Kakashi keeps his tone light. “Do you want to talk about genjutsu with Naruto around, or in private?”

Sasuke somehow goes even stiffer. “I’m fine,” he repeats.

Kakashi hums, and crouches to make himself smaller. A moment later Naruto sits, yanking Sasuke down with him so he crashes on top of Naruto as he loses his balance.

“What are you doing deadlast!” Sasuke awkwardly tries to pull free, wrenching against Naruto’s grip.

“You’re being weird bastard!” Naruto snarls, wrestling Sasuke into the dirt.

Before it can escalate, Kakashi clears his throat. They both freeze, Sasuke’s fist tangled in Naruto’s hair, Naruto pressing him down with a knee to his stomach and Naruto’s underarm clamped between Sasuke’s teeth. Blonde next to black hair, pale skin next to deep tan. As if they were designed to contrast each other, he thinks with no small amount of irony. 

“Sasuke,” Kakashi says. “You said you’d talked to Naruto? So I assume you know about the fox, and I know you know about the fourth.” Naruto’s parents, he doesn’t outright say.

Sasuke grunts in agreement, letting go of Naruto who reluctantly pulls back. Sasuke stays on his back on the ground, grass flattened around him from their scuffle.

“Maybe,” Kakashi says, a bit more harshly than he intends. “You should tell Naruto how the man who killed your family used genjutsu.”

Man, he thinks, of thirteen. It’s cruel, the reality of it, and how Kakashi brings it up, but Sasuke can’t ignore this, or it will become dangerous. It probably is already.

Naruto’s gaze immediately leaves Kakashi to stare down at Sasuke.

“He’s my brother,” the last Uchiha says, twin tracks of tears escaping closed eyelids, running down and back into his hair.

-

People still stare at him wherever he goes.

It's easier with someone else at his side, and he thinks he's mostly coping, but sometimes it just gets too much. People’s looks keep making his skin crawl and neck prickle and the awareness of their attention is like a constant noise he can’t escape.

The times Tenzo is visible are mostly good. Two jounin are obviously more to stare at, but he can ignore it more easily. When Tenzo is instead concealed at the fringes of his awareness (or the rare times he’s gone, Yuugao, though she never walks by him openly), nauseous hypervigilance seems to be his default state. As soon as he sets foot in public, he just wants to bolt.

The memorial stone is his only sanctuary, away from the apartment.

It's hard to leave them, the dead.

Sakura is working for Moriko’s team today, Sasuke is training with Team Ten, and Gai has taken his own genin on an out of village mission, so Kakashi doesn't even have an excuse to leave.

He has no idea where Naruto is, but he assumes he’s harassing Ebisu’s delicate constitution.

The stone is speckled with the droplets of recent rain, drying slowly despite the heat. Konoha’s early summer is heavy with humidity, though the white sky is breaking up with blue, over head.

"I'm tired," he tells Sensei and Obito and Rin. "Things are better than they were, after the Wave mission, but..." He sighs. "Yeah. Tired. The students are adorable, at least."

He finally moves several hours later, the pangs in his stomach and weakness to his limbs alerting him of hunger and dehydration.

It's evening by the time he dresses as Sukea, slinging the camera strap around his neck. He looks forward to revisiting the Nighthawks location, and to have people’s gazes pass him by as any other civilian. He has no idea if this camera can handle low light at all, but he can just get more film if these don’t work out.

-

That week in his meeting with Inoichi the camera is running again. They skirt around serious topics, and talk at length about the concept of ‘the medium is the message’ in art theory. Inoichi seems to remember it from their mind walks, and is interested if it could apply to flowers and gardening.

Obviously it does, Kakashi argues, even if McLuhan didn’t use those examples. A flower bouquet or a slowly cultivated garden carries their own connotations and spaces for interpretation, unavoidable in the delivery of meaning; in an artistic or purely functional way, and of course the functional sense also brings with it the added layer of what it says about the messenger themself, their choice of medium. It seems silly, in the context of shinobi society, to focus even for a little while on the twists and turns of phrase of texts he's sure he'll forget eventually, in word if not in meaning.

Still, he is happy to info dump even if his head feels strangely off-kilter, thinking back to the studies he will never go back to again. Even if the act of concentration itself makes his head hurt. Surely, this is reality.

The thing with his odd, otherworldly memories is that they make sense, and there is no way the Hatake Kakashi who used to be would have been thinking this deeply into a whole field of study he probably never considered the existence of.

“You know,” Inoichi says off-hand, after he flips the switch to the camera. They’re done for the day and standing to leave. He picks up the emptied thermos of tea. Black tea in a yellow container, this time, with blue sunflowers patterned across it. “Accounting for your remembered history you might be, in terms of academia, one of the most well-educated people in Konoha. If you did decide to retire - not now, of course,” he tacks on, “you would have options.”

He snorts. Do you want me to retire, Inoichi-san, he can’t help but think. “People would be interested in essays about photography, or a field of statistics that doesn’t exist?”

“The Daimyo’s wife is a great patron of the arts. And there’s always the civil-servant exams. There’s more to the world than Konoha.”

Kakashi hums and crosses his arms, reveling in the frission of don’t that instinctively rears up. It’s a risky pose around well-trained shinobi, and he wants to feel on edge, not lulled into false security by the familiar setting and Inoichi’s ever-present kindness. “The crazy former S-class ninja who went to court, to do portrait photography and regurgitate the essays of smarter people from another world.”

“Well you are the Copy-nin,” Inoichi smirks. Kakashi rolls his eyes, but does laugh a little too.

“In all honesty,” Kakashi says just before they exit the room, “…there’s too much I care about here, now.”

He can’t see Inoichi’s face as he says it, but there is a tension that fades from the other man’s shoulders.

-

After leaving the Intelligence division Kakashi finds himself at a loss. There are things he could do, but the meeting had been the only set thing on the day’s agenda.

He ends up walking past the memorial stone, a few hours fading into the midday heat.

The thought of a cold drink is what pulls him away. He hesitates, guilty to let something so mundane distract him. It’s nowhere near real dehydration, yet. Obito looks back at him, crushed, staring with an empty eye socket whenever Kakashi blinks.

A little voice in the back of his head tells him he needs to care for his body, if he wants to get better. It sounds suspiciously like Gai.

The cup of iced tea he gets from a hole-in-the-wall shop wets his fingers with cold condensation, and it feels like salvation. He’s been doing mostly fine in Konoha’s temperatures so far, but early June is starting to take its toll with a constant cycle of building pressure and humidity, dramatic rainstorms and increasing heat. Anko’s fashion choices seem increasingly less provocative and more sensible, even if he’d never follow her example.

He's stopped in the shade of a tree at a street corner, the cup that is now mostly just ice pressed over his right eye, when Naruto’s familiar voice calls his name. The kid is waving from a small garden patch across from a book shop down the street. Kakashi heads over reluctantly, not entirely pleased to abandon his shaded sanctuary.

"Ne, Kakashi-sensei," Naruto drawls, with an incredibly suspicious expression. Kakashi has so far in the existence he actually remembers been mercifully spared from pranks, but that face makes him think that's about to change. The boy leans against the low fence beside him so casually it has to be an act. He’s wearing uniform trousers, and shinobi mesh peeks out from underneath a dingy looking orange t-shirt. There’s paint smudges on him. "Do you remember those D-ranks, with the cat?"

"...Yes?" Kakashi hedges. As a cartoon, sure, but it’s still somehow one of his clearest memories from the anime. He even remembers the name of the cat.

Naruto nods, holding his chin in an exaggerated thinking pose. "I wonder if that old lady is coming back soon, I have a plan for her, believe it!" He tacks on an evil cackle that doesn't sound entirely genuine.

What plan? Why does he sound so calm? Kakashi does not trust this for a moment. He sighs. "Don't call the Daimyo's wife 'that old lady', Naruto."

A triumphant light catches in Naruto's eyes, and he grins. "Sure thing Sensei!" The kid turns on his heel and dashes off. "See you later, sensei!"

What the...

He turns to where a conspicuous flowering bush has been rustling out of step with the nearly non-existent breeze for the last few minutes.

"Good choice, to disguise yourself as something that should match your scent, Sakura." He tilts his head and uses a foot to nudge the lowest foliage.

In a puff Sakura appears instead, crouched with a wide, fake smile. She does smell floral, but it's clearly shampoo, not actual flowers.

Kakashi continues, "but you also smell like soap. Get the scentless stuff."

Sakura huffs a little and stands, shaking out her legs, looking shifty. "Okay, Sensei."

"Care to tell me why you're spying on me?

"Ah-," she jumps from where she has started to peer into a nearby alley. She hasn't noticed Tenzo perched on a ledge behind and above her, courteously using only a minor genjutsu to keep attention off himself. "That is..." Sakura seems to grasp for an explanation, then her shoulders square with determination. "Show me under the mask!" She points at his face.

“Now why would I do that?” he tilts his head and squints at her. Didn’t they see his face in Wave? Or did he dream that? He might have dreamt it.

“Because…” Sakura trails off. “Because we DESERVE IT!”

“…No.”

She sighs dramatically, but doesn’t smell disappointed at all.

“Where’s Sasuke?” It seems out of character that he wouldn’t be here as well.

“Oh! Sasuke-kun’s on a mission. He’s on a messenger run to Minamikawa.”

“Ah.” Kakashi can’t help the twinge of anxious worry at the idea of Sasuke leaving the village, but he chokes it down quickly. “Good to know. You’re free today?”

Sakura shakes her head. “Lunch break, Naruto came and got me,” she looks embarrassed and brushes off her shorts. “It seemed more fun than waiting around.”

He hums. “Did you eat?”

“Not yet,” she looks off to the side, not meeting his eye. “Lunch isn’t that important anyway!”

After he sends Sakura away with a kid-size bento, Kakashi admits to himself that he has no idea what to do about the dieting thing.

When he wasn’t actually her teacher it felt like overstepping, but now that she might, and probably will, become his apprentice (which is somewhat terrifying and even more daunting than one student among several) it will be his job to make sure she gets the most out of her training. And trying to get stronger while eating to get smaller does not add up.

Which brings him to this dilemma. He hasn’t dieted for weight loss in his life (as far as he knows, in either life). While he isn’t unfamiliar with training and how to eat for it, in the casual, ‘take care of yourself’ sort of way, the ‘sports performance’ way and the ANBU ‘train as if your life depends on it, because it does’ kind of way, and now with Gai’s help he’s more familiar than ever with eating for recovery, he has no clue about changing a teenage girl’s mindset about food.

Maybe it’s stereotyping of him, and there are surely men who diet for looks here too, but Konoha is pretty set in its gender roles. He needs a kunoichi’s perspective.

The list of people he considers is pathetically short. Anko definitely doesn’t diet, and doesn’t seem the type with the rate she consumes all sorts of sweets. She would probably just leave Sakura traumatised besides. Yuugao, he knows with reasonable certainty, follows an ANBU program for food as well as training. Moriko-san hasn’t addressed Sakura’s habits of eating in something like two months. That leaves Kurenai as the only person he can remember who he also feels reasonably confident about asking.

He'll bring it up next time he sees her, he decides.

-

He has the chance to talk to Kurenai only two days later. Though in hindsight, he could have picked his moment better.

“Do you diet?” Turns out to be a terrible conversation starter in the middle of a group of people.

They’re walking to the bathhouse, Gai dragging Kakashi along after a Dynamic Entry! that left his ears ringing. It’s a dry, dusty day, and the dirt clings to everything, kicked up just by people walking in any place that isn’t entirely paved.

Everyone turns to stare at Kakashi, who feels his cheeks heat and he laughs awkwardly, scratching the back of his head.

Kurenai, the paragon of elegance that she’s turning out to be, just raises a judgemental eyebrow. “I don’t think that’s any of your business, Kakashi.”

Next to her Asuma looks incredibly unimpressed.

“No, no - I mean,” Kakashi sighs and hangs his head, trying to find better words.

Genma laughs at him, Raidou shakes his head in clear disappointment and Anko cackles. “Oh you’re going to die, prettyboy,” she crows.

“It’s about Sakura, okay,” he begs, hiding behind Gai so Anko can’t get him. “I need advice!”

“Okay, okay, simmer down!” Kurenai calls. She shakes her head and falls into step next to Kakashi, who has to dodge a final swipe from Anko. He’s not quite clear if the latter intended to scratch him with poison or pull his hair, and he’s not eager to find out.

“What’s the problem then,” Kurenai asks. A bunch of the others are obviously listening, but he knew that much would happen when broaching this in public.

“Well, mostly she eats very little. It can’t be good for her? But I don’t know what kunoichi are taught, or how to talk about it.”

Anko makes a grunt of agreement. Asuma walks a little closer, cigarette between his lips but politely unlit.

“Ah, I see,” Kurenai nods in understanding. “You know, a lot of us, but especially kunoichi in the lower ranks, have a lot of pressure when it comes to looks.” She grimaces a little, but somehow the expression remains very pleasant. She moves like someone very aware of what they look like, Kakashi realises, reminded of some models he’s known and photographed, in the life he maybe didn’t live. “It doesn’t always shake out well.”

“That makes sense,” Kakashi says, cringing internally. “And it sucks?” He keeps his hands casually in his pockets, slouching as he walks.

“Yeah,” Anko buts in again. “It does. I had an eating disorder for a bit. In the end-,” she trails off. “In the end Sensei had to knock some sense into me.” The tangential reference to Orochimaru has less reaction than Kakashi would have expected, though maybe the set of Anko’s jaw has something to do with that.

A lot of the men in the group look awkward, though. Kakashi sure would, he knows, if his natural default wasn’t just mission ready.

Kurenai rolls her eyes at the others, after gently nudging Anko who has stuck herself very close to her. “If we don’t talk about it won’t get better,” she says. “And all of us who have students have girls on our teams.”

As they move through Konoha’s main leisure district Kurenai explains a little about the mentality around beauty, for women overall and kunoichi in particular; how it’s expected to be used as a tool, hammered in from a very young age. Only the elderly, the very strong, and those with a well-established clan culture opposing it tend to be exempt. Even then, those who don’t fit the mould are often socially punished.

Kakashi knows some of it maps with the other world’s societies, and some of his sister’s complaints growing up.

“You know what,” Kurenai says as she stops before the entrance to the baths. “Let’s get all our genin girls together and talk about food. Kunoichi to kunoichi. Anko, you in?”

Anko wrinkles her nose and puts her hands on her hips, sweeping back the sides of her coat. Her generous chest is only covered in mesh, with crosses of black tape stuck over her nipples. Kakashi averts his eye, but he’s only human and she’s clearly doing it on purpose, so there’s an unavoidable eyeful before he succeeds.

“Yeah,” Anko sighs. “Why the hell not.”

-

Kakashi has only just sunk into the warm water, flimsy handkerchief looped over his ears instead of a mask, when Ebisu joins them.

The steam is unpleasant in the summer warmth, but the water has immediately taken some of the ache out of his ever-hurting joints, and he feels pleasantly drowsy within minutes of arrival.

The outdoor hot pools are not actual hot springs but modelled after them, natural-seeming boulders placed strategically throughout, and stone that doesn’t match Konoha’s natural bedrock carved out to make large, welcoming areas with gently trickling water from one to the other. Gnarled trees make the whole outdoor part of the baths pleasantly shady.

Gai is next to him, chatting quietly with Raidou while Genma has his eyes closed on Raidou’s other side. Their shoulders are pressed together, Genma and Raidou’s, and they have both covered their ANBU tattoos - they were hidden before they even undressed. Kakashi honestly forgot his own until it was too late, but no one batted an eye.

Asuma is off at the other end of the pool, chatting to an older Aburame man Kakashi doesn’t recognise. The bugs are unmistakeable, though, and seem to all be gathered on, in and around the guy’s head and shoulders to escape the hot water. It’s fascinating, and Kakashi wishes he could stare just a little. He may not be the most socially conscious, but he knows that would be rude as fuck.

Ebisu greets them and is enthusiastically welcomed by Gai in turn, with the others chiming in with various quiet words and waves. Kakashi just lifts a lazy hand out of the water, then lets it fall again. There’s orange paint clinging to Ebisu’s hair, and he looks a bit harried.

“How’s teaching treating you?” Kakashi asks with a decent dose of vindictive satisfaction. He wonders if Ebisu remembers that he wanted to talk to Kakashi, quite some time ago now.

Ebisu is quickly turning red, from the water or embarrassment Kakashi can’t say, and looks oddly vulnerable without his sunglasses. Then he huffs and leans back against the pool’s edge, across from the others.

“You were right,” Ebisu says, rolling his eyes. “He does have potential.”

Kakashi raises his eyebrows in surprise, then lets himself smirk. “See? It wasn’t so hard.”

“No,” Ebisu pinches the bridge of his nose. “It really, really is so hard. That kid… He has far too much enthusiasm, for all the wrong things, and I’m not quite clear on if he has a severe learning disability or if he’s been so badly neglected his reading level is on par with students half his age! Not to start on how much energy he has and how bad he is at directing it!”

Their whole section of the pool has gone quiet at Ebisu’s outburst.

“Oi, Ebisu…” Genma throws a look at Kakashi.

Kakashi meanwhile feels Gai’s hand settle on his shoulder, as if ready to hold him back.

“Maa,” Kakashi sighs. “I’m way too relaxed to fight right now.” He sinks further into the bath, eye narrowed in Ebisu’s direction. It would be very easy to open the Sharingan and freak him out, just a little bit.

“I- I don’t,” Ebisu blusters. ”It’s not his fault,” he finally concludes. “And he is monstrously talented on the physical side of things. I am up to the challenge.”

“Good,” Kakashi acknowledges, as much as he twitches at Ebisu’s word choice. “I think the orange paint means he likes you.”

Ebisu starts combing through his hair looking for paint he’d failed to rid himself of, and Kakashi closes his eye.

-

It was only a matter of time before things went truly to shit.

Kakashi has been complacent, lulled into a false sense of security with the fucking delusion that he knows what is coming. He tries to teach the genin about genjutsu, but has failed to consider the illusions cast by his own broken mind.

It’s a normal weekday. The early summer sun is blotted out by waterlogged clouds, the humidity stifling and the world smoothed out into flat colours with little contrast. He would have called the sky ominous in hindsight, but in the moment it’s just like any other cloudy day.

Kakashi takes the bag of vegetables from the clerk with a nod, the plastic rustling as it’s pressed between his fingers. The shop’s air conditioning whirrs loudly and sputters, close to giving out.

The girl chirps a friendly “see you next time!” with the kind of rote friendliness he remembers echoing in his own head, after one too many shifts working a till when he was younger.

“Did you hear what happened?” An Inuzuka looking teenage boy says, stepping up after Kakashi in the queue and adressing the girl, who he clearly knows. “To Sarutobi-sama?”

The Sandaime? Kakashi pauses and pretends to look at the cover of a magazine. No, they would have said the Hokage. Asuma?

“I know,” the girl at the till replies. “I heard from Kento like ten minutes ago. It’s horrible. And it just happened, right? Uchiha-sama, too.”

“What happened?” Kakashi cuts in, using the same tone Obito’s crystal clear recollection tells him he used in ANBU, calling report as his team checks in.

“Oh,” the Inuzuka kid jumps, the red marks on his face stark like blood against his pale skin. “Someone attacked Sarutobi-sama, he’s critical and in hospital. His genin team got hurt too.”

Kakashi is running before he knows if they have anything else to say.

-

Chapter Text

The shinobi hospital reception area is worn, clean, and smells like blood and sickness. There are staff behind a long, solid desk, and a large waiting area mercifully near-empty, with rows of pale blue plastic seats. Tenzo half-jogs to keep up as Kakashi strides in, the glass doors swinging behind them.

Kakashi knows he was here before, taken directly from T&I when they were done with him. He barely remembers it.

He registers a numbered waiting system, a roll of tags in a red holder, by a sheet of instructions stapled to the wall. He ignores it, ignores the indignant young chuunin who calls out a “Hey!” and ignores the baffled look a familiar nurse watches him with as he goes straight for the desk.

“Uchiha Sasuke.”

“I’m sorry, sir, you have to take a tag and wait your turn,” a tired looking woman says, her eyes bloodshot and she smells like hair grease and hospital soap.

“Hatake-san,” the familiar face cuts in. Yoshida-san, his name finally clicks. Wears very squeaky shoes but is happy to put up with all sorts of bullshit 'if you will just stay in bed, Hatake-san'. “The patient in question is not cleared for visitation.”

“I need to see him.”

Yoshida-san has a whispered discussion with the tired woman, which amounts to he’s just going to find the right window if we don’t show him the way.

“All right,” Yoshida-san signs something in a ledger. “Your registration number please. I can validate that you are the patient’s jounin sensei.”

He’s not anymore, but he was the last time he was checked in here, and he’s not about to argue a point that will make this harder. He rattles off his number.

Yoshida-san makes Tenzo stay in the reception area.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” are Tenzo’s parting words, as Kakashi squashes every part of him that burns to hurry, and follows Yoshida-san inside the hospital proper.

-

There are three beds in the room, the curtains open to show the hospital garden outside, muddled by rain and the light dimmed by the heavy clouds. Drops patter on the windowsill, calm and steady and ominous. Two beds hold small, unconscious figures hooked up to monitors and there is a low, constant whirr and whoosh of an oxygen tank by the bed in the middle. Closest to the door Ino Yamanaka lies still as the dead, deeply asleep.

At the furthest bed, by the window, sits the one conscious occupant of the room. Akimichi Choji, always, usually, the largest boy among his peers, is skin and bones, a large cast on his left leg from foot to upper thigh. He’s hooked up to three IV bags, but otherwise it’s just him and a tray of food he isn’t eating (rice, some kind of meat stew and cucumber, Kakashi’s nose tells him).

Between them in the final bed, Uchiha Sasuke lies still as if dead, a tube connecting to a hole in his throat, and endless wires running to his vitals. Everything reads steady. Outside the grey, ominous pressure is finally releasing into dark, pouring sheets of heavy rain.

Kakashi takes in the scene with the blink of his eye, and then he’s by the foot of Sasuke’s bed.

Yoshida-san startles but follows inside.

“Kakashi-sensei,” Choji breathes, fear, exhaustion and the smallest hint of hope in his voice.

Kakashi grabs the clipboard hung on the foot of Sasuke’s bed, metal hooks noisy against the metal frame. Vitals checked every half hour, minor wounds and abrasions, tended to, a partially collapsed trachea, hence the tube. Chakra exhaustion. Non-critical. Something inside that was pouring acid into his veins releases some of its death grip in his chest.

“Choji-kun,” Kakashi greets, forcing himself to turn away from Sasuke’s still form. “What happened?”

“There was, I don’t know who they were, they attacked us at the training ground.” Choji’s speech is slow and stilted.

Yoshida-san interrupts. “Choji-kun gave his statement just a few minutes ago. He needs to rest.”

Choji shakes his head and says to Yoshida-san, “Is Asuma-sensei okay?”

“He’s still in surgery,” Yoshida-san replies. “We’ll know more soon.”

Choji turns back to Kakashi. “Sasuke kept Asuma-sensei alive after they got him. Naruto, Sakura-chan and Tenten-kun showed up and we all fought together, but something went wrong with Ino’s jutsu, she didn’t come back to her body. The- we got some of them but the rest escaped, with the person Ino tried to mind-transfer to. Shikamaru, with Naruto and Sakura-chan followed them, out the village, and they haven’t come back.”

Ice pours down Kakashi’s spine and he just about hears Choji continue.

“Our dads are going to see the Hokage now.”

“Thank you, Choji-kun. You did well.” He can’t bring himself to force a smile. The window is right there, and his fingers flip the latch before he’s made a conscious decision. He ignores Yoshida-san’s resigned sigh. “We will get them back. If he wakes up…” he glances to Sasuke. “Tell him that.”

He knows Tenzo is waiting for him downstairs, and he doesn’t care.

-

Kakashi is about to enter at the top floor when he smells Inoichi Yamanaka through an open window on the floor below.

He doesn’t hide from the stationed ANBU and Tanuki, Genma, steps out, visible for a moment behind the Hokage’s office. Kakashi salutes, and slips inside the building, into the hallway outside the Hokage's office, where he had last waited for his reprimand.

The scrolls are starkly black on white, as before. Perseverance. Power. Honour and Trust. Fire, still above the double doors. He stands outside the office, tap tap tap of water dripping off his soaked clothing onto the floor as he hesitates.

Downstairs a door opens, and before it closes again Kakashi hears Inoichi's broken voice "I know, but Shikaku, she's-," the sound is cut off again by the click of the door.

He waits.

It is only minutes before they arrive, Inoichi, Shikaku and Chouza. All three with determined strides and grim expressions.

He doesn't move aside, and Inoichi pauses.

"Take me with you,” Kakashi says.

"Hatake." Shikaku's voice is stiff. "You are on indefinite leave."

"I want to help." He turns to Inoichi. "You know I didn't lose everything." He taps the left edge of his forehead protector. Hound used to be the second-best tracker in ANBU. The Kakashi he is now still has that, preserved by Obito so he’ll never forget.

There is a moment of tense silence. Inoichi’s hair is wet, his red haori darker at the shoulders.

Kakashi continues before any of them say anything else. "If I become a detriment I will stand back." He can't stop feeling like this is his fault. Ino lying motionless, Choji a spindly figure, a small, starving child alone with other injured children. Sasuke breathing through the tube in his throat. Asuma-

Naruto and Sakura somewhere out there, facing unknown opponents.

He hopes they haven't caught up to their targets. He knows it's selfish, when Ino could be lost forever.

"How is this even a question?" Chouza scoffs. His large bulk fills the hallway behind his two smaller teammates. "Bring him."

Finally Shikaku nods.

Sarutobi Hiruzen doesn’t bid them to enter from within his office - instead he arrives through the same side entrance Kakashi had used. Water runs over the Fire written on his white hat, pours down in front of him as he tips his head to shake it off. Two ANBU flank him and they all pause beside the doors, facing the trio of Ino-Shika-Cho with Kakashi between them.

Then the Hokage speaks. “I have received the barest report. We will learn what happened in detail shortly. Please enter.” At that, one of the ANBU, Squirrel, opens the doors for for him and the Hokage enters first, the rest of them trailing behind.

Before the doors shut, Tenzo slips inside.

“We are going,” Chouza announces, stepping forward. His red hair has fluffed up hugely with the humidity, making his large silhouette even larger. There is still half the room’s distance between the Akimichi clan head and the Hokage’s desk. It doesn’t seem like much space at all and a great chasm all the same.

"No," the Hokage says. "Shikaku is too valuable to the village, to risk on a mission like this." Behind him the day is dark, and Kakashi sees the flare of distant lightning.

The three clan heads stand in silent unity before the desk, and Kakashi can smell the fury. None of them are kneeling. Kakashi himself is behind them, to the side, back straight and hands at his sides. The urge to kneel before the Hokage is overwhelming, but it would make a contrast to the others he doesn’t want to bring attention to.

Tenzo meanwhile kneels down, on the other side of the entrance in parallel to Kakashi’s position.

Shikaku breaks the silence. "Understood. Hokage-sama."

The Hokage turns to Chouza. "However. You do have Konoha’s full support. You may assemble a four-man jounin squad. This incursion is a direct threat, delivered within our walls, and it can not be allowed to stand. Your mission priority is the retrieval of the mind of Yamanaka Ino, or, should she be beyond mortal reach, to eliminate her assailants. You are permitted to make a message out of the culprits."

Shikaku speaks up. "Bring one back for interrogation."

The Sandaime nods his assent. “Your secondary objective.”

Kakashi can see Inoichi's hands clasped behind his back, grip so tight they are entirely white.

"I want Inoichi, Hatake Kakashi and Hyuuga Tokuma," Chouza says.

Shikaku nods with approval.

"Hatake Kakashi is currently on medical leave and prohibited from leaving the village," the Hokage dismisses.

"He will be under my direct supervision." The first words Inoichi has uttered since entering the office.

The Hokage hums, considering. Before the verdict comes, running steps announce a new arrival. Kakashi opens the door at the Sandaime’s gesture.

A chuunin dashes inside, a young man, black hair, brown eyes, brown skin, a gash across one temple reaching down to the corner of his mouth. The Hokage greets him as Yanto. After a formal bow, pausing a moment too long in the pose to breath heavily, he immediately launches into a verbal report. The kid is visibly jittery with so many eyes focused on him.

“This is the report regarding the incident earlier today, involving Team Ten as well as genin Uchiha Sasuke, Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura, Tenten, and eight reported assailants.”

The stillness aside from Yanto’s words and the rain pouring outside is absolute. There is not even a curling wisp of smoke from the Hokage’s pipe.

“By multiple accounts Uchiha Sasuke appears to have been the primary target. Therefore, this preliminary report follows his timeline.” Yanto takes a deep breath. Kakashi can’t see his face, but by the wincing tilt of his head he imagines the scar pulling awkwardly over his cheek.

Yanto continues. “In chronological order, the events have been reported as follows: Uchiha Sasuke, on chuunin team Umeko, returned to the village today at eleven hundred hours. Umeko gave his initial, verbal report of a successful C-rank mission at eleven twenty-two. The mission has been retroactively upgraded to B-rank. It is as of yet unknown whether the complications during team Umeko’s mission are related to today’s attack.

“During this mission, a standard message run to Konoha Outpost Delta, there was attempted interference by a Grass missing nin, one Takahiro Sauro, chuunin at the time of defection. Takahiro was only entered into the Bingo Book as of last publication. He attacked Team Umeko on the road west, three days out.

“Unconfirmed speculation suggests he may have been paid to disrupt Konoha operations, though now an investigation whether his actions tie into today’s altercation will need to be conducted. Team Umeko neutralised Takahiro and sealed his body in a scroll for bounty collection. The team received mild to moderate injury only, and proceeded to complete their mission without further issue. They received basic medical attention at Delta.” Yanto’s breath begins to even out, and he stands straighter.

“Upon return to Konoha, Uchiha Sasuke first went to his residence and then convened with Team Ten for lunch. ANBU Cricket had eyes on Uchiha from his entry at the main gates until he was safely in the company of Sarutobi Asuma.

“Uchiha alongside Team Ten proceeded from Yakiniku Q to training ground six at approximately thirteen hundred hours. Shortly after their arrival is when and where they were attacked by eight as of yet unknown assailants.

“The genin, these being Akimichi Choji, Yamanaka Ino and Nara Shikamaru as well as Uchiha Sasuke, engaged in combat alongside jounin Sarutobi Asuma. The latter neutralised two of the attackers before one of them brought him down. Preliminary hospital reports detail a primary injury of a severed spinal cord.

“Uchiha Sasuke Sharingan developed during the altercation and he neutralised another assailant. He was briefly gripped around the throat by one of them, cracking his trachea, before he used an unidentified lightning-release ninjutsu to repel the attack. Nara, Akimichi and Yamanaka continued the engagement, while Uchiha administered emergency medical treatment to Sarutobi Asuma on Nara's instrution.”

Kakashi is buzzing to run, to act. He knows moving without all the intel they have would be a bad idea, but by every minute that passes he can almost feel the trails through the forest wash away in the rain.

“During the proceeding engagement Akimichi was non-critically injured with a broken leg. Yamanaka used her clan's mind transfer jutsu on one of the assailants. She was apparently successful at first, but her body suffered a traumatic head injury and she did not awaken.

“Once injured Akimichi removed himself from the immediate engagement and fired a signal flare. Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura and Tenten, all genin rank, arrived on the scene, presumably on their way already with reported plans to convene with Uchiha. They joined the altercation and placed themselves under Nara's command.

“Nara deduced that Yamanaka’s consciousness was likely still within the assailant, and this has been deemed highly likely by Yamanaka Inoin after initial assessment of her body.

“According to all corroborating reports, the attackers were intently focused on Uchiha, and the five remaining fled once the numbers of Konoha shinobi on site increased. They took with them the individual possessed by Yamanaka Ino, Tenten’s report indicating them to also be unconscious at the time.

“Uzumaki, Haruno and Nara left in immediate pursuit. Tenten remained at the scene and assisted Akimichi while Uchiha kept Sarutobi alive. Uchiha collapsed with suspected chakra exhaustion upon the arrival of medical support with Village Patrol 2B, also summoned by Akimichi's signal flare.

“Sarutobi, Akimichi and Uchiha as well as Yamanaka's living body were brought to hospital. Tenten alongside Patrol 2B, excluding their medic, diverted to the tower for immediate report.

“According to Akimichi's account, Uchiha stated that the technique used to neutralise Sarutobi was a medical chakra scalpel. Corroborated by Akimichi and Tenten, the assailants were all disguised as unfamiliar Konoha shinobi. Three bodies have been collected at the scene.

ANBU Jackal received Akimichi's report in hospital. This full assessment was compiled three minutes ago.”

Yanto bows at the conclusion of his report, and steps to the side. The Hokage sits thoughtful for a moment, then pulls a scroll from a desk drawer and begins to write with the sure, swift strokes of a brush. The calm, traditional scene of a man in robes writing against the backdrop of a rainy village is surreal in the glow of electric bulbs, and coloured with the unbearable rush of undirected adrenaline.

“Team Chouza," the Hokage speaks, "with Yamanaka Inoichi, Hatake Kakashi and Hyuuga Tokuma. Your mission is as stated to retrieve the consciousness of Yamanaka Ino and neutralise or apprehend these assailants.” He lifts the brush from the scroll. An aide dries the ink, and passes it to an ANBU agent who becomes momentarily visible, before vanishing out the window as the Hokage begins on another. “Should you come across the reported genin in pursuit, you are to instruct them to shelter in place.”

“Team Eight under Yuuhei Kurenai will retrieve Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura and Nara Shikamaru. Yamato will assist team Eight.” The Sandaime looks up to adress Tenzo, and the seconds scroll is passed off like the first. “Your primary mission is to ensure the retrieval of Uzumaki Naruto. This mission is complete once Uzumaki is in the custody of Yuuhei Kurenai, or if circumstances prevent when he is returned to Konoha. Your secondary mission is to neutralise all outside entities who may have learned of Uzumaki’s jinchuuriki status.”

Finally the Hokage looks to them all and says, “The Will of Fire burns within all of you. Dismissed.”

Tenzo vanishes, Chouza and Inoichi turn on their heels and exit by the main doors. Kakashi follows.

As they are walking Chouza says, "We meet at the training ground in ten minutes."

Kakashi looks to Inoichi. “Bring something with the scent of the targets. I’m assuming the bodies have been taken to Intelligence?”

Inoichi gives his assent, and they go their separate ways without another word. Kakashi is out the window before he can even pause to think about it.

Eight minutes from exiting the Hokage tower they are gathering at training ground six.

Inoichi and Chouza arrive three minutes after Kakashi. He has everything he needs in scrolls and pockets and pouches in the vest he wears every time he leaves his apartment. It had felt almost silly, to carry it all around after Wave, when he was convinced he was not and could not ever be a ninja. Now there is only placid satisfaction in that he never gave up the habit left behind by the real Kakashi.

Ino's pale form is wrapped in a solid sling, her body pressed against Chouza's back beneath a large hooded coat. Kakashi's insides itch.

The rain shows no sign of subsiding, heavy droplets sliding over his and Inoichi’s vests and thrumming on Chouza’s hood. Everything is dulled by the smell of fresh water striking earth.

“They said Asuma was brought down with a medical chakra technique,” Kakashi says, looking to Inoichi, “could it be..?”

He thinks of the grey haired guy from the chuunin exam arc, the fake genin with his suspicious cards. Orochimaru’s lackey who Kakashi thinks he remembers sticking around for a long time, in the story, causing problems. He can’t remember his name.

“It could be,” Inoichi says grimly. “But we don’t know yet. He wasn’t among the bodies we have.”

Tokuma arrives two minutes after the others, in standard uniform. His white eyes survey the scene in a moment, somehow even more stark in the dull grey of the day. The visual trail away is quickly fading in the rain, though the signs of a fight are still clear for all to see. There’s blood spilled, so plentiful it hasn’t yet washed away.

Smells overlap smells and it’s hard to make anything out, made worse by unfamiliarity and the weather working against them.

“I have the scents.” Inoichi pulls a clear zip lock bag from an inside pocket.

"Show me," Kakashi says and pulls out his ninken scroll, cloth and paper like an old friend in his hand.

-

"When we reach them," Inoichi says as they run. Pakkun is on Kakashi's shoulder and Uhei and Shiba in front. "The first objective is to locate Ino." His voice is grim. "With luck she is conscious, and proximity will allow her to release the mind transfer on her own."

The other dogs are spread out in loose formation to catch any breaking off trails. The rain is a problem, but where Kakashi’s nose fails there are eight dogs to pick up the slack. They go slower than he can tell Inoichi wants to run, making sure they don’t lose their way in.

Chouza continues, "If not, we bring the body she possesses into our custody. Once her location is identified we neutralise any other hostiles. Aim for capture but kill if necessary. If her location is not clearly identifiable, we bring all targets in alive.”

"Understood," Kakashi and Tokuma say in unison.

Where their quarries have made an attempt at stealth, Naruto especially has not, and the challenge, Kakashi suspects, will be to pick up the correct trail if the genin have been led astray.

They have no expectations that Kurenai’s team will catch up, so they make no move to slow down. Either they will run into the genin, or the kids will have lost the trail. Either way, team Chouza have their objectives.

Kakashi is distantly, below the mission focus that has narrowed his attention to the moment, sick to his stomach that there are children involved at all. Victims and soldiers both. Ino, Sasuke and Choji in their hospital beds, Naruto and Sakura and Shikamaru who ran off like idiots to follow their attackers on their own.

He can’t blame them. The worry makes his pulse beat in his throat and something like rage simmer in his chest, but to claim he’d have done anything different in their place would be a lie.

He thinks they could be dead already, but refuses to let the thought take hold. Kakashi focuses on the steps of their feet and leaps across branches as the trail veers up and through, past areas where the undergrowth is too dense to continue below.

Naruto has the Kyuubi, and Sakura is frighteningly competent when she puts her mind to it. Shikamaru is supposedly a genius, though he doesn’t know him well. They’re twelve and thirteen. He can smell the three of them, easier now below the shielding canopy, following behind the faint, strange smell of antiseptics, bile and chalk that clings to the footprints of the targets.

Inochi says nothing, running behind Chouza and keeping a solid eye on his daughter’s lifeless body. Chouza in turn runs steady, slower than Kakashi would like once their trail is caught, but he’s not about to voice that. Tokuma is a flanking ghost, leaving no trail and silent as a whisper. Kakashi runs at the front, choosing their path with a confidence entirely granted by Obito’s gift.

The air is damp but the branches they land on nearly dry, scuffed bark and missing moss and torn leaves confirming the passage of ninja through the trees.

-

"The trail splits," Shiba announces, coming to a halt on the ground below and ahead. His pale grey fur and blue jacket clearly visible against all the green. Uhei dashes from one direction to the next, the greyhound vibrating as he waits for the humans to catch up. Pakkun leaps of Kakashi's shoulder, and Kakashi shifts chakra to his nose, lifting the edge of the mask from his face.

Before he can quite parse what he's smelling Pakkun says, "Scent eastward is a few minutes fresher. The genin followed it."

Kakashi takes a moment to breathe. There is something off about the older trail, a muddled scent of earth and moss nearly drowning it out. More than stepping through soil or undergrowth would cause.

"The newer trail is likely a decoy," he tells Chouza.

"I concur," Tokuma says, veins throbbing around his pale eyes.

Chouza nods.

"Kakashi, shadow clone?" The Akimichi clan head says, as he shrugs the brown coat halfway down his arms to expose the sling and Ino's still form. Inoichi steps up and checks her pulse, and pours a small trickle of water into her mouth.

Kakashi has his hands in the sign before Chouza finishes speaking, clammy skin against clammy skin, a rising swell of chakra and twist of reality and another of himself appears like a mirror image by his side.

He feels the drain of energy like a punch to the chest, but he still has plenty in reserve to run and to fight. Gai’s meditation program proving it’s worth already. He will pay for this in pain and fatigue, but what has he been resting and training for if not this.

"Bisuke, Akino, Bull, with me!" The shadow clone barks, and the three dogs set off on the newer trail. Kakashi's duplicate nods to the team and follows the dogs. He watches himself, a strong, quick figure topped in bright grey twisting through the air as if there is no pain and no gravity to speak of.

Before the clone and the dogs are out of sight the rest of them set off again.

-

The rain has ceased, or maybe more accurately, they’ve run past the edge of it. They have been rapidly heading north and ever so slightly east, and an insistent conviction of Orochimaru has settled in the back of Kakashi’s mind. They are pushing the pace hard, burning chakra to move faster. Stealth will mean nothing if they’re too late, and as long as they are within Fire any political retaliation can be dealt with, Chouza has assured with the kind of confidence that only comes from experience.

Uhei flags, by far the fastest of the dogs but lowest in stamina, and Kakashi can see the wavering step before he slows. Kakashi veers only by a diagonal step, then drops down and gives the dog an affectionate stroke as he runs past. Uhei is gone in a dissolving puff of vapour before Kakashi has even moved more than a step.

He squints forward, Shiba is now at the front, confidently guiding the group. Guruko picks up speed, pushing his short legs to overtake the shinobi and double check Shiba’s direction, before the humans can further muddle the trail.

“When we find them, are we fighting?” Pakkun asks from his perch by Kakashi’s ear. He means the ninken, not the whole team. The pug has been shifting place from one of Kakashi’s shoulders to the other in a steady interval, with breaks running by himself every now and then, evening out the strain of the uneven weight on Kakashi.

“We’re not used to working with this team?” He is almost entirely sure, but there is still so much he doesn’t know.

“Only Hyuuga,” Pakkun confirms quietly. “Never trained or fought by the others.”

Kakashi nods. “Stick around but hang back. I’ll call if we need you.”

“Got it, Boss.”

The sun is low, light flickering through leaves as the world dims. Soon it will be dark, and Kakashi almost hopes they’ll catch up in the cover of night. Darkness favours him and Tokuma, and is unlikely to help their targets.

His idle near-wish does not come through. Only a few minutes later the trees are growing close together and smaller in size, soon unsuitable for the racing speed they’ve kept up until now. They move to run across the ground and over the side of tree trunks instead of up in the higher branches.

Tokuma speaks up without a break in his step.

“One o’ clock. Six hundred metres ahead. Three in motion. One of them carried, appears unconscious.”

Kakashi makes a huff at the back of his throat, half muscle memory and half spurred by ANBU chase missions recorded in flawless, blood-soaked detail. Pakkun leaps and calls to the other dogs in a low rumble, and they disappear into the undergrowth.

“Inoichi, Tokuma, take point,” Chouza orders. Kakashi falls back to flank the team leader, who paces just behind and half a step to the side of Inoichi.

“One hundred and fifty metres,” Tokuma updates. “Odd chakra flow in several…” his posture stiffens, head cocking to the right. “The unconscious target’s chakra is unnaturally disrupted.”

“Mind-transfer?” Inoichi seeks the confirmation Kakashi thinks would have already come if Tokuma could tell.

Tokuma’s reply backs up Kakashi’s suspicion. “Inconclusive. It could be a seal.”

“Or both,” Kakashi says.

“Or both,” Tokuma agrees.

They rush ahead, no consideration for stealth, and a moment later Tokuma speaks again, his stride slowing to a brisk walk and the rest of them slowing with him. “They’ve noticed us. Halting up ahead.” He describes a clearing by a stream, with a boulder at the far end where they have set down the unconscious figure, the two others stepping up in front.

“Hm,” Chouza considers. “Brawlers favouring open terrain, or a final stand. Inoichi, get eyes on them. Kakashi go right, Tokuma left. Again, no lethal force until we have Inoichi’s confirmation.”

“Yes,” Kakashi says at the same time as Tokuma goes, “Loud and clear.”

They fan out before they hit the clearing. Kakashi circles right and tugs his headband up. The world slows and sharpens. Chakra cycles down his foot without thought as one step crosses the stream, clear water glittering over rocks in the golden light.

The two figures come into view as he rushes forward.

Teenagers. Dressed in Konoha uniforms. Their smells aligns with the trail they’ve been chasing, minus the chalky scent. No sign of fear in their postures or smell. One of them, black hair, Kakashi’s side, smiles, an unhinged, wide expression with staring eyes.

“You think you can take us-,” the further figure, the red hair beneath a bandana with Konoha’s forehead protector, has to dodge a jab from Tokuma who is suddenly very close, “Konoha!?”

Kakashi can see his opponent move as if through syrup, an easy swing, dodge, step to evade the black-haired ninja’s strikes and deal his own. The double vision as his own eye can’t keep up is not an issue, the Sharingan taking over and his right eye only giving a blurred context to fill in the field of vision.

Adrenaline makes him buzz and every movement flows, smooth, natural reactions responding to decisions he’s made before he’s conscious of them.

“We’ve already got what we came for,” red-hair laughs.

Kakashi stalls. Black-hair draws a sword and swipes at his stomach but Kakashi has already leapt, twisting in the air to catch his target’s temple with a heel.

The teenagers stumbles, down to one knee but feet finding traction on a tree root and shooting forward again. He breathes in deep, and a dark, noxious cloud explodes from him as he exhales and Kakashi goes up, catching a tree too small and it bends under his weight so he leaps again. The gas could be anything, and he does not want to find out.  He sees Tokuma vanish up into the canopy across the clearing.

From a momentary perch Kakashi’s hands flick through quick hand signs.

“Wind release: Hurricane Pulse.” He drops to the ground. His chakra rushes in all directions, out in a spiral and converted to wind as it meets the air in a sudden gale.

The cloud is gone in a moment. Red-hair is knocked off his feet, tumbling away into the undergrowth but immediately back on his feet as Tokuma jumps down onto him from above.

Black-hair braces, sword aloft, running as soon as the air pressure lets off.

“Ino confirmed!” Inoichi’s voice rings from behind. “By the boulder!”

Killing someone, for real as him and not just rememebered through the surreally sharp filter of the Sharingan's preserved memories, turns out to be disturbingly easy.

Kakashi ducks in close, just under the blade of his opponent and uncaring of the strands of his hair sacrificed in the movement, sliced through by the razor-sharp steel. He braces and twists and comes up behind the teen.

The kunai sits comfortably in Kakashi’s hand and it carves through skin and cartilage and veins and the target falls forward, a minute twitch of their hands toward themselves, dropping the sword, the only sign they even know what is happening before the gush of blood has deprived them of all control and their face hits the dirt.

Kakashi turns to the side to see Tokuma break red-hair’s neck.

Chouza has moved around from the back, and kneels by the unconscious enemy nin. Ino’s current location. Inoichi flashes into place with a shunshin.

“This seal,” the Yamanaka clan head says, pointing to something on the figure on the ground. Kakashi doesn’t approach, instead keeping an eye on their surroundings. Five had fled Konoha. That means two are still out here. Or two are leading the genin away.

Chouza grunts. “Keeping them under. And keeping Ino trapped.”

Tokuma approaches, Byakugan still active. “I can disrupt it,” he says. “But it will kill the target.”

“How fast?” Inoichi.

“Ten seconds to a minute. It’s anchored to the third gate.”

The Gate of Life, Kakashi knows from Gai’s teaching.

Chouza frowns. “They did not care what would happen to the host.”

“It’s enough time,” Inoichi says. “Do it on my mark. Chouza, it will be easier on Ino if there’s physical contact.”

While Chouza takes off his coat and Inoichi gently pulls Ino’s limp body from the sling, Kakashi curls his tongue and lets out an ear-piercing whistle.

Ino is placed on the moss, shoulder to shoulder with the unconscious stranger, their hands on top of each other. Pakkun, Shiba, Urushi and Guruko come into the clearing on silent feet.

Inoichi’s hands steeple together, knuckles white with tension. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them again, fixed on the body of the unknown shinobi who will very soon be dead, where Ino is trapped.

“Now,” Inoichi says.

Tokuma presses his hands to the target, fingers digging into several tenketsu points. Kakashi sees the flash of chakra as a faint blue burst and then the unconscious body is leaking shimmering blue like a fountain. It pools beneath him and spreads into the moss, lingering like a visible scent in the air. It shifts Ino’s hair and tugs at her clothing and Inoichi breathes out slowly-

Ino opens her eyes with a gasp. “Dad.” she sits up fast, hands clutching for Inoichi’s vest and he grasps for her in return.

Inoichi kneels in place, holding his daughter close. Ino cries into Inoichi’s shoulder, dead enemy nin still by her side, the chakra that was his life swirling around the two of them.

The last bit of sunlight warms everything with a golden shine, and makes the dead look disturbingly peaceful.

Kakashi looks at his bloodied hands, and at the people who aren't really people anymore. He should be feeling something, he thinks, stepping over one body to get to another, by rote pulling an empty body scroll from one of the pockets in his vest. But there is only mild satisfaction in Ino's safe retrieval.

Dealing with the dead brought down by his own hands feels routine. He tugs the forehead protector down, and the world dulls as the Sharingan's view is taken away.

When he was six years old Dad brought him fishing, and after handed him the knife and showed him where to press as the bodies of their catch writhed. The boy who wasn't Hatake Kakashi had cried. Two years later he felt nothing, happily thinking of other things when emptying out the buckets of tiny lives.

This feels like that.

(Another two years later Dad was dead, and there were no more fishing trips.)

He wonders if he will hate himself later.

Well. He will, but maybe not over this.

Kakashi lays the scroll open like a tiny mockery of a death shroud over what used to be a teenage boy. He sparks chakra into it. The body vanishes without a sound. He passes the scroll to Tokuma, who nods and tucks it away.

“That was too easy,” Chouza says quietly, “for a group who-“

Kakashi turns to Chouza, and he’s leaping through the canopy, Bull racing on the ground below, Akino and Bisuke in the trees ahead. Light rain patters through the leaves above to hit his head and shoulders, and the sun is high in the sky, behind the cloud cover. They race east, following Naturo’s sharp smell of fox, Sakura’s flowery shampoo, Shikamaru’s deer-like scent which would have been easy to miss if not for the mingled smell of teenage boy.

They pick up speed as the weather improves and the trail becomes easier to follow.

Kakashi loses himself in the repetition of leap, step, leap, the steady burn of chakra and clear heading narrowing to a moment that is both endless and over very soon.

The sun is near setting when Akino freezes up ahead. The rest of them come to a stop.

“Listen,” the dog says, and the rest of them, Kakashi included, cock their heads.

Naruto’s voice, shouting. The splintering of wood. The smell of blood and fox and chalk, distant but noticeable when Kakashi pulls down his mask for a moment.

“Defensive manoeuvres to protect the genin,” he orders. “Bull, if anyone is injured get them out of there. Nara Shikamaru is a strategist who uses shadow techniques, if he has instructions, follow them.”

He is only a clone, and if his chakra drops too low he’ll vanish. But if he does, the real him will know what happened.

The three dogs bark their understanding, and the four of them rush forward again. Kakashi applies a low-intensive genjutsu to go unnoticed, and circles south to come up on the battle at an angle.

From a perch on a branch in a Hashirama tree he gets a first look on the situation, and it feels like cold water has been poured down his back. He raises his headband off the Sharingan. 

Naruto is wreathed in the Nine Tails’ chakra, blood bubbling as if it boils in a gash on his cheek, as Shikamaru dodges in behind a fallen tree and Sakura shouts, “Over here you freak!”

Her hair is roughly chopped short, long pink strands in a pile to the side and she is bleeding, bone gruesomely cutting out of her shoulder and through her jacket, neatly piercing the cloth. It looks wrong, the fabric caught into the wound instead of pushed away around the white protrusion.

There’s a crash and a crackle and from the shadows of a newly splintered tree trunk. A figure leaps forward, towards Naruto, though twisting at Sakura’s shout. Spiny bones jut from their shoulders, their ribs, their arms. One hand grasps one of the bones and hefts it like a javelin.

Kakashi recognises him.

Kakashi sees Sakura dodge, too slow, as the shadows from Shikamaru’s hiding place extends and Kakashi flings himself forward and down as Naruto cries out “Where did you take her!?”

Bull catapults out of the underbrush like a cannonball, wide jowls gripping the collar of Sakura’s jacket as the two of them tumble. The bone clips Bull’s flank, a flesh wound to what would have been Sakura’s punctured lung, and Kakashi lands in front of them. There are trees scattered through the area between them and the target.

“Kakashi-sensei!” Sakura calls. She twists and gets to her feet, panting, with Bull beside her, hand grasping a kunai. He can see the glint of wire tied to the handle. There are scrapes and scratches on her skin, and dirty tear tracks on her face.

Naruto hardly spares them a glance, focused on his opponent. He rushes forward in a blur of blue, orange and yellow, a new jacket worn open over the standard uniform set. Clawed hands reach for the target.

“Tch,” Shikamaru scoffs as Naruto’s drive them both away from his reaching shadows. “Troublesome.”

“Status?” Kakashi urges and Sakura snaps to.

“One opponent. We only just caught up. My- my shoulder is the worst of it. He has the bone thing and is really fast sensei.”

His eyes glance to her hair but she doesn’t mention it.

“They have Ino,” Sakura continues, “I don’t-, they’re not-“

“We’re tracking Ino,” Kakashi interrupts. “And more help is on its way. Stay by Bull.”

“I’ve got wire,” Sakura says, and there is a crash where Naruto flies into a wide branch and it comes down with him. Sakura looks to Shikamaru. Kakashi follows her gaze.

“Plan was I catch him,” Shikamaru whispers, Kakashi understanding it more by lip reading than hearing, "and make him fall into that. I don’t think I can hold him long.”

“Do it,” Kakashi says. “Sakura, rig it, but be careful. Bull, on her.”

The longer this goes on the more dangerous it will be for the genin.

Sakura and Bull reverse into the underbrush as Akino and Bisuke burst out from the north, barking and running to distract their opponent. Naturo screams something about suffering and triest to grab the target in a headlock, a bone-spur cutting into him for his trouble. The fight flits in and out of view between the trees.

He really, really, really hopes Naruto’s healing is something like in the story, or that is bad.

“I’m a shadow clone,” he tells Shikamaru. “I will fight, but if I go down, Team Eight and another jounin are coming. I will too, if I can. My dogs will stay. Hold out.”

Shikamaru nods, jaw clenched. Naruto is gasping, holding his abdomen. There is a wet cough.

“Can you halt him, just for a moment?” Kakashi asks.

“Yes. If you stall.”

"All right." Kakashi runs. He reaches through the miasma of burning chakra around Naruto and grips his shoulder.

“Sensei-?” the kid seems to only then realise he’s there. He steps forward, putting Naruto behind himself.

“Kimimaro,” he greets, the forest suddenly goes deathly still.

“You know my name?” The young man is hardly out of breath. From behind him Kakashi can hear Naruto’s gurgling, a telltale sign of blood in his lungs.

“Yes. I know who you are, and your master.”

Kimimaro hums. “Then you know you will not leave this place alive. It’s a shame. Orochimaru-sama speaks highly of you, Kakashi-san.”

“We don’t have to fight!” Naruto calls out. “You said that-,”

“No, Uzumaki Naruto, future Hokage." Kimimaro's words have Kakashi resists the urge to slap his face. Of course Naruto had introduced himself. "My purpose is to serve Orochimaru-sama.”

“I know what he does to those who serve him,” Kakashi says, tense.

The dappled golden light is starting to fade, passing beneath the heights of the treetops around them. He can see the shadows move at the corner of his eye, creeping longer and further across the ground. Too visible in the Sharingan’s clarity. Hopefully too hidden for Kimimaro to perceive.

“He saved me,” Kimimaro says, “when everyone else would see me dead or suffering for only the accident of my birth. I am sorry.” He raises an arm and bone grows out, a blade extending from his own body straight into his hand.

Three thoughts fight in Kakashi’s mind. Wow. So gross. And like Wolverine.

“Naruto, fall back!” Kakashi calls. Kimimaro jerks to rush them but instead he freezes in place. Kakashi is moving already, from the moment just before Shikamaru’s shadow touched Kimimaro’s.

One two three hands signs and lightning rushes through Kakashi’s body, through his flesh and bones and chakra pathways, it gathers in his hand and shoots back up his arm and the world is filled with the noise of a thousand screeching birds.

The fading golden daylight is replaced by the blinding white of a lightning strike.

He launches forward, with all speed he has and all the chakra his shadow-formed body can muster. Kimimaro jolts at the very last split of a second. Kakashi’s hand skims the side of his chest and he wrenches it up, through the flesh of Kimimaro’s shoulder. It blazes through skin and muscle and bone (too much bone) and Kimimaro’s momentum sideways continues. His arm comes loose into Kakashi’s still sparking hand and the bone-blade swings up and it cuts into Kakashi’s-

“-took down Asuma,” Chouza finishes.

“Two assailants are unaccounted for,” Tokuma replies.

Kakashi stiffens. “Inoichi,” he says, though he should be addressing Chouza right now. “The genin. It’s Kimimaro.”

“Fuck,” Inoichi swears, standing up with Ino in his arms. She’s still clinging to his clothing, exhaustion and fading terror heavy in her face and her scent.

“Report,” Chouza orders.

“Shikamaru, Sakura and Naruto are fighting a likely S-class opponent,” he says, eye flitting back to Inoichi. “My clone assisted but was just dispelled. The three are as of now alive with minor injuries. Team Kurenai have not caught up.”

“Can you find them?” Chouza asks.

With Pakkun’s help? “Yes.”

“All right,” their team captain says. “Kakashi, you hurry. Relieve the genin and support team Kurenai. Tokuma, we need your eyes in case there are more of them in the vicinity. We will follow at a standard pace. Here,” Chouza pulls out a white paper tube from an inside pocket of his coat. “Do not take more than one within a two-hour span. No more than three in twenty-four hours.”

Kakashi accepts the tube, feeling round shapes inside. Chakra pills.

“Be cautious,” Inoichi urges. “Don’t blindly trust your memories.”

“They’re vague on this part anyway,” Kakashi says. “I’ll do my best.”

-

Chapter Text

The run takes an hour. It’s a torturous, endless hour while the sun fully sets, the darkness creeps in and nocturnal animals wake.

Kakashi doesn’t bother with stealth. He remembers the position and direction of the sun he as the shadow clone noted, the angle and length of the shadows, the direction and distance off the trail he’d run after the split. How he’d tracked the kids and the unsettling scent of who he now knows to be Kimimaro.

Chakra launches every step two, three, four times a humanly possible distance and trees whizz past. It almost feels like downhill skiing, nothing like any running he’s done before or that anyone could have done in that other world.

Every second could be a second the kids don’t make it through, but he refuses to let himself think about that. He relays everything he knows to Pakkun as the pug rides on his shoulder, stubby claws dig into the cloth of his vest.

Pakkun directs him when he slips up and veers off course, and asks him for details about the location they head toward he didn’t think to mention – scents on the air, the direction of the wind, proximity to water.

There is no moon, and the night sinks into total darkness. Kakashi doesn’t think about how strange it is that his nose takes over, knowledge through scent of what is up and down and splitting the limb of a tree from open air. It still slows him down too much, and with the flick of a hand the Sharingan is exposed, faint traces of ambient chakra giving a dim, blue tinted view of the path ahead.

He remembers frustratingly little about the fight in the story.

Bones shooting out the ground, Kimimaro activaring a cursed seal, Lee using the drunken fist and the whole screen filled with sand. None of it helps him, other than hammering home what level of battle the kids are alone in.

He can only hope the fact that the show only had children fighting means this won’t be as bad, with him and the other jounin on their way. Gaara was a different beast entirely, no matter his age. Kakashi refuses to let himself think about that. The phantom pain of bone shearing into his kidney makes him less optimistic than thinking of three kids making it out of a fight with this opponent in flat, cartoon images.

Fourty minutes in he sends Shiba and Urushi to find Team Kurenai and update them on the situation. He hopes they’re already there, and that this will be redundant. Hope is useless, only actions he can control really matter now.

The bark of a dying tree crunches beneath his foot and he slips, catching himself a split second later with bile in his throat. His heart is thrumming, too fast, fatigue crushing in as adrenaline can’t keep him going forever.

“Shit.” He breathes through the rush of almost falling, keeps going. Pakkun and Guruko say nothing, and Guruko just keeps flanking him.

He wanted to save this for when he arrived. He doesn’t know exactly how long it will take to get there, but slowing down now would be so much worse. The packet of chakra pills Chouza handed him, back before they parted, crinkles as he pulls it out. It’s easy to tear the little tab on top one-handed, while his other pulls down the mask.

The pill is coated in sugar, which shatters between his teeth. The taste after that is bitter and herbal, with something unfamiliar and undescribable chasing it. It’s bad. He washes it down with half his canteen, running along the forest floor and fighting to keep going.

Less than a minute later he feels better than he ever has. The Sharingan’s view is as perfect as ever, but his mind is clear and what he sees easy to process. The weight in his limbs has lifted and his failing coordination is less than a memory.

Speed is a breeze. He leaps into the trees once again and races onward.

It turns out that he did not need to worry if he’d find them, as they finally get closer.

The forest is on fire. An orange blaze reaching into the sky, a wide column of smoke lit from below. The wind is gentle at his back, but once he can see the smoke it doesn’t take long for the smell of it to drown out every other scent.

Getting closer still and it gets warmer, shadows deep and flickering with an odd dual tinge as his own eye adjusts and Obito’s takes no time to register every detail. There is a reverberating, bone chilling cry and the crash of a tree coming down.

Kakashi hides, a twist of chakra saying I’m not here, as he crouches behind foliage. Naruto and Kimimaro stand as two silhouettes backed by an inferno, a moment that drags into a still frame in the view of Obito’s eye. There is a clearing now, where there was none in his clone provided memory.

Before they move he sees the shifts of both figures, weight adjusting, muscles tensing. Kimimaro’s bizarre arrangement of bones settling through gruesome wounds parting his skin. His right arm is missing, a cap of jutting bone sealing the injury.

Naruto’s previously fresh jacket has melted and torn in patches, the t-shirt beneath is nothing more than rags, though the mesh underneath is still holding up and the standard blues of his trousers show little damage. There is blood and dirt and soot, making it impossible to tell if there are any lingering injuries.

Naruto is snarling, scars on his cheeks inflamed and eyes wide and bright, fingers clawed. They rise into the sign for the shadow clone jutsu.

Kimimaro meanwhile looks calm. Ridiculously unaffected for someone who has been fighting this long, and with this level of injury. He too is stained with soot and his hair is no longer contained, instead flying about his face as he launches forward, single arm outstretched as bone protrudes from his wrist, blood dripping off it as it grows.

No wonder he’s sick, Kakashi thinks, bizarrely, in the tick between one second to the next as Naruto is shrouded in clouds of chakra, and more of him appear. Two of Naruto are immediately impaled and vanish again. How could he use those bones without constant risk of infection.

Outmatched though he is, Naruto is okay. He’s holding out.

Kakashi pushes onward, north, into the heat, searching for the other genin. He just needs to find them, then he’ll do what he can to relieve Naruto. Guruko splits off, searching south through the underbrush, upwind of the fire.

Naruto's voice, echoing with the Kyuuibi’s influence, is loud enough to hear over the roar of the flames. Kakashi can’t see the fight anymore.

"I was also made to be a weapon!" Naruto shouts. "I was kept away from anyone who would love me, and they saw me as a monster...” There’s a clipped shout and the sound of a body hitting the dirt. Then Naruto continues from another direction. Another clone. “But I won't let that stop me, Kimimaro! I’m not going to blindly follow and throw my life away, for the plans of people who want to use me to cause more pain! I'm going to make them recognise me, and they'll see that they were wrong! If we don't prove it to them, and live with them, how can things change!"

If the brat is running his mouth like this the others can’t be dead. They can’t be.

Guruko finds him as he circles the northern edge of the inferno. Moss drying crisp beneath Kakashi’s feet and sweat pools beneath his clothes. Guruko calls his attention with a yip.

The fight is now entirely out of Kakashi’s awareness, with the forest burning between him and them. The dog leads him back and around, west and then south.

He spots Sakura's soot-smeared but still bright hair in a hollow, upwind from the fire. Every scent is drowned in acrid smoke, and it hurts to breathe.

Shikamaru is pressed in next to her, Kakashi realises as he gets closer, the Nara boy almost invisible in the dark. It feels like a layer to his world is missing, seeing the two of them and smelling neither.

They're leaning on each other, side pressed to side. Shikamaru looks exhausted, and Sakura is pale with shock. The piece of bone is still in her shoulder, the fabric below it shining wet and beyond that crusted stiff. The firelight and deep shadows washes out any colour, but he knows it’s darker, warmer red over the cooler tone of her jacket.

There’s not even a sense of relief seeing them, just distant confirmation.

Kimimaro's voice rings out, nearly drowned by the roar of the fire. "Being of service to those who do give us kindness is the best purpose we can wish for! The only worthy purpose!"

“Guruko,” Kakashi whispers, nearly inaudible to himself but he sees the dog’s long ears prick. “Find Akino. Prepare to take the target by surprise.”

Guruko doesn’t say anything in confirmation, but dashes into the undergrowth at once.

Kakashi unseals a first aid kit before he even reaches the two hidden genin.

“Kakashi-sensei,” Sakura gasps, seeing him before Shikamaru. “Pakkun-sensei!”

"How long has this been going on?" Kakashi jerks his head to the fighting and arguing juggernauts in the near distance. He crouches down, assessing for the worst injuries.

"Since your clone dispelled," Shikamaru sighs with a tinge of exhausted exasperation.

Kakashi's eyebrow lifts. The Sharingan is open and visible, and that eyebrow with it is too so he makes a point to raise it as well, just a moment too late.

"W-with fighting in-inbetween, th-though," Sakura says, trying and failing to suppress violent shivers. "W-we've been fighting too." Her eyes are steely, despite the pain.

The shadow behind them moves, with a familiar rumbling of a wordless greeting. Bull. He reaches out and gives the massive dog a pat, then turns back to the children.

"Burns?" Kakashi asks. From their voices they’ve avoided breathing too much smoke. Shikamaru’s face is entirely covered in soot, thickly caked on, but that could be to better hide in the dark. Sakura’s short hair plasters to her skin with sweat.

They both shake their heads.

"We set it, the fire. No shadows without light," Shikamaru says. "It's helped. Though now I’m out of energy." The last part is said with grim resignation.

Kakashi glances to Sakura. “N-naruto’s been getting in most of the h-hhits-, I’ve been d-istraction. Sh-hikamaru-k-kun can stall h-him a l-l-“

He reaches out to silence Sakura, fingers resting lightly on her good arm. She needs to save her energy, and all this can wait. "You've both done well."

Naruto’s voice, hoarse with screaming, can be heard from just out of sight. Kimimaro doesn’t reply, but something strikes the dirt only metres away with enough force to rip deep into the earth.

Kakashi takes another of the precious chakra pills from its wrapper. He has no idea of the full dose is all right for children their size, so he cracks it between his thumb and forefinger. He gives half to each of them. If the fight comes closer, or if they have no choice but to run or keep fighting, they need the power to move.

"Take that," Kakashi instructs and gives half to Shikamaru. The kid clearly recognises the pill and eats it without hesitation, and Kakashi hands the other piece to Sakura.

Her hand shakes so badly it falls to the forest floor, lost in the black shadows and crushed plants beneath them. Wordlessly, Kakashi cracks another and brings it to her lips directly, placing it into her mouth.

"Try to hold still," he instructs.

Her wound is sluggishly bleeding, but much less than it could be. Kakashi uses a kunai to cut away the fabric of her jacket, exposing her shoulder. The piece of bone looks like it's in deep, and some of the blood is concerningly pale, now that it’s no longer hidden. The bone itself gleams with traces of chakra, not entirely dead yet, even pulled from Kimimaro’s body more than an hour ago.

"Can you close your hand?"

She nods, already regaining some colour. "But it's weak."

He takes her hand in his. "Squeeze my fingers."

Weak is accurate, but she has full range of motion. Lucky.

"We're leaving that in for now. Keep it as still as you can. You're doing great." He could try to pull it out and treat the wound, cauterise it if it bleeds badly enough, but he doesn't want to risk the function of her arm. She’s still moving, still talking. It can’t be too bad, not yet.

"Any other injuries?"

"Sprained ankle," Shikamaru says, with a hand gripping his right leg.

Sakura shakes her head. "J-just scrapes."

Kakashi stays low and shuffles to Shikamaru’s side. “Checking for breaks.”

The kid nods, and Kakashi pokes and moves his leg and foot.

Shikamaru winces, but doesn’t make a sound. The foot is weaker than it should be, and swelling despite the wrappings around his lower leg, but a sprain seems to be accurate. He doesn’t feel any shifting bones where they shouldn’t be, at least.

Kakashi doesn’t waste time undoing the leg wrap Shikamaru wears, and just gets a splint from the kit and uses a roll of bandage on top.

The sounds of the fight have moved further away again, Naruto driving Kimimaro back. Either Orochimaru’s lackey is weaker than Kakashi would have thought, or he’s toying with them. Stalling. An hour is an insanely dragged out fight, even with the three genin working together. Kimimaro hasn’t killed them or left, and that doesn’t sit right.

"Kakashi-sensei," Sakura says when the bandaging of Shikamaru's leg is almost done. "Bisuke, he g-got hurt," he can hear the tears threatening to fall in her voice. "He disap-disappeared too but I don't know how bad it was."

"Don't worry about it," Pakkun says, voice gravelly by Kakashi’s ear. "He just unsummoned."

Kakashi and Pakkun both know it might not be just that, but there's no point in stressing Sakura more. By Shikamaru’s expression, he knows too.

"All right." Kakashi ties off the bandage. "Reinforcements should be coming from both the west and the northwest. Lay low for now."  He hands over a small scroll to Shikamaru. "This has ration bars and water. Take the first-aid kit as well. Retreat to a safe distance and recover as much as you can."

Shikamaru nods, eyes already clearer with the artificial energy boost.

Kakashi stands, and takes a step back. “Pakkun,” he murmurs, “where would you work best?”

“I could observe,” the pug says just as quietly. “And debrief reinforcements on what’s happening here.”

“Good. Do it.”

“You got it, Boss.” Pakkun slips off his shoulder, and disappears between the trees.

Bull is the first of the others to act, shoving his head under Shikamaru's arm in a familiar move, taking the kid's weight as they stand. Kakashi makes sure they're all up and going, and then he turns to the fight.

He tries to feel for his reserves, for the first gate, for the boost given by the chakra pill still in his system. He still has several more of those in his pocket.

A shadow clone is a cheap tradeoff to make. The other him steps back out of sight, knowing what to do already.

Twisting his fingers through signs feels like finally settling into action, adrenaline finding an outlet and he reaches for chakra to bring it out and thread through the flames already present.

In the clearing Naruto throws himself forward, literally, with only one clone left the other one of him steps into the hands of the first and together they launch him at Kimimaro faster than he could leap on his own. He’s either out of or has abandoned kunai, fingers clawed as he rakes for Kimimaro’s throat.

Thank you, Obito, Kakashi thinks with the Sharingan’s memories guiding his motions. “Fire Style: Circling Inferno.”

Naruto’s clone misses as Kimimaro dodges. It dispels with a gut-wrenching gurgle, Kimimaro’s sideways twist bringing the bone spikes he sports like flaring ribs through the body that isn’t real.

Meanwhile the flames loop and swirl and build out from the forest fire, onto the ground torn up by the dragging fight. A sudden flaring gust, fuelled by Kakashi’s chakra, and the fire leaps, turns, and circles Kimimaro and tightens around him in a closing snare of burning walls.

A shunshin, and Kakashi is by Naruto’s side. He just has time to say, “Sorry I’m late,” and the fire pressing in around Kimimaro explodes outward, revealing him singed, flaring bones blackened at the edges. His eyes are just offset to the side, avoiding Kakashi’s gaze.

“Sensei!” Naruto staggers, turning to Kakashi, voice cracking. Tears prickling at the corners of his eyes leave pale marks in the film of soot on his face.

Kakashi grabs Naruto by the collar and leaps sideways, seeing Kimimaro throw bone shards in the split second before it happens. They skid.

Kakashi’s momentum stops quickly, halted by the roots of a tree that has entirely exploded.

He can’t risk another Chidori, Kimimaro reacted too fast before, and even with the Sharingan’s ability to predict his movements there is nothing he can do; even if he can see it those sharp bones shift too quickly for his own body to react in time.

Whatever happens, he has to hold out until the others arrive.

“Stay sharp.” He doesn’t look at Naruto, but makes sure he has his balance before letting go of the disintegrating jacket. “Did you notice any weak-“

“It’s terribly rude, to deliberate right in front of your opponent,” Kimimaro interrupts. “But perhaps Konoha is ready to take this seriously, now?” He stretches his neck side to side, shakes out his hand, disturbingly at peace with the missing limb on his other side.

“Apologies, Kimimaro-san,” Kakashi replies. He circles counterclockwise, watching Kimimaro stand in confident stillness across the clearing. “It’s my job as Naruto’s sensei to check in on him. I hope you understand.”

“I understand, Copy-Nin, but it won’t help you here.”

Kakashi rushes in, trading taijutsu blows in a fast exchange. Kimimaro extends a bone spur from his wrist like a blade and Kakashi deflects.

He slips into mirroring his opponent’s every step and strike with a natural ease, making each movement the same as Kimimaro’s with a smoothness that to others would be simultaneous.

Kakashi reaches out in a strike to Kimimaro’s left arm with his own right, hand deflecting hand and- From Kimimaro’s wrist another bone spur extends, slicing through Kakashi’s palm. Breaking out of the pattern Kakashi kicks to Kimimaro’s chest to create distance. Kimimaro sidesteps and they both jump back.

The distant agony of Kakashi’s wound is masked by adrenaline, easy to shove to the back of his mind.

There is a flare of red on Kimimaro’s chest, three curvet lines burning in his skin. Black patterns extend and crawl up his throat and down his torso, and Kakashi has no intent to let him finish that transformation if he can stop it.

“Naruto! The jutsu Sakura asked for, I’ll use it. You hit him hard.” Kakashi doesn’t wait for Naruto’s reply. He whistles, and Naruto disappears in his periphery as Kakashi dashes forward.

From below the ground Guruko launches up as if shot from a cannon. Akino comes through the fire, air and chakra in a swirl around him, dark glasses flaring with orange reflections.

The dogs latch on with teeth and crushing jaws. Akino’s greater weight pulls down Kimimaro’s arm and Guruko aims for the opposite leg. The smaller dog is thrown off immediately, flying through the air as Kakashi’s vision changes angle from one heartbeat to the next with a shunshin that puts him right in front of Kimimaro.

He hears Akino cry out, but he doesn’t look and yes; Kimimaro meets his eyes. Got him.

While Kimimaro is forced to live out his greatest fear, chakra coiling in on itself and Kakashi’s eye burns with strain, Kakashi grabs Akino by the back of his coat and takes them both out of Kimimaro’s immediate range.

An arc of dark blood trails in the air after the dog’s face.

Naruto smashes into Kimimaro’s frozen form, wreathed in orange chakra, launched by three of his own clones, heel coming down in a move Kakashi recognises Gai performing. There is an audible crunch of breaking bones and Kimimaro screams.

Kakashi puts Akino down and the dog retreats under his own power. In the same moment, Kimimaro’s cursed seal expands in spidery, parallel lines glowing red, covering all of his visible skin. The clear dent in his skull left by Naruto’s foot reinflates. He isn’t chatting or stalling anymore. Instead he reaches back and it looks like he pulls out his own spine. Blood and viscera clings to it and as vertebrae meet air they flatten and sharpen.

What the fuck.

Naruto scrambles backwards but not fast enough. Kimimaro swings the whip-like blades at blistering speed and Kakashi can see the impact before it happens, but is too slow and too far away to intervene in time- No.

Kawarimi. The replacement technique doesn’t work over great distances, it doesn’t work with too large disparities of mass, the greater the size difference and the more complex the chakra system of what you try to swap yourself with, the harder it is to perform.

Kakashi knows Naruto very well. He knows ninjutsu better than anything else he can remember. He doesn’t even think before he does it.

Naruto is where Kakashi stood and Kakashi is where Naruto was and the bone whip cuts through his side the moment he blinks and-

He waits beneath the earth, a pocket of chakra filtering air and keeping him from suffocation. The headhunter jutsu propels him forward again as he reorients with the memories of the clone, preparing to come up from underneath, just like Guruko had seconds that feels like minutes ago.

Kakashi registers the reverberation through the ground of Kimimaro turning. The target’s weight shifting on the surface above. He reaches up, grasps, and pulls.

The moment Kimimaro is submerged Kakashi flees. The jutsu launches him out of the ground and he twists to call “Naruto, trees!”

They both jump as bones shoot out of the forest floor like macabre spikes, strange growths of white, tall as a person.

Kakashi’s feet stick to the side of a pine, his hands again flying through seals. Phantom pain lances up his arm from the hand that was injured on the clone.

“Great Fireball Jutsu.”

The rolling ball of fire expands forward and down, rolling into and over bone that blackens and brittles.

The fireball fades, and an odd cone of curving bones open like a flower to expose Kimimaro’s head, skin darkened to an inhuman grey, whites of his eyes gone black, irises yellow. He starts to pull himself out of the earth, as if there is nothing but soft silt around him.

Tremors wrack Kakashi’s body, subtle still, but he knows they’ll get worse. There’s no time to take further stock as Kimimaro comes flying, so fast only the Sharingan saves Kakashi hide. He sees the trajectory before Kimimaro reaches him, and drops the chakra cycling through the soles of his feet.

He falls, and Kimimaro sails over him, missing by nearly nothing as he flies past. The bone whip follows, cracking as Kakashi moves and coming up to meet him, downward and behind Kimimaro, followed by a strike of the fucking bone-spiked tail Kimimaro suddenly has.

Kakashi’s vest catches the worst of it, bone slicing into reinforced cloth, catching in the weave, spinning Kakashi with it as the whip pulls upward and through. He feels it cut into his back as he rolls and then he blinks and braces with chakra and hits the ground.

He doesn’t let the air punched out of his lungs halt his momentum. A backwards roll and Kakashi is back on his feet, leaping into another tree, twisting around the back of the trunk, the heat of the forest fire too strong and too close.

“Hey, asshole!” Naruto shouts, from the middle of the clearing.

Kakashi doesn’t look, but he hears Kimimaro move behind him, past this tree and the next, out of sight. He grants himself a split second’s reprieve from the mounting headache and pressing fatigue, closing the Sharingan.

Hands slightly shaking, he finds Chouza’s chakra pills, luckily in a pocket left intact after the slice of the bone whip.

“Pick on someone your own size!” Naruto calls again.

Kakashi breathes, and glances out. The pill crunches between his teeth, mouth again filled with bitter tang after a moment of sweet.

Naruto is alone in the centre of the clearing, burning embers on the ground, churned earth beneath him and brilliant firelight a halo in his dirty hair. He’s shaking, and he looks very very small.

“You think you can ignore me, huh!?”

Kimimaro moves, fast through the underbrush, then stops. Kakashi’s angle doesn’t let him see to that side of the clearing, Kimimaro still out of view, but Naruto’s shift in posture is enough.

A howl pierces the night, louder than the roaring, spreading fire, louder than Naruto’s shout. Canine, young, not one of his. Reinforcements. Another howl joins it a split second later, human. Kakashi feels the urge to join with a strange sort of apathy, and doesn’t. Instead he throws himself out of the tree toward Naruto who jolts and looks toward the howl

Kakashi intercepts Kimimaro’s projectiles of bone with shuriken of his own.

He lands facing Kimimaro, back to Naruto, and sees Kurenai step out from between the trees to his left, the side away from the raging fire. She looks calm, pristine, standard vest over her regular dress, not a hair out of place and – she has no chakra. There’s a faint blue mirage by her side in the Sharingan’s view.

Kakashi doesn’t even blink and she stands a step to the right of where she previously was, hair ruffled in a way that suggests it’s been soaked with water or sweat and dried on the run, expression strained. Genjutsu.

“You are outmatched,” Kurenai tells Kimimaro, who halts when she comes into view.

Kimimaro is watching the spot next to her, where the false image of her still must be to him. Then he's looking to Naruto, Kakashi in his periphery, before the stark, inhuman eyes flit back to where Kurenai isn't.

"And outnumbered,” Kurenai continues. “It's time to surrender."

Shino moves out of the darkness behind her, from deep shadow suddenly lit with bright yellow and orange, glasses glinting. "I am glad we caught up before you were defeated," he says, entirely monotone. "Why? Because I want to make you pay for the harm you have done to my comrades." He barely reaches Kurenai’s shoulder, and he’s terrifying.

Kakashi doesn’t take his eyes off Kimimaro, but he has no awareness of Tenzo, Kiba or Hinata.

Kimimaro laughs, a low, hair-raising chuckle. “Dying for Orochimaru-sama is the greatest fate I can envision. But I will not, today. None of you will walk out of this.”

Kakashi sees a tiny, black dot land on the ragged remains of Kimimaro’s shirt, where it hangs shrugged off around his waist.

Kurenai runs in, Shino sidesteps, Kimimaro raises the spine made whip still in his hand and Naruto yelps behind Kakashi who jumps back and to the side, fingers twisting through seals.

He lands next to Bull, who reverses fast out of view again, dragging the exhausted Naruto backwards.

There is little moisture in the air, the heat of the forest burning harsh and dry but that just means this takes more chakra than it otherwise would. Kakashi yanks down the mask.

Kimimaro’s whip strikes air next to Kurenai, she grazes his side with a kunai-

“Water release: Water Prison.” Chakra warps into water over Kakashi’s tongue and he blows it into a spray in the air, it turns around his arm and forward as he runs back in, seeing Kimimaro sidestep before the motion is complete. He intercepts, water spirals and coalesces in front of Kimimaro’s momentum and he’s caught.

Kimimaro thrashes, suddenly submerged in the globe. Kakashi stands in front of him, chakra continuously streaming and swirling into the water.

Kurenai grins, something dark and angry. Four senbon launch from her hand through the dome. Kimimaro tries to twist out of the way but is too slowed by the water prison. Two needles pierce his wrist, one his lower arm, and he loses grip of the weapon in his hand.

The ground beneath them looks for a moment like it vibrates, like it’s alive, like when you notice one ant and there are suddenly hundreds. The whip falls and countless little bugs swarm over its surface.

Kimimaro’s bones explode outwards, new growths extending from his body in all directions at once. Kakashi drops the contact with the water sphere and falls back, a spike from Kimimaro’s tail shooting through the space where he stood just a moment before.

The little black dots that make the ground crawl shoot up, disappearing into Kimimaro’s clothing, covering his skin. The dropped whip that was a spine disappears entirely beneath them.

“You think,” Kimimaro mocks, breathing harshly now, “your little vermin can reach my tenketsu through bone?” He steps toward Shino, head cocking. Bone growths extend from his elbow and curves around his arm, twisting forward into a brutal spike around his now limp hand.

Kurenai circles away from her student, around Kimimaro at a few metres distance, and her hands hold a solid sign before her.

Kakashi starts moving through his own signs, a strange weightlessness in his limbs and odd, glowing halos around every point of reflected light in his vision. He sidesteps, putting himself at an angle where neither Kurenai or Shino will risk getting hit.

“Did you know,” Shino says, glasses reflecting fire, face hidden by his collar. When Kurenai reaches a mirrored position on his other side she nods, and Shino takes a quiet, tiny step sideways. “That there is a species of Aburame kikaichu who secrete an acid to dissolve mineral. They feed on calcium as well as chakra.”

Kimimaro’s attention shifts, from readying to throw himself at Shino he instead glances at the little dots of hungry lives crawling up his grey skin, over his form stained with gore, into the open wounds from which bones protrude.

Kakashi forms the final seal and the screams of a thousand birds compete with the roaring bellow of the forest on fire. Brilliant white flashes up Kakashi’s arm and a shadow creeps across the ground.

Kakashi lets the jutsu drop a fraction of a moment before Kimimaro suddenly relaxes, his bone-spike arm raising in the air in the universal sign of surrender. Kurenai holds up her hand to Shino, who remains still, whatever motion he was planning obscured by the bulky coat.

“Oh wow,” Kimimaro says, then coughs once, sharp, and spits a glob of blood onto the dirt. “This is one messed up fanatic.”

“Inoichi,” Kakashi says, relief and empty, echoing apathy washing over him. Suddenly the fire is louder, the light brighter, the chakra of those around him brilliant in colour and utterly surreal.

“Mm,” Kimimaro inhabited by Inoichi hums, eyes narrowing at nothing. “He’s-,” he grits his teeth. “Stubborn. Give me a-,” he shakes himself eyes losing the black sclera for a moment, with an entirely human, furious expression. Then the cursed mark flares on his chest and the sclera turn black again and he draws a sharp breath, twitching, half turning.

Kakashi tenses to move and Inoichi through Kimimaro’s eyes look at him, no past him and he nods, once.

Kimimaro jolts and draws sharp breath and bones extend and a teeny, tiny sapling beneath his feet, fresh and lively against the dead and churned up ash and earth shoots up faster than the beat of a heart, sharp and point skimming Kimimaro’s leg, piercing in through his back and up through his torso and a tree grows out Kimimaro’s mouth, open in a soundless scream.

His eyes, dead and open, lose the yellow iris and blackened sclera and the colour retreats from his skin. Then it’s just him, Orochimaru’s curse gone, leaving a dead boy with too many bones and a tree growing through him, widening and reaching up and up toward the sky, leaves bursting from buds all of it lit by golden light and warmed by the fire’s blistering heat.

The sound of retching breaks the momentary stillness. Kakashi glances to the side, and there is Naruto bent over, bile and vomit spraying his own shoes. One of his hands is wrapped tight around Bull’s collar, the dog holding him up.

In periperhy Kakashi sees Tenzo jump out of a tree, wide eyes and still expression just the same as it always is.

“The Hokage did say we could send a message,” Chouza’s voice rumbles from out of sight. Kakashi steps back get a better view of the clearing and everyone in it, watching Chouza step forward with Inoichi and Shikamaru at his side. “I think this will suffice.”

“Whoa, that’s insane!” Kiba calls as he steps around the two jounin, Akamaru draped over his shoulders. At his feet Guruko limps into view as well, Hinata behind him.

Pakkun follows from the other side, and with him Sakura, hand clamped around the elbow below her injured shoulder, but steady on her feet. After her comes Ino and Tokuma, the latter’s byakugan active. Ino takes a quick step forward, reaching for Sakura, fingers catching on her sleeve.

Sakura lets go of her injured arm and reaches back with her good one. Ino’s hand slides down, pale and jarringly clean and bright against Sakura, dirtied and darkened with soot and mud and blood. Their fingers lace together, two little girls finding strength in eachother.

“The others have dispelled,” Pakkun reports as he comes to a stop at Kakashi’s side.

Tokuma goes up to Tenzo, and they speak in low, clipped tones.

“Good,” Kakashi crouches next to the pug, bloodied fingers scratching into the fur on Pakkun’s head. “Go check on them.” He looks up. “You too, Guruko.”

“Sure thing, Boss,” Guruko says. Then he looks up at Akamaru and Kiba. “See you later, pups.”

“See ya,” Kiba salutes the dog, then dashes up to Shino, demanding updates for ‘everything he missed’.

There are two puffs of white smoke that dissolve in a moment with the heat and wind from the fire. It’s spreading fast east and north, a warm breeze pushing it away from the devastated clearing they stand in.

"I am quite pleased," Shino replies to Kiba, not sounding pleased at all. "Hardly any of my Kikaichu were lost in the battle."

“Well done, all of you,” Chouza says, drawing everyone’s attention. “We will be returning to Konoha. Kurenai, how are your reserves?”

“Good.” She has a hand on Hinata’s shoulder.

Kakashi pulls down his headband to cover the Sharingan. The world goes dull and flat and slow.

“Here,” Chouza reaches into his coat, then hands Kurenai a single chakra pill. The remaining pack he hands to Tenzo. “Kurenai, I want you to return at speed. Report to the Hokage and inform him of the situation. Bring news of the fire as well,” he squints up at the plume of smoke. “It is distant yet, but could pose a threat to Okada within days, should the weather hold.”

“Understood.” Kurenai looks over to her students.

Meanwhile, Chouza continues. “Inoichi, Kakashi, Tokuma and I shall-“

“I would like to assist Yamato’s continued mission,” Tokuma interrupts. “There is one target unaccounted for.”

Chouza deliberates for a moment. “Approved. As field commander, I task you with the mission to pursue this remaining assailant under Yamato’s command.”

Tokuma bows his head, and then turns fully to face Hinata. “If I have your leave, Hinata-sama.”

“Oh! Uhm, yes, approved,” Hinata replies, curling in on herself and looking a blink away from hiding behind Kurenai.

Where Chouza had received a nod, Tokuma bows deeply to Hinata.

“Yamato, Tokuma,” Inoichi cuts in. “Pursue until the border of fire country. Do not proceed further. Return if the target is not acquired before then.”

Yamato protests, “The Hokage’s orders were to eliminate all potential information leaks.”

“The Hokage is not up to date on the situation,” Inoichi counters. “I will answer to Sandaime-sama as the highest-ranking Intelligence officer on this mission.”

“…Understood,” Tenzo says, though Kakashi can tell by the tiny twitch by his temple that he is unhappy with the order.

“That decided,” Chouza picks up again. “Inoichi, Kakashi and I will escort the genin back at high civilian pace. Kurenai, when you arrive inform the gate of our ETA and to have medics on standby.”

“Will do,” Kurenai agrees. “Well done Team Eight. I will see all of you back home for post-mission debrief. I’m proud of all of you.”  Her genin say their goodbyes, then she nods to the rest of them, and slips away into the night silent as a ghost.

“See you, Senpai,” Tenzo says to Kakashi, who raises his hand in goodbye. Then Tezo turns to Tokuma. “Let’s go.” The two of them disappear from the clearing as well.

“Well,” Kakashi sighs, “we survived. Let’s go home.”

Inoichi snorts at him, then turns to Ino and Sakura, opening his arms to both of them. The girls, hands still clasped, lean into Inoichi’s vest and Ino shakes with what must be hidden tears. Kakashi’s senses still feel broken and numb, with only fire and smoke in his nostrils.

Shikamaru stands by Chouza, supported by Kiba and Shino, and Hinata steps over to join them. Kakashi looks around for Naruto, and finds him hunched with Bull just a little off to the side. His blue eyes are wide, glassy and unblinking as he can’t seem to look away from Kimimaro’s corpse.

Kakashi steps up next to Bull, and nudges the dog. Bull looks up at him in turn, a question in the tilt of his head.

“You okay to continue?” Kakashi asks.

Bull just nods in reply.

“Come on, Naruto,” Kakashi says, trying to sound gentle but it hits somewhere between too upbeat and done with the world. The kid doesn’t move more than turn his head ever so slightly Kakashi’s way, eyes still trained on Kimimaro. “We have to go.”

When Naruto still doesn’t turn, Kakashi grips him under the arms as if he was a much smaller child, and lifts him. Up and over, he sets him down straddling Bull’s back.

“We need to get back to Sasuke, ne?” Kakashi says, and Naruto finally blinks.

Ino is lifted up in her father’s arms. Chouza is saying something quietly to Sakura as Kakashi turns back, Bull striding along beside him. Naruto sags forward, to rest his forehead against the back of Bull’s head.

Kakashi moves over to Chouza and Sakura, the large bulk of the Akimichi clan head shielding them somewhat from the heat of the fire.

“Hey, Sakura,” he says, wiping his hands on his vest to try and get them a little cleaner. It doesn’t really work. “Come here.”

She looks up at him, small and strong and pale with pain. Kakashi doesn’t ask, he just hooks one arm behind her back and the other under her knees, bad shoulder away from his body.

“We’ll make camp in two hours,” Chouza says. “If anyone flags before then, tell me.”

They leave through the undergrowth on foot, the pace like a surreal stroll after the many hours of running. Kakashi breathes, Sakura a solid weight against his chest. She is here. Naruto is here. Sasuke is back at the hospital. They are safe.

Behind them the forest burns.

-

Chapter Text

The silent group travelling through the night carries with it an atmosphere fraught with uncertainty and coloured in fatigue, alongside a giddy strain of success.

Every now and then Kiba nudges Shino, and Inoichi keeps sneaking looks at his daughter with clear relief. Several of them carry little red lights to give some minimal vision in the pitch-darkness, trees like threatening columns in a dark cave all around them. If not for the smells and the knowledge there really might as well have been underground.

Kakashi is still riding high on the energy of chakra pills as the sharp focus of adrenaline fades. Physically he feels fantastic. Hands steady, breath coming easy, Sakura light in his arms even as he chafes at the pace they’re moving at. Leaving foreign material so deep in her shoulder overnight seems risky as hell, but Chouza is team lead, and well, it’s a relief to just… not think about it.

At the front of the group Kiba and Shino are guiding the way, while Hinata takes up the rear with Chouza, who is carrying Shikamaru on his back. Inoichi and Kakashi are in the middle, with Naruto unconscious (or near as) on Bull’s back between them.

Kakashi can feel Sakura shiver occasionally, drifting in and out of consciousness as the pain likely won’t let her sleep. The scents of blood and sweat and mud are just about discernible beside the inescapable, overwhelming smoke that clings to every thread and hair and patch of exposed skin. If anyone is searching for them in the night the little pinpricks of red won’t be what gives them away, it will be the reek.

A little while through the forest, leaves and twigs rustling underfoot as the genin pass through, and Ino insists she’s well enough to walk on her own. Inoichi sets her down.

“Just let me know if anything feels off,” Inoichi tells her.

“Of course, dad.” Ino sounds like she tries to be snappy and confident, but it’s shaky.

Instead of staying by Inoichi’s side, she pauses for a moment and lets Bull pass her by. When Kakashi reaches her, she falls into step.

Ino’s eyes glint in the minimal light, as she glances from the path to Sakura to Kakashi and back to the path again.

“Hey Forehead,” she whispers, and Kakashi pretends not to listen. “You’ve got to pull through this fine. I can’t critique your fashion if you get crippled, okay? That wouldn’t be fair.”

Sakura’s eyes crack open to minimal slits, just enough to glare in Ino’s general direction. She grumbles something that can be loosely interpreted as “Not on your life, Ino-pig.”

Out of sight of her rival, Kakashi sees Sakura smile ever so slightly, despite the cold sweat beading on her skin.

He lets himself release a single, quiet huff of a laugh. Ino looks startled but Sakura’s smile grows wider, and she turns her face to press it into Kakashi’s vest.

“I’m glad we got you in time,” he tells Ino. It’s kind of a lie, because he strangely feels almost nothing at all, but he hopes it won’t be.

“Yeah,” she reaches out and holds on gently to the leg of Sakura’s torn trousers. “Me too.”

-

They make camp in what’s clearly an established site. There are no visible signs when they arrive, but the ground is flat and free of poking roots, covered in leaves and pine needles. There’s good visibility from the trees and good cover below, and Chouza doesn’t hesitate for a moment before he reaches in underneath a spiky looking bush and pulls open a hatch.

He lifts out a storm lantern, and with a soft click bright, electric light brightens the clearing, casting deep black shadows behind everyone and everything in the vicinity. Kakashi holds back a wince.

Underneath the hatch there is water, with paper seals applied to the side of each container, and there are bedrolls and firewood and rations, together with a large, wooden box of a med-kit.

“Kiba,” Chouza calls. “Set these up.” Then he tosses over two tightly tied bedrolls and Kiba scrambles to catch them in the dark.

“We’ve already got stuff!” The genin squawks. Akamaru dodges sideways and wags his tail.

“No, it makes sense,” Shino cuts in. His sunglasses flash with reflected light, and there’s nothing visually to show he’s spent hours running through the woods.

Chouza chucks another roll, this time at Shino. There’s a buzz around him and through the air, and the roll slows down as he reaches out to take it. “Why? Shikamaru, Sakura, Ino and Naruto did not have time to collect their gear before leaving.”

“Who said you could drop honorifics, Shino-kun?” Ino says from where she is clearing space on the ground to make a fire.

“Apologies,” Shino replies immediately. “I thought it was appropriate. Why? The social convention is generally to forego honorifics once taking to the field together, for expediency as well as a result of the closeness forged in dangerous situations. If you do not like it, I will return to referring to you as I heretofore have. Why? Your comfort is something I wish to be considerate of.”

“Ah,” Ino seems a little taken aback, but then she smiles. Hinata hands her the first piece of wood to start stacking in the cleared space. “That’s all right then. Thanks, Shino.” She’s quiet for a moment, fussing with the firewood more than anyone would think necessary. “And thanks, for coming after me.”

“Tch,” Shikamaru scoffs from where he’s leaning against the trunk of a tree. “Troublesome. Of course we came.”

“Well, be more gracious of me thanking you!” Ino scolds. While standing watch over them Inoichi looks at the kids with so much care that Kakashi wants to break something.

Sakura fell asleep in Kakashi’s arms a little while ago, and her soft breathing feels fragile. He can’t move, or she’ll shatter, and he would go with her.

The genin stumble through setting things up in the dark, but help each other without fuss. Eventually there are bedrolls laid out and a fire crackling in the centre of the small clearing. The shadows between trees move with the flickering light, and the storm lantern is turned off and put away again. Harsh white has been replaced with burning yellow.

Kakashi lays Sakura down gently in one of the spots set out, and crouches beside her. Her forehead doesn’t seem too warm, but he’s not sure he trusts the sensation in his fingers right now. They’ve started to tingle every now and then, but there’s none of the weak tremor he’s learned is a sign of fatigue about to hit.

Bull tips Naruto off onto another bedroll, but the kid doesn’t even wake. There’s a startled snort when he hits the ground with a thump and rustle of leaves, but then at Bull’s throaty rumble Naruto immediately relaxes again. The dog settles next to him, big head pressing down on the boy’s legs.

Those of them who are awake and capable of it wash their hands on rotation. Kakashi pulls off his gloves, a strange, surprised dissonance niggling at the edges of his mind when the one that had been cut on his clone comes off intact, and not crusted stuck to his palm. Blood and dirt rinse off his fingers, revealing pale skin and nicks and cuts and bruises.

Kiba scrubs himself more than anyone else, washing his face as well as his hands. He then gently rinses Akamaru’s face and nose, too.

Ino and Hinata bundle up next to each other, Hinata’s Byakugan active in short flickers every few minutes, . Kiba and Shino bully Shikamaru into a bedroll.

Chouza checks the perimeter, surprisingly nimble despite his bulk and entirely soundless. When he returns he comes over to Sakura and Kakashi. In the dark and firelight his hair looks almost brown. The large med-kit dangles from a strap over his shoulder as he’s pulling a small scroll from inside a coat pocket.

Inoichi nods to his old teammate. He drapes his haori around Ino’s shoulders, suddenly more nondescript in his standard uniform, and then takes up a watch position.

“Sakura-chan.” the Akimichi clan head kneels next to Sakura. She startles awake with a pinched, worried expression, and Kakashi makes sure to lean into her line of sight. Her face is still streaked with soot and sweat and marked around the eyes where tears have rinsed away the dirt.

“You’re okay, Sakura. Just a medical check.” He makes sure to smile at her, but he feels close to dead inside.

Chouza gets the scroll open and reveals an arsenal of bottles and boxes and odd little packets. All of them match the simple design of the package of chakra pills sitting in Kakashi’s pocket.

“She’s had half a chakra pill,” he says as Chouza picks up one of the bottles, opening it to reveal little dark tablets.

The Akimichi clan head pauses. “How long ago?”

“Just over two hours.”

Chouza hums and closes the bottle up, then grabs another one. “Help her take these.” He rattles out two white pills, then takes two more from another.

Kakashi accepts them with a questioning look.

“Painkillers and antibiotics.”

He nods, and helps Sakura sit so she can take a sip of water and down the pills. It turns out she needs them snapped in half and given piece by piece. He does it for her, dry pressed tablets snapping neatly and leaving residue on his fingers.

Chouza peels away the bloodied bandage on her shoulder.

All Kakashi can think is that she’s a little kid who shouldn’t be here. It would be so very easy for her to die. She’s barely older than Obito, crushed in that cave. The same age as Rin, with his hand through her chest.

She’s moving her lips, but it’s hard to see what she’s saying past the ringing in his head and the smoke in his nose.

“Kakashi.”

He jolts at Inoichi’s voice.

“Take watch.”

He stands and Shunshins up onto a branch in a tall Hashimara tree. It’s easy to do as he’s told, and Inoichi takes his former place at Sakura’s side.

The night is still around them, animals scared off by the large group and the fire, and he notices no trace of anyone else around. At the horizon there is an ever-widening cloud, rising from the ground, lit orange from below.

Out of sight from. The others Kakashi pulls down the mask and breathes fresher air. The scent of smoke clings to the fabric, and his hair and clothing envelop him in its numbing pressure, headache throbbing as a result.

The gentle western wind brings the forest closer and the distant wildfire further away. Hints of greenery and pine and decay and fresh water carries with it, just breaking through the layers ground into himself that Kakashi won’t escape until he can properly wash and get rid of everything on him.

The sharp smell of iodine rises from below, and he looks down to see Chouza apply a dark liquid over Sakura’s shoulder.

Time passes. Sakura’s shoulder is wrapped in clean gauze around Kimimaro’s bone, the genin drop off to sleep, and Inoichi tends the fire.

At a gesture, gather, from Chouza, Kakashi drops out of the tree, chakra cushioning and silencing his landing. He approaches the fire and the two jounin. Inoichi, normally a fairly imposing figure on his own, looks small crouching next to Chouza who is standing beside him. They both are starting to show signs of tiring, hints of dark circles beneath their eyes and the type of jerkiness to their movements that comes with the effort to chase of sleep.

“I’ll take first watch,” Chouza says softly. “Kakashi, you’ve taxed yourself the most. Take the third.”

“I feel fine,” Kakashi protests. The lack of pain is a novelty he’s cherishing, and his mind feels bright and sharp. “I don’t mind taking the first two.” He probably couldn’t sleep now no matter how hard he tries, energy buzzing under his skin. If they need to fight he’s probably in the best shape, going by the look of the older men. The tingling in his fingers is the only issue, and that’s so minor compared to his every day that it’s barely an issue at all.

Chouza looks at him with a displeased twist to his lips, round cheeks bunching. “How many did you have?”

“Ah?” Oh, right. “Two.”

“How far apart.”

“…less than thirty minutes.”

Chouza full on frowns.

“Change of directives. Two watches, I’ll take the first, Inoichi second.” He looks at Kakashi, the firelight putting one side of his face in bright warmth while the other nearly disappears in shadow. “We will monitor you. You can assist on each watch. Tell us if you notice any symptoms.”

“That seems excessive.”

“Give me the rest.” Chouza holds his hand out

Kakashi hides his reluctance with quick, easy compliance. The little paper package is dry and smooth in his hand as he passes it over. There are four pills missing. Chouza raises an eyebrow as he visibly counts the remainder through feel.

“One fell. One split between Shikamaru and Sakura,” Kakashi reports. His voice is soft, but there’s tension back in his limbs and core. “What am I looking out for?”

Chouza then looks at Inoichi, just as reproachful as his gaze on Kakashi was a moment ago.

Inoichi in turn cringes, pulling a hand through his sweat-streaked hair. “I should have realised,” he grimaces. “And I’m sorry.”

Chouza turns back to Kakashi, voice sharp but barely above a whisper in volume. “Spontaneous heart failure is the greatest risk. At least you did not have two at once.”

“Ah.” Maybe he should have listened closer to Chouza’s instructions, but honestly… “I would still have made the same choice.” He looks over to the sleeping genin. Shikamaru’s breathing is too steady, his pose too stiff. The kid is clearly listening in.

“I don’t blame you,” Chouza sighs. “Other than the danger of the heart giving out, more common side effects include general sympathetic nervous system overactivity, with high heart rate, anxiety, nausea, and stomach upset. In another four hours you should be out of any serious risk.”

“That also means you should rest, even if you’re wired,” Inoichi adds.

“Understood,” Kakashi concedes.

He spends the night wide awake, keeping watch alongside the other jounin, surrounded by sleeping children.

-

He doesn’t have a heart attack in the nigh. He’s not entirely sure he cares one way or the other.

-

"You didn't even blink."

Kakashi glances up at Naruto who stands a few steps away. Kakashi himself crouches by a small stream, washing his hands. They’re about to set off, morning light heating up the already warm humidity of the forest.

Kakashi hadn't even noticed the need to relieve himself, be it because of lingering adrenaline or the chakra pills, but Chouza set a rotation and ordered them to go in set pairs, and so they did. The mask is back over his nose, rinsed once in the night and now slightly stiff and only a little less saturated with smoke. It’s nauseating, but going barefaced would cause reactions.

Naruto wipes his hands off on the legs of his bloodied, muddy, soot-stained trousers, then grimaces as they are immediately dirtied again. He crouches upstream from Kakashi and repeats the cleaning he’d already done.

Kakashi ignores the blood still underneath his own fingernails and in the grooves of his palms and staining his wrists and dripping into the water when he lifts his hands out. It's not there. He knows it's not there. Sakura's and his own and Kimimaro's, already washed away. It feels like it’s soaked into him. This is not the time and place. The mission still needs to come first.

Naruto won't meet his eye, shaking his hands vigorously in the air. Then he closes his eyes and breathes deep through his nose.

"He was like me, Kakashi-sensei," Naruto says, small and balled up on the edge of the stream, late morning light filtering down through green leaves above. The orange jacket is missing, replaced with Kiba's spare shirt, long sleeved and Inuzuka red. Now washed off, there is not a single wound or fresh scar left on the kid. Kimimaro had delivered several what should have been close to mortal blows.

"Maybe you had things in common," Kakashi says, an abyss of uncaring echoing in his chest. Naruto matters. Kimimaro didn't. "But you're not the same."

If anyone in that clearing was the same as Kimimaro, it was Tenzo. Not that Naruto is likely to have the clearance to know that. Then do not speak, the Hokage's words rest heavy in the back of his mind.

"Yeah?" Naruto opens his eyes to stare down at the water. "How? Because the only thing I can tell is that I'm supposed to think like that about Jiji, and Kimimaro’s fault’s that he was a weapon for somebody else."

"This isn't the place to talk about this," he tells Naruto, the same tension he feels when faced with Danzo and the Sandaime creeping up his back. The others are breaking up camp just a little way out of sight.

"There's never gonna be a place to talk about this," Naruto snarls bitterly, arms hugging his own knees. "We didn't have to leave him like that."

"We had orders," Kakashi says. His voice is steady, unaffected. It sounds pathetic to his own ears even as he says it.

Naruto stands up abruptly and turns away, facing back toward the camp. "When I'm Hokage, no one's gonna be treated like that. Believe it." He stomps off, without looking back.

"I look forward to it," Kakashi says quietly to himself, and washes his hands again. Obito's eye is irritated, grit trapped underneath the cloth.

-

They pack up, erase all traces of their presence, and then they run. Not a mad, frantic rush but a steady clip that eats up the distance. Kakashi’s heart is beating in his throat, not too fast but too hard, throbbing up his jaw and echoing with every step.

Inoichi and Chouza carry Shikamaru and Sakura, with Team Eight taking up the front and rear of the group. Shino’s bugs flit in and out of Kakashi’s awareness, and Bull trots steadily alongside Akamaru’s canter.

Naruto sticks by Kiba, avoiding the adults and seemingly lost in thought. His silence is unnerving, and Kakashi hates that he doesn’t know how to help. He’s just numb, and telling Naruto how little he cares probably won’t do anything to help.

As morning continues into midday, a light drizzle starts, bright white clouds chasing patches of blue above. Most of it doesn’t hit them through the canopy, until they exit the tree cover onto the wide dirt road that will bring them back to Konoha. There Chouza calls for a break at a slower pace, and Kakashi wants to be sick. Somehow being still feels worse than running, though the tingling in his hands has subsided. It doesn’t matter, anyway, they’ll be back in Konoha soon.

The group formation loosens with Chouza’s permission. Naruto and Team Eight push ahead, Kiba pulling Hinata along as he loudly chatters about the pros and cons of different dog breeds and their abilities. Naruto is heavily quoting ‘Pakkun-sensei’ in response. Shino interjects every now and then with bug species that could do the same as whatever ‘cool moves’ the other boys are describing.

The rest of them make up a group a few paces behind, Kakashi still listening and looking out for any hostile presence, even as it gets more and more unlikely the closer they get to the village. Bull still sticks around, calmly pacing Kakashi’s steps.

They pass a pair of civilians with heavy backpacks, looking like they’re on a hiking holiday. Their presence seems absurd. One of them, a gangly man with a yellow cap on his head, nudges his shorter companion and they stare wide eyed at the shinobi.

Sasuke and Team Ten were attacked in the village. Safety is an illusion.

Danzo is there too, and the policies that keep sending kids out to die, so Kakashi has no idea why he’d ever taken any kind of stability even close to granted.

The civilians disappear behind them, weighed down by their bags.

"So apparently,” Shikamaru says when there’s a particularly loud shout from the group ahead, “Naruto recently figured out the Yondaime’s his dad." The kid is perching on Chouza’s back, to the side and behind Inoichi who has Sakura in his arms. Behind the casual tone there's a clear note of what the fuck. "How the hell did he not know?"

Sakura peers over Inoichi’s shoulder to stare at him in surprise, then quickly looks away. The Yamanaka clan head meanwhile looks back to knowingly to meet Chouza’s eyes. Ino looks appalled.

“He’s what!?”

“So troublesome,” Shikamaru sighs. “He blabbed all sorts of things to Kimimaro, you know.”

"Maa," Kakashi says. "Don't be too hard on him for not knowing. I don't think he ever read a history book until Ebisu got hold of him."

Sakura snorts. Shikamaru looks exhausted, raising his eyebrows in an expression that clearly communicates that’s not what this is about and you know it.

"He's making leaps and bounds with a better teacher!" Kakashi insists, ignoring the attention. "But don't worry Sakura, I'll study up on teaching, I won't be slacking off."

When she replies her tone is deadpan. He can hear the eyeroll in it. "But Sensei, you hate Ebisu-sensei."

"Mm. Sadly, two things can be true at once," he sighs.

Shikamaru laughs, Sakura scoffs, Ino hits hear head against her father’s arm and Chouza shakes his head, while Inoichi hides a smile.

If nothing else, Kakashi can still pretend.

-

Outside the village gate a stand-by team of medics takes Sakura from them. The man in charge is deeply tanned, short and square, smelling of hospital alongside cheap sake. His jaw is so crooked it must have been badly broken more than once. Behind the them there’s a short queue to the gate desk, civilians, other teams and local farmers waiting to be let in.

It's early afternoon, sunlight breaking through the clouds and the sky slowly turning back to blue.

“Right,” the medic steps forward. “Hospital transport for Haruno Sakura, and any others on Team Chouza!” He has four other hospital staff with him, and two simple stretchers of pale blue fabric between metal poles. “Team captain?”

Chouza steps forward, after setting Shikamaru down on his feet.

“Akimichi Chouza,” he introduces himself and proceeds to inform the medic of Sakura’s condition, all the medication she’s had and what other interventions. The man in charge doesn’t blink, but the others look varying degrees of starstruck at Chouza’s presence. Then they look from him to Inoichi to Kakashi.

If nothing else, Kakashi guesses, a team of this many heavy hitters returning in broad daylight will spark rumours, if everything isn’t common knowledge already.

Two of the medics snap to and raise one of the stretchers between them, holding it steady. Inoichi settles Sakura on it, and she opts to sit upright rather than lie down. Her good hand is holding her own elbow again, knuckles pale.

The two med-nin now holding her up seem unaffected, but Kakashi can see one of them lean in ever so slightly to peer at the oddly smooth bone shard.

“I’ll see you soon,” Kakashi tells Sakura, who nods and tries to keep a brave face. He’s so proud of her, of Naruto too, even as he wants to shake them both and tell them to never do anything so stupid again.

He’d have done the same, though, going after a friend or a teammate, so he doesn’t say anything.

Shikamaru is offered transport and declines, saying he’ll go to the clan’s clinic first thing instead.

The medical team dashes off, and the rest of them line up to go through the gate.

Once they’ve been stamped through the checkpoint by chuunin Kakashi doesn’t recognise, they gather by the tree to the side, finally back in Konoha proper.

“All right,” Chouza says. “Inoichi and I are going to go give our initial report. Should any questions crop up about details I’ll contact you in the next few days. The rest of you are off duty for now. Go home, clean up and rest well. Our mission is a success, and you have all done well.”

The kids all straighten up at the praise, except Shikamaru who slumps heavier into Inoichi’s side and groans something unintelligible. Ino doesn’t even criticize him.

Naruto looks conflicted, idly scratching at his own arm where he stands to the side.

Kakashi walks through the now familiar village in a daze. It is the same as it was yesterday, but he’s not.

The residual effects of the chakra pills linger, and he itches for another fight.

Someone follows, and his first impulse is to lose them. He takes a moment to register what he’s noticing, and the scent tells him it’s Naruto. Despite the awful void inside Kakashi can’t quite bring himself to not let him trail him. They walk in silence, just the rustle and scuffs of Naruto’s steps behind Kakashi.

He aims for the hospital, Bull pressing against his leg the only thing steering him right.

Shinobi and civilians alike crowd the streets at the tail end of the lunch rush, and when faced with one of the more popular areas Kakashi wonders why he tried walking in the first place. They come to a stop, summer sunshine and a sea of sweaty bodies ahead. Colourful heads of hair and outlandish fashion all blends together into something mundane, stucco facades bright and welcoming and safe and normal.

“You go back and check on the others, hm?” Kakashi looks down at Bull, and doesn’t give in to the impulse to pet his wide, soft head. The mastiff huffs in assent, waits just a moment for something, then when Kakashi doesn’t do whatever that is, he dispels in a puff.

Kakashi glances at Naruto, who is chewing on his lip with his hands in his pockets.

“You’re coming to see Sakura?” Kakashi asks.

Naruto jumps at being addressed. “Yeah believe it! Sasuke-teme is in the hospital too, so y’know…”

“Yeah. Let’s go.” Kakashi doesn’t wait, he just cycles chakra and takes to the rooftops, avoiding the crowds and moving at a much more comfortable speed. Naruto keeps up.

-

They go in through the shinobi emergency intake. The staff makes a half-hearted attempt at telling Kakashi to check in as a guest, and then seem to decide to do it for him when he ignores them, walking past the desk.

Naruto skates along by momentum, and Kakashi barely notices except for when the kid grabs the hem of his vest. “Hey Kakashi-sensei, shouldn’t we-?”

Kakashi stops and Naruto almost crashes into him, and he draws a breath. This is the room. He can smell Sakura past the smoke of his own and Naruto’s presence and the hospital scents. There is no door, and ten beds in the room, shielded by curtains. By scent half of them are occupied, but only Sakura and one other patient are visible.

A dark eyed kunoichi Kakashi doesn’t recognise looks at them wide eyed as they barge in. She’s got an IV in her arm and smells of something sour, but has no visible injury.

“Sakura!” Naruto dashes ahead, dirty sandals slapping the linoleum floor. The curtain hangs open, soft blue with little Konoha leaf swirls in white. Sakura has been changed into a hospital gown, one shoulder left out and the fabric bunching around her neck and chest. She smiles, looking surprisingly at ease.

“Naruto! Kakashi-sensei!” Her voice slurs a little. They’ve got her on some good stuff.

“Sakura.” Kakashi doesn’t know what else to say. She’s here and she’s okay. She will be okay, he tells himself. Her injury somehow seems worse under the hospital lights.

“They’re gonna surgery me,” Sakura informs them happily. “I’m really sick of this being here you know?” She scrunches her neck awkwardly to look at her own shoulder, fresh bandages around Kimimaro’s projectile.

“That’s, uh, that’s cool Sakura-chan!” Naruto looks a little bit sick.

“Mm,” she nods. Her chin-length hair is jagged, lopsided, mostly it’s natural colour and a little crusty from where Ino helped her rinse it in camp this morning. “They said’s good nobody took it out, and, and the Akimichi meds just have to wear off properly before they can, uh, do the sleep thing. But I got some more painkillers!”

“That’s good, Sakura.” Kakashi doesn’t know what to say other than nearly mimic Naruto’s words, if a bit more smoothly. He fakes a smile.

“They sent a message to my dad,” she informs them. “He’s got to pick me up tomorrow.”

“Hey, hey,” Naruto bounces on his heels. “D’you want anything for after? I’ve gotta go by home later but then I’m gonna come back here believe it! Gonna go ask Sasuke-teme too because the bastard probably’s been moping this whole time and I gotta…” his stream of words stalls. He finishes at a lower volume, speaking more slowly, “fill him in on everything, you know?”

Sakura starts crying. Naruto flails.

“I can’t even bring Sasuke-kun flowers,” she hiccups. “He’s hurt and I bet that bitch Ami’s been sending him so much stuff and I was just getting dirty in the forest!”

“Maa,” Kakashi leans back. Panic attacks and survival is one thing, he is kind of getting a hang on trying to give these kids some mental support, but this? She was just in a fight for her life, and she’s thinking about bringing her teammate flowers? “You were going after Ino?”

Sakura cries harder. “I w’s so scared!” There’s snot coming out her nose, liquid wobbling on her upper lip as her cheeks streak with tears. This has to be the adrenaline come down, right? And maybe the drugs. Probably the drugs.

Kakashi glances at Naruto. Naruto looks back at him. Naruto nods. Kakashi has no idea what he read in his eye.

“Ah don’t worry Sakura-chan!” Naruto climbs up onto the bed next to Sakura. “We’ll go see Sasuke-teme when you’re done with the surgery believe it! And then when everybody’s out we’ll go to Ichiraku together!”

Sakura nods violently, then falls forward and presses her forehead to Naruto’s arm.

“My treat,” Kakashi promises. He puts an awkward hand on the back of Sakura’s uninjured shoulder.

He makes his escape a short while later, when Sakura dozes off and Naruto says he’s planning to stay with her.

“If anyone tries to give you shit,” Kakashi says, and Naruto tenses, “tell them I ordered you to be here.”

The kid nods, still uncharacteristically quiet, and stays sitting next to Sakura. They’re too small and too bright and it’s really not fair.

Kakashi leans against the wall around the corner, closing his eye, just breathing. He’ll continue in a moment.

The fluorescent lights whine.

Another, deep breath, and he stands straight again. Then he hears Naruto’s voice, free of the put-on bravado and hyperactive cheer.

“I know he was an enemy, Sakura-chan, and I get we had to fight him. But I liked him anyway.” There’s a sigh, which would have been loud by any other standards but is quiet for Naruto. “Sometimes I imagine how stuff could be, if people just didn’t hate each other so much.”

-

He tries to go see Sasuke, but Kana-san, the nurse who brought him from T&I and bossed him around in recovery, catches him in the hallway.

Her lined face is particularly displeased looking in the overhead lights. Her hair is still fully hidden by the forehead protector’s cloth, and her eyes narrow in knowing disapproval.

“Hatake.”

“Kana-san.”

“Are you injured?”

“Just visiting my cute little student!” He fakes a smile, crinkling his eye.

“Then you can visit him after you clean up. You’re a walking infection risk and you stink like a five-day-old bonfire.”

“Can I say hi?”

“No! It’s not visiting hours. Get the fuck out and come back when you’re presentable.”

Ugh. “Fine, fine, Kana-san. See you later.” He salutes, and Shunshins down to the window at the end of the hall, just to be annoying.

“No jutsu in the hallways!”

-

Kakashi is leaping across rooftops, sandals touching down quietly on metal sheets and ceramic tiles and flat concrete terraces. It’s almost at the apartment when Genma appears next to him, calling out his name. He’s feeling dangerously blank again, holding off a towering emptiness with motion. He stops stops and turns.

Genma looks and smells just the same as he always does, but Kakashi can’t quite look away from the glint off the senbon in his teeth. It’s poisoned, he knows. Genma is resistant, but it could kill someone else, just like that.

“Yeah?” Kakashi can’t quite make himself put his hands away.

“Good to see you back. Everyone okay?”

“Some injuries, nothing life threatening. Mission success.”

Genma nods. “Cool. You free this evening?”

Kakashi imagines going to any kind of busy social gathering and would rather tear his own hair out. He narrows his eye.

Genma huffs. “Dude, take it easy. It’s for Kurenai. Asuma’s been in surgeries pretty much non-stop, and she’s camping out at the hospital, so we’re taking watches. Gai should be there now. I was going after him, but I’ve been called in for a shift. So, since you’re back you could join.” There’s something challenging in his tone that Kakashi can’t be bothered to examine.

“Sure,” he decides. He still feels all right physically, and he absolutely does not want the time and space to think. He needs to see Sasuke, too. “I can do that.”

“Great. Bring food! The hospital vending machines suck ass.”

“Will do.” Kakashi nods, and they each dash off in opposite directions.

-

Coming back to fluorescent lights and the smells of antiseptics, death and bile has Kakashi jittery. And that’s just walking through the halls, before even considering who is inside the doors to the operating area, and how long he must have been there.

He swears he can still smell smoke sticking to him, but it’s better with an all-fresh uniform and hair shampooed four times over with the best odour-killing stuff the shinobi supply has on offer.

(His apartment is left in disarray, ever little knick-knack he’d put away taken back out so he could spin them and flick them and count them and make sure the world is still real. That and a check with the Sharingan and a decisive kai hadn’t revealed any changes.)

A quick check with a nurse at the main desk lets him know Sakura is all right, out of surgery with no complications and currently under observation in the wake-up area. The latter is said pointedly, before telling him that until she’s moved there will be no visitors.

He gets directions for the waiting room instead.

Kurenai sits alone, the one next of kin still around as scheduled procedures have finished for the day. Her posture is hunched forward, long hair draping over her shoulder. She leans on an elbow resting on her crossed knees and her stare is blank, red eyes unfocused in the middle distance. She smells like worry, and the kind of cold, static sweat that comes with fatigue. In her hand a pack of cigarettes spin in a rythmic thwip, thwip, thwip.

"News?" His hands are in his pockets, and around one arm hangs a rustling plastic bag. It’s becoming slightly easier to behave like a person and not feel like it’s fake, now that he’s clean and with a mission.

She blinks, but gives up the effort to turn to him and instead looks down at the floor. It’s scuffed but cleaned and polished to a shine despite the gouges.

"He's alive."

"Uh-huh." He drops into the seat next to her. "Gai been by?"

"Yeah." Her voice is hoarse, like someone who has not spoken much if at all and drunk too little. "A while ago. He had to leave."

Kakashi nods. He doesn’t make any excuses for being late. He fishes out a bottle of cold, plain green tea and hands it over.

Kurenai's hands don't shake as she tucks the cigarette pack against her stomach and uncaps the bottle. He's glad to see her drink, though maybe her training will keep her doing the necessities, despite the stress. He’s not sure. She could be like him. He doesn’t remember the training though, and shouldn’t that make a difference?

"How long..?"

"Nine hours. This is the third surgery since the attack." Her voice is flat.

"Do they think he'll recover."

Kurenai snorts. "He'll need a miracle. Or Tsunade-sama to return. Which is the same thing, really. But I'll be happy if he just... can be with us still.” She breathes deep, something between a double breath and a sigh. The flat lighting makes her look like she could be dead. “They’ll try to save some function above the waist. That could be possible."

Kakashi hums noncommittally. Whatever happens, he hopes Asuma and Kurenai both get to have a life where they can be happy. Safety is probably too much to long for.

"If it wasn't for Sasuke-kun he'd be dead. I'm-," she shakes her head. "I'm glad he was there.”

They’re both silent for a drawn out second.

“I wish," she says like a secret, "the mandatory medic program had been implemented."

Kakashi rustles through the bag again, and hands over a bento with onigiri and fine slices of fresh sashimi. Expensive, but he knows it's her favourite. She’d said it was the one thing she could always stomach, a few weeks ago when they were too many drinks in and commiserating about the horrors of deep-fried foods.

"Why wasn't it?" He tries to think, but his memory is no help. To him, back in the other place when reading and watching the story, it would have been a trivial detail among hundreds of chapters, if it had been in there at all.

She glances at him, a small frown creasing between her eyes, then a near-invisible shift of realisation. She's letting him see her expressions, he's sure.

"Tsunade-sama left," she says. It would have been fair if she was bitter, but her voice is just tired.

"Ah."

Maybe it wouldn’t have been easy to maintain, but there are people in the village who could have made it happen, with or without Tsunade.

Konoha's (or maybe Sarutobi Hiruzen's) tendencies to only let the strongest bend policy to their ideals, and then let those systems collapse when the people are gone is... something else. Instead of building something reliable, the few who have the position to make changes are over and over brought past the brink, and burn out so spectacularly it’s a miracle if they don’t crash out with a body count.

It’s unfair of him, but Kakashi is glad to be here, now, where he can focus on Kurenai and Asuma and all this and not anything else.

"Ah," Kurenai agrees.

She eats in slow, small bites, and Kakashi stays by her side. Eventually he pulls out a book, a non-explicit, slice of life historical romance he'd picked up a few days ago. It's light-hearted, and the worst thing that's happened so far is that the protagonist caught a cold after her horse threw a shoe, so now the love interest thinks she stood him up.

Kurenai gives him a tired eyeroll and a fond smile, which soon falls into grim exhaustion again.

"I've got another one if you want," he holds up another paperback. This one is about a business mogul who falls for a courtesan.

He sees her consider it. "I'm too tired to read." She takes the cigarette pack in hand again.

"Fair." He looks down at her beside him, can smell her distress in the silence. "I could read it to you? It's not…" he clears his throat awkwardly, "the age rating is teen."

She doesn't look up. "...Yeah. Okay." She leans back, then turns sideways away from him and lifts her feet onto the adjacent seat, curled up so her back is to him. "And that's too bad really. The dirty parts of Icha-Icha are the best." It's forced, but he can hear her smirk.

"I wouldn't say that..." She’s not entirely wrong but he’s not going to admit it.

"Yeah, yeah. You’re the one person who likes porn for the plot. Let's hear about whatever the Blossoms in Spring get up to."

He opens the book to the first page. Kurenai hesitates for a moment, then leans closer.

He says nothing, and doesn't move away as he begins to read. Gradually she falls back, her warm weight against his side, her head on his shoulder.

It's unpleasant at first, the constant awareness of touch he can’t ignore. But it fades, and being there makes it worth it.

"How are you even up right now?" She murmurs after the first formal party scene. The protagonist has just performed on the shamisen, and the love interest sees her as more than a plain face in a crowd for the first time.

"Akimichi chakra pills. I'll probably crash at some point. I can't feel any pain right now."

"That bad?"

"It's the best thing I've done in months. Tanaka-sensei's going to murder me."

That makes her snort the tiniest laugh, inelegant and real.

He keeps reading. A short while later Kurenai falls asleep, soft breaths puffing from her slightly open mouth, felt through their contact more than heard. Eye on the book and ears and nose on the clinical despair around them, Kakashi keeps watch.

At two in the morning he's relieved by Anko, who happily takes the offering of the novel (finished, though it wasn't very good) and the sweets Kurenai hadn't eaten. She shoos him out with far too much enthusiasm for the hour, and he goes three floors up and one hallway down, evading the nurse's station on the way, to slink into Sasuke's room.

-

He stays there for hours, watching Sasuke sleep.

The last Uchiha is the only patient left in here now, dark hair stark against pale sheets in the low light of a blue call button on the wall. The tube through his throat is gone, replaced by a taped-down dressing.

Ino is with her family, and Choji must have been released. The extra beds have been removed, but Sasuke hasn’t been put in a smaller space or with anyone else.

There are flowers and cards and little teddy bears, none of it from people who know Sasuke well at all.

There is also a two-man ANBU guard stationed, but they don’t bat an eye at Kakashi’s arrival. One just slips out into the hallway, and the other out the window.

The chair is wooden, with a hard seat pretending to be a cushion and tall arm rests, and he sits there rigidly for too long.

After a long while he checks the chart hanging on the foot of the bed, movingly carefully to make no noise, and squints to read in the dim light. Everything seems good, as far as he can tell, and Sasuke is set for discharge tomorrow.

He returns the chart and looks up to see Sasuke’s eyes open, watching him.

“Yo, Sasuke.”

“Hn.” Sasuke’s voice is a hoarse whisper. “What time is it?”

“Early. Don’t speak.” He moves the chair closer and sits down again. “I’m guessing Naruto told you the basics?” He doesn’t wait for confirmation. “Everyone made it back. Ino is all right. Sakura is injured but being cared for. Naruto got through without a scrape, of course.”

Sasuke blows air through his nose in what could be a scoff or a hint of a laugh.

“Asuma is alive thanks to you. Still in surgery,” Kakashi continues. Sasuke probably knows all but the last detail.

The kid looks away at that, frowning.

Kakashi doesn’t know what else to say, so they just exist in silent proximity. The hospital air conditioning rattles. The floor here is less marked than the one in the waiting room, but he sees what must be kunai marks in at least a few spots.

After several long minutes, where Kakashi thinks Sasuke might be asleep again, the kid makes another noise.“Sensei.”

He looks up to meet two red eyes, not quite glowing but more visible than they should be in the near darkness. One spins with two tomoe, the other with one.

Again, the silence draws out. He still feels so empty, but he knows what it’s like to be young and scared, needing someone to step up. Unlike Sakura crying about flowers, Sasuke’s quiet helplessness is easier to understand. Kakashi uncovers Obito’s Sharingan.

Slowly, so that Sasuke can avoid it if he wants to, Kakashi reaches out and takes his small hand in his, holding it as tight as he dares without hurting him.

“I’m proud of you, Sasuke.” He pretends he doesn’t see the kid’s face scrunch with a supressed sob, but thanks to the Sharingan he’ll never forget it. “I’m sorry you had to go through it.”

“I’m stronger now,” Sasuke scrapes out.

“Hm. Those things don’t have to be contradictions. And stop talking. You need to rest your throat.”

Sasuke doesn’t let go of his hand. Kakashi keeps Obito’s eye open, seeing every fibre in the blankets and every scratch on the metal bedframe and every hair on Sasuke’s head shining with blue reflections.

The fatigue comes with vertigo first, then the light starts to hurt, and he has to close the Sharingan. By then Sasuke’s breathing has evened out and his grip slackened.

When Kakashi stands, the cramp that shoots down his left arm makes him think for a moment that the heart attack has just come late after all. One breath, two. Nothing else happens, so he decides to ignore it.

With his last dregs of energy, he detours through the hospital under ANBU standard genjutsu, finding Sakura’s recovery room while dodging the morning shift’s staff just starting their rounds.

Sakura is now in a room with four others. Naruto is there, slumped back in a chair and dressed in fresh clothes, smelling of cheap three-in-one soap and snoring wildly, with his head tipped back uncomfortably. An old woman, unknowing or uncaring that Kakashi is watching, sneaks over to a neighbouring bed and tips a full glass of water into another sleeping patient’s overnight bag.

-

Kakashi gets home and crashes into bed fully dressed.

He wakes up thirty-two hours later, feeling like he’s been ground up into mince and stepped on for good measure. It hurts to breathe and to move and the blanket is too heavy, but also the only thing shielding him from the air. It feels like razor blades against his bare arms when he chucks the vest and the shirt, leaving him groggy and cold in the sleeveless undershirt and attached mask.

The washing machine full of mission gear has finished running a long time ago, but he only stares at it before he decides it’s a problem for future him.

The distance to the kitchen feels longer than the run to catch up to the targets had, and filling a glass of water is worse than dodging Kimimaro’s blows. The only mercy is that he’s too tired to think.

A tap on the kitchen window seems strangely far away, but he still turns to look. Tenzo is sticking to the wall outside, and waves through the glass. Kakashi shuffles over and lets him in, finger joints protesting the effort.

“Did you get him?” Kakashi asks without greeting.

Tenzo smells like forest, exhaustion, and his own strange body odour. He hops inside, over the edge of the table, then pulls the window closed behind himself.

“We didn’t. Sorry, senpai.”

Kakashi squints at him. “Why are you apologising?”

Tenzo hesitates. “Ah. I’m not sure, really.”

“Are you okay?” Kakashi leans against the kitchen counter and crosses his arms. It takes a little strain off his screaming shoulders.

“Yes.”

“The kid we fought, that was someone else Orochimaru…” he doesn’t know what to say. Fucked over? Experimented on? Kept?

“He was.” Tenzo still doesn’t seem bothered.

Kakashi sighs, and resists the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. He doesn’t care either, so he doesn’t know why he’s pushing.

“I don’t like it, but I am happy to protect my comrades.” Tenzo has so much conviction, even when his voice is entirely flat.

“I guess I can’t complain about that,” Kakashi says, staring emptily out the window. It doesn’t register what time of day it is or what it looks like out there.

Tenzo looks at the scattered cutlery and bottle caps and toothpicks and playing cards and knick-knacks left all over the table, still not tidied away.

Kakashi looks at it too. “You’re back on surveillance?”

Tenzo shakes his head. “You’ve behaved, resources are being reallocated.”

Kakashi just breathes. Tenzo picks up a go tile and peers at it.

“What is really wrong with you, senpai?”

“Wish I could tell you.” He tries to make it sound like a joke, but it just comes out tired.

After Tenzo leaves, Kakashi drinks as much as he can stomach and chokes down his meds and a ration bar, and then he goes back to bed.

-

The next day it’s schedule as usual, and he has another routine meeting at T&I. He shamelessly eats nothing but another bar, deliberately forgets to check the post, and tries to ignore the way everything is slightly spinning.

He should probably check into hospital too, if just to make sure he hasn’t torched his chakra system, but that sounds like a torture worse than the painful exhaustion that tears through every muscle.

The chuunin at the entrance desk knows the routine by now, and just waves at Kakashi as he passes by.

Inoichi comes down the set of stairs at the other end of the hall just as Kakashi reaches the regular floor, and Kakashi nods in silent greeting.

“Kakashi,” Inoichi replies. His red haori and standard vest are gone in favour of a grey jacket. He gestures to one of the nondescript doors.

Once inside the interview room Kakashi falls into one of the chairs, blue and cushioned and upholstered in something plasticky that would be easy to clean. The walls are a soft, cheery yellow. This room doesn’t have a window either. He can smell the blood that always clings in this building, but today it’s harder to ignore than it’s been for a long time.

The door shuts with a soft click.

"I killed someone on that mission," Kakashi confesses to Inoichi, the words spilling out. "And I felt nothing.” This room is mirrored in setup, and located across the hall from the other ones they’ve been in. “People died and I don’t care.” He draws in a sharp breath that burns in his lungs. “I've been having constant nightmares about it. Not just people I- that he knew, about targets too, ever since… and now I did it, and it was just routine.”

Inoichi hasn’t even sat down, and now he sinks into his own chair slowly. The tea thermos placed on the side table is the first one Kakashi saw Inoichi use, printed with sakura petals and razor wire. He can smell the tea, a familiar jasmine. Together with blood and fear it makes him want to gag where before it was calming.

Ending a human life wasn’t something the man who never should have become Kakashi imagined himself capable of. The idea of him committing the act remained somehow distant, even as the Sharingan’s first person view kept repeating in his head nearly every night.

"Kakashi," Inoichi says gently. Always so fucking gently. "As shinobi we have to compartmentalise, or we go mad. You remember the worst of more than a decade of missions. Of course it's having an effect."

"A bit late," Kakashi laughs bitterly. What does this say about him? "How funny is it, that I liked to think of myself as a good person, and then I'm worse than him."

"Worse than who?" Inoichi's fingers don't even twitch. The clipboard rests on his knee, and he hasn’t touched it beyond holding it steady. Stone cold in the face of a killer who might be losing it. The camera’s whirr is drilling into Kakashi’s skull.

"Friend-killer Kakashi."

Inoichi looks down for a moment, not meeting his eye.

"I should have realised," Inoichi says to himself. His ponytail slips off his shoulder as he leans back. He looks up. "You remember some of Hatake Kakashi's worst traumas, but none of the work to recover. I thought these weekly meetings would be useful, for both you and the Intelligence Division, but I may have made you a disservice."

Kakashi hums. It’s forced. "I don’t think so. This is the only place I can really talk about," he chokes. "About my insanity."

"Is it insanity?" Inoichi presses, still painfully calm. "You recognised Kimimaro. I recognised Kimimaro from your memories."

"Well, it never made any sense. And we haven't made any progress on fixing it either." His voice is rising, his spine straight, his hands poised for seals. "I thought I knew what was coming and still failed to protect them!"

"Kakashi!" Inoichi snaps. "Stand down."

He slumps back into the chair, heart thrumming.

"It is not your job, on medical leave, to act upon information you have supplied through the appropriate channels. Don't think yourself that important."

Kakashi closes his eye, heart rate slowly calming. Inoichi is right. He's a cog in the machine. Part of the system. A faulty fucking nightmare of a system, but one he isn't in charge of.

"I don't know what I'd do if I lost them too." Obito's stupid (life saving, everything he has, endlessly useful) eye is crying again. The headband soaks it all up. His own eye is dry and apathetic. It’s not his eye either. It’s Kakashi’s. The real one’s.

"Such is life for all of us who survive to raise the next generation," Inoichi says, and he sounds tired. Some of the professional facade falling away.

Fuck. The guy nearly lost his daughter.

"I'm sorry," Kakashi says, mouth dry, eye opening again and fixing on the wall behind Inoichi. "I know you understand."

Inoichi smiles, though it doesn't reach his eyes. "I have a lifetime of preparation and functional coping mechanisms. I don't blame you for your reactions."

Kakashi looks down, picking at the knee of his trousers. He’s wearing old sandals about to fall apart, because he couldn’t deal with how the other ones still stank of smoke after washing and threw them out with the trash.

"We're done here. I want you to go and find Maito Gai."

Kakashi doesn’t respond, letting his mind drift into the ringing in his ears. The click and sudden silence of the camera turning off pulls him marginally out of the cloud. He moves to stand, but Inoichi raises his hand, and he falls back against the cushioned backrest.

“Work is being done. If there is somewhere you’re judged to be the best asset, the Hokage won’t hesitate. We are not entirely clueless, but no one had anticipated they would be this bold. In is not just your responsibility.”

“What do you mean, work is being done?” It can’t mean what Kakashi thinks it does?

“Need to know, Kakashi,” Inoichi says pointedly. But then he continues immediately anyway. “My brief mind transfer with Kimimaro was… informative, if unsettling.”

Kakashi lifts his eyebrows, eye widening.

“Until the attack there was no real confirmation that Sasuke would develop the Sharingan. Before the courier mission, they didn’t know whether he already had.”

Because the fight in Wave had never happened. And Orochimaru wants a body with the Sharingan for his own. Shit.

Inoichi nods in response to Kakashi’s expression.

“Was he stalling to let the last target escape?”

“Yes. Unfortunately, they were covered up enough in Kimimaro’s surface memories that I couldn’t confirm their identity, though I think our suspicions are not unreasonable at this stage. What we still don’t know is why now? Why would they risk tipping their hand, unless they have high access to our own internal intelligence?”

“You've been making changes." Inoichi isn’t talking as if this is just ripples from Sasuke’s Sharingan not developing in Wave. Kakashi feels like the world just slipped on its side.

He didn’t think of any of it as possibly real, until he saw Kimimaro himself and spoke to him.

"We’ve been taking precautions." Inoichi is so fucking calm. Kakashi’s headache is getting so bad that the overhead light feels like a knife through his eye, and he is a killer and a monster and probably not Kakashi at all.

"But the chuunin exams will go on as scheduled." He’s squinting, trying to make sense of all this when all he wants to do is disappear. “That’s insane.”

"That is the Hokage’s decision," Shikaku says, "but I agree with his assessment. Calling it off would signal weakness to the world at large, but more than that, we know where and when Orochimaru will be. It's a chance too good to pass up on."

"... You intend to let the Kazakage be killed."

"Should things pan out as predicted, Gaara of the Desert has the potential of a great leader and a valuable ally."

"An ally you can influence." By allowing the murder of his father.

"We want peace and security for Konoha, but we are not naive."

Kakashi nods slowly. He honestly can’t believe he’s still alive, with all the secrets the village administration now has virtually confirmed.

"So Jiraya coming here...?"

"Your situation is an excellent excuse,” Inoichi says. “Well, not just an excuse. His expertise will hopefully help you as well. But more immediately pressing is that he will be here for Orochimaru's... visit. Not to mention everything else that may be coming up ahead."

“Then why is he taking so long?”

“That’s classified.”

It makes so much sense, Kakashi can't quite believe he didn't see it before.

“How the fuck has Danzo not murdered me?”

That startles a laugh out of Inoichi.

“Sorry,” Inoichi apologises, “that I didn’t tell you. But I couldn’t trust the intel, or your potential actions. Memories from the Sharingan or no, a civilian life is poor preparation for… all of this.” He finally moves more organically, and leans forward with a smirk. “Danzo can’t act on what he doesn’t know.”

“What? But the Hokage-?”

“The Hokage also cannot act on intelligence that doesn’t exist.” Inoichi raises one pointed eyebrow.

“You’ve…” Kakashi doesn’t know whether he should laugh or cry or lie down and never move again. “Been picking out what to report. From the beginning.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Inoichi’s look is very, very serious.

“Understood.” Kakashi feels detached from the body that isn’t even his in the first place.

Inoichi is committing treason… for him?

-

After the meeting Kakashi does not go to find Gai. He goes to the memorial stone.

Inoichi’s revelation has his mind echoing, but even that can’t keep away what’s been building behind it all.

From the moment it finally takes hold the thought has him in an iron grip.

Kimimaro is real. Orochimaru's plot is real. Bigger things than small details which could have been flukes, and things that he under no circumstances could have known before have proven to be true. His delusions have basis in reality.

The stone gleams in the sunlight, names like wounds neatly, starkly visible, the edges of them catching the light. At the wrong angle one of the facets of the stone glares blinding. At the right one the names are almost glowing.

Obito is alive.

He’s not Hatake Kakashi but he remembers looking down on Obito’s face with the eye removed and fighting his way out of there, leaving his teammate behind.

His teammate who is not dead but brainwashed and broken and alive. Who helped commit the Uchiha massacre and released the Kyuubi and he's alive. Who is orchestrating wars and was left crushed underneath tonnes of stone and earth and abandoned to die with an empty eye socket small and alone and he is alive.

Kakashi could find him. He doesn't know what he could do, but Obito is real and adult and alive and out of reach, and Kakashi keeps watching the world through his eye, and he needs to see him and free him and apologise for a lifetime of failures he can't remember. (It wasn’t him, but doesn’t Obito deserve Kakashi’s apology?)

He could write a note, and drop it into Kamui, if he just figures out how. Only Obito would find it and read it.

It would be a stupid fucking thing to do.

Kakashi's throat clenches around nothing, gagging on the knowledge of where he left Obito, who he only remembers as a crushed little boy dying in the vision of his own eye in Kakashi's head.

He pulls down the mask just in time and vomits in a flowerbed, bile and acid and the ration bar he forced himself to eat burning as it's expelled. It weighs down the flowers, crushing and staining delicate purple and yellow and blue with off-putting grey.

Prickly sweet plant scents mix badly with cloying, sour bile and half-digested mush.

There are no circumstances where tipping the hand of his knowledge to the Obito who is pretending to be Madara would be a good idea. He’s not strong enough to counter anything if it doesn’t go perfectly.

He needs to be stronger.

He wants to run.

He remembers sneaking a look at Rin, when she was laughing with a melancholy twist to her lips at some festival, because Obito would have wanted to see it. Minato-sensei showing him new fire jutsu, so he could copy what Obito worked so hard for. Obito breathing what should have been his last, and himself, leaving Obito to die.

(If that other world is real, then he’s real and not Hatake Kakashi at all. He’s nothing, a thief and a killer and a ghost and he owes the man he’s been pretending to be to care for the people who matter, doesn’t he? Or maybe he owes him to leave, to be gone, to not be here and fuck everything up. He’s killed people and doesn’t even care.)

He has a starting point, and the vaguest idea of how to get there.

And he will.

Just...

“Kakashi!”

He’s still at the stone, and Gai’s voice has to cut through the emptiness before it reaches him. Kakashi doesn't stir, just remains standing where he has been for… at least a few hours, by the movement of the shadows on the stone, now diffuse, cast by the sun behind gathering clouds.

Everything hurts. The flowerbed stinks. He should do something about that, but he can’t bring himself to move.

He can’t bring himself to turn and look at Gai either, just seeing his shape in green and orange from the corner of his eye as he stops at Kakashi’s good side.

"I think Obito is alive," he blurts, before the part of his brain that does actual thinking can stop him.

Gai's freezes, whatever he was going to say seemingly forgotten.

"Kakashi... Do you... remember Obito?" He sounds surprised.

"Of course I remember Obito?" It comes out something between a scoff and a question.

"Ah... Do you, do you remember me, now, then, Rival!” There’s a building excitement in his tone and scent and it makes Kakashi feel even more like a piece of shit.

He lets his own fatigue come through in his voice. "Same as before. I remember some bits. And the last few months. Since, you know."

"But you remember Obito?" Oh. Gai sounds uncertain, and fragile.

"I remember him in that cave, after, when Rin had- when he gave me his eye. It's not. Fuck. I remember what I've seen with the Sharingan."

"Ah. That makes sense,” Gai says, very, very gently. "But Rival, Obito died in that cave."

"You don't believe me."

"I believe you believe what you are saying."

The hurt is unexpected. There’s so much of it anyway, he wouldn’t have thought Gai could make it worse.

"I have very good reason to think Obito is alive." He can feel himself sinking back into numbness. Closing off that vulnerable open part he forgot to hide, because this is Gai.

Gai studies his face, whatever he thinks he can get from it between the mask and the headband. Kakashi still doesn’t feel awkward or exposed, like Gai is just so much a part of him that there’s no embarrassment possible between them.

Gai, who is going to open the eighth gate and nearly die and lose the ability to walk, and Kakashi isn't even sure how, because he never finished the fucking manga, or the damned anime, and now it could be worse still because the real Kakashi is gone and there's just thim. He fought Kimimaro and wasn’t entirely useless, but now Naruto rightfully hates him, too.

"I'm listening," Gai says quietly.

Then do not speak, the Hokage told him after he’d shared things with the kids. He chokes on his words. Would it even help? The plans to invade Konoha are real. They’re working on it. If Gai needed to know they would have told him. His insides are wrung so tight he feels like he’s going to disappear, compress into a black hole and take the world with him.

"I can't tell you."

"Very well. If that changes... I will be here to listen."

"If it was up to me I still wouldn't tell you," he snaps. He lies. He wants to let Obitos’ eye leak like the crybaby faucet it is and hide his face in Gai’s vest and never surface. "You have no idea how much shit I haven’t told you." Kakashi turns away, stares at the grass and doesn’t really see it.

I've seen the future, he wants to say. I'm not Hatake Kakashi, he’s already told Gai, who decided to stick by him anyway. Who keeps coming back. I stole his life and his skin and you, and you’re still here. What does that say about either of us?

If that other place is real, his presence here isn’t just Kakashi finally losing it and he is something else. Something that shouldn’t exist.

"You're a gullible idiot," is what he says.

He doesn't see Gai's face, but he hears the stiff sigh.

"I will not let you use me to hurt yourself.” He can hear the wobble of Gai’s voice, and knows he’s near tears. “I am going to train. You are free to join me."

Kakashi says nothing.

Please don't go, he refuses to call when Gai leaves. It’s better this way.

-

It feels like a dirty thing, to grasp for his own guilt and shame with the intent to use it. Like he’s violating their memories. He’s certainly violating the real Kakashi’s, that feel like they’re his, a mess of disgusting feelings he had started to learn to ignore when he shouldn’t have.

Who he is... is nothing but refracting pieces of mismatched colours spinning in a dizzying, broken melody.

He has been complacent, and this is where it ends.

He has no excuse beside selfish fear, and that is unacceptable. Every part of him hurts, but that is also an unacceptable excuse.

His hands would shake but Kakashi’s don’t, stilled by training so deeply ingrained that becoming someone else hasn’t changed it.

The real, actual children he’s somehow attached to are in danger. The world is vast and dark and things are coming that will hurt them. Inoichi has been sticking his neck out for him. Gai has been carrying more than he ever should have to and Asuma took a blow that should never have been coming his way.

The forehead protector settles with a gentle clunk and soft rustle on the closed toilet lid, and Kakashi looks up to meet Obito’s eye.

I’m sorry, he thinks. It’s my fault, he knows.

Kakashi, blacking out after fighting Zabuza and never waking again. Minato, giving everything up for the village, Kakashi, too weak to help him. Kushina, reaching out even as he pushed her away. Obito, crushed beneath the earth that should have been Kakashi’s grave. Rin’s blood running down Kakashi’s arm, his name on her lips, her heart beating its last against his wrist, Rin, running toward him, Rin, asking him to stay as Obito’s death tore the team apart.

Dread chokes him, and tears start to pool at the corners of the Sharingan. He can see it so clearly even with the lights off, just a narrow strip coming in from the half-open door. Red, solitary, twisting faster with three tomoe moving in a cursed dance that never ends. He can feel it, droplets resting at the edge of his misaligned eyelid.

That wasn’t even him, part of him says. But it was, Obito’s eye insists.

He failed to protect Sasuke. He failed to keep Sakura safe. He hurt Naruto in a way he doesn’t know if it’s possible to fix.

He’s been hiding from reality in memories that should have been fake, and settled into the belief that he knew what dangers lurked ahead and he was wrong. Hiding from everything and pushing his duty to the kids off on others. If he had been there, would Asuma be on the brink of death right now?

Blood cakes his hands and wants to stick his fingers together and the scent of iron turns his stomach and he doesn’t turn on the tap.

Sasuke, small in his hospital bed. Asuma, in surgery with unknown outcome. A parade of the dead who would still live if it wasn’t for him, friends and enemies and strangers who happened to be in the wrong place doing the wrong thing as Hound stepped from the shadows and ended their lives. Minato turning away, Obito fading with a hole in his head where his eye should be, the eye in Kakashi’s socket. Rin, hanging on his arm as her legs give out, Rin’s face as she dies, Rin, Rin, Rin.

The sensation that splits his head goes past comprehension. The world opens, and it ends.

-

Chapter Text

Dripping water.

The smell of incense. Stress. A faint tinge of ozone. Tomato, rice, tuna, in the puffs of nearby breaths. Pre-teen sweat. Water. Chalk dust. Floral shampoo.

Blood.

He comes to vaguely bewildered, with no memory of his dreams beyond a flickering fire.

The surface beneath his back is hard and cold. The air is warm and impossibly heavy.

There is a familiar presence leaning over him.

“Sas-Sasuke?”

Why the fuck are the kids here? Confusion and foggy weight slows his mind, and it’s so hard to open his eyes.

“Sakura?”

“Don’t!” Sasuke snaps. “Eyes closed and shut up, Sensei!”

“Maa…” he breathes, and gets an actual growl in response.

Fine, fine…

Moments or minutes pass, and it becomes easier to think. And easier to breathe, for that matter.

It feels like a fresh drink when parched, poured straight into his aching bones. With it comes the realisation that he is also soaking wet, clothes sticking to him and water covering the surface beneath him. He cracks his right eye open. Sasuke is leaning over him, his hands hovering above Kakashi’s chest, chakra like a faint mirage shifting between them.

“You can stop.”

Sasuke jumps. His Sharingan red eyes flick from his own hands to Kakashi’s face.

With a shuddering breath the kid halts the chakra transfusion and sits back on his heels, shaking his hands out with jerky motions.

“Thank you.” Kakashi hesitantly sits up.

It hurts, the familiar tear of chakra exhaustion, but Sasuke’s work has made it significantly better. His uniform shirt clings to his back. The air feels strange on his bare face. Sasuke must have pulled the mask down. He tugs it up over his nose, steadied by the familiar pressure.

Sakura is watching from the doorway, knuckles white as she holds on to the wood. Her injured arm is in a sling, and she’s wearing a loose, pink t-shirt over dark shorts. “Sensei…”

“Your eye is bleeding,” Sasuke interrupts.

“Ah, right.” He lifts a hand to the uncovered Sharingan, keeping it closed. Caked and crusted blood is also sealing it shut, what must look like gruesome tears trailing down his cheek. There isn’t that much of it. “I think it’s fine.”

“How is that fine!?” Sasuke snaps.

“What happened?” Sakura says at almost the same time.

Kakashi crinkles his right eye into a smile.  “Just trying something new.”

He rubs the crusted blood, unsealing his eyelashes with gentle tugs, and looks up. He is seated on his fluffy blue bathroom mat, now thin and squishy as it soaks up the water that covers the entire floor.

The mirror is gone, and the wall behind it. He can see into the kitchen, dim light of an overcast evening throwing the green cabinets into half-shade. The thin metal pipes in the wall have all been bent out of shape, and a few are steadily dripping. The whole bathroom has been sprayed with water.

“I didn’t know you’d learned to do transfusions,” he says to Sasuke while staring into the kitchen.

He doesn’t want to talk about the Mangekyo. Not yet. It hurts in a world-wrenching, sickening way that he has it (he has it, he has it, he has it). It worked. It’s an unbelievable success.

It’s fucking awful.

A yawning abyss of awareness lingers below his consciousness. A space that has always been there that he never noticed and now it would be so very easy to step in-

The mental turn as he pulls back from the gravitational pull of despair and power feels like the snap of a rubber band.

Whatever it feels like, whatever he now has confirmation he is, it’s something he can use. He wants to try again.

He just needs to practise.

Sasuke shrugs, wiping his hands on his t-shirt. The high collar hides the scar that must be on his throat.

“I’ve been taking some classes at the hospital. There was one yesterday… with the Sharingan it’s been a lot easier to figure it out.” The kid looks away, as if using the magic copy eye to copy something is anything to be ashamed of. His hair hangs limp around his face, weighed down with sweat and water. A drop falls on his shoulder, soaking into the blue fabric. “With what happened in Wave, I didn’t want to be that helpless again.”

“That’s… really impressive, Sasuke.” Kakashi uses the edge of the tub to get to his feet, then holds a hand out to the child who just gave of his own life energy to help him. “And thank you.”

Sasuke takes it, and lets Kakashi pull him up.

“I’ll tell you what I was doing later, I just… need to work it out. And you don’t need to be worried about me, ne?” He shuffles into the hallway. The soaked, fluffy dog slippers squelch under his feet. Every joint screams. On his way he reaches out and ruffles Sakura’s hair, soft pink strands standing on end rather than settling back down, now that the length is gone.

Sasuke huffs, disbelieving.

The water seems to have been mostly halted by the bathroom threshold, but entering the kitchen that doesn’t matter much. It has also flooded from the destroyed wall between the rooms, and a large puddle reflects grey light from the window. There is a little splash or red, where the setting sun is breaking through the clouds. Kakashi sighs.

“Maa… I guess I know what I’m doing tomorrow.” He turns back to face the genin, Kakashi just inside the dim kitchen and the kids under the warm electric light in the hallway. He looks at Sasuke, who sways on his feet. “Come on kid, let’s get you home.”

Sasuke shrugs off Kakashi’s attempt at placing a steadying hand on his shoulder. “No! You are going to the hospital.”

“You can’t be alone,” Sakura adds, unhelpfully, chin up in defiance.

“Now I think that’s a bit over-“

“SHUT UP Sensei!” Sakura is furious. “You almost died!”

“I’m fine?”

He looks from Sakura’s wide, green eyes to Sasuke’s pale face.

“You were passed out when we got here.” Sasuke has his arms crossed tightly, looking like he’s straining to stay on his feet. “Your vitals weren’t good.” He’s refusing to look directly at Kakashi.

“Sasuke figured out it’s chakra exhaustion,” Sakura adds. There are tears brimming in her eyes, alongside the angry flush on her cheeks.

The dents on the bent, dripping, broken pipes are a perfect match for the size of Sakura’s hands. The wall has been smashed open further to expose them enough to reach.

Shit.

It’s hard to breathe. Worse than the smoke. Everything is too close and too tight and too heavy.

Kakashi wipes a hand over his face. It snags on the mask. They’re children. His genin. His responsibility; not ordered, anymore, but by his decision. They don’t deserve this. He should be the one caring for them. He can’t bring himself to open his eyes.

“I’m sorry.” He tries to breathe.

A solid weight crashes into his side.

His eyes fly open in surprise.

Sakura, the pink in his view and her smell confirms.

He looks up and over, to Sasuke in the doorway. As Kakashi lifts one hand to go around Sakura’s back, holding her close with the soft cotton of her T-shirt warm under his cold fingers, he raises the other to Sasuke.

He expects nothing, but the feeling when the kid steps forward, into his reach, and leans his forehead against Kakashi’s chest is overwhelming.

“Close your damn eye, idiot,” Sasuke tells Kakashi’s shirt.

Sakura still sounds angry. “You’re not allowed to be this stupid, Sensei.”

“I didn’t plan to,” he chokes out.

He’s not sure how long they stand there, but the red splash in the sky and reflected on the floor fades away.

“How about this,” Kakashi says, finally relaxing his hold of the kids. They each step back, Sasuke crossing his arms. “I promise I’ll go to the hospital and book a time first thing tomorrow. And for now, we’ll have dinner. That’s why you’re here isn’t it?” His throat feels dry, and speaking is exhausting. But he needs to eat and so do they. It’s easier to be sensible when it’s not for himself. Naruto’s absence feels like a punch.

The genin glance at each other. Sakura frowns. Sasuke raises an eyebrow. Sakura shakes her head, then blinks. Sasuke makes a clipped “Hn”, and Sakura nods.

This is clearly some kind of tween-telepathy he is not fluent in.

Sasuke turns to him.

“Fine. We’ll cook. I’m staying over.”

“Okay,” Kakashi sighs.

 Honestly, he’s grateful. Being alone with his brain seems like a bad idea. Still, maybe it’s the chakra transfusion, maybe it’s the near-death experience, maybe it’s the reality check of their frightened faces, but his head feels clearer than it has in… days. At least.

Sasuke goes to where there turns out to be a dropped bag of groceries by the front door, and orders Kakashi to sit down, pointing at the bed.

He sits gingerly, pulling the blanket around himself before the sticky feeling of still-soaked clothing stops him halfway through. He doesn’t have to keep the wet clothes. He’s got a wardrobe full of dry things. The wardrobe is… so far away though. He fights his own fatigue to get up, and toes off the slippers, leaving them sitting in their own sad little puddle.

Meanwhile Sakura starts looking around the kitchen, then in the bathroom, then starts poking around the washing machine and the drying rack above it, rummaging around in the dog leads and collars hanging on the wall.

She grumbles in frustration. “Sensei, where’s your mop?”

He pulls a fresh undershirt down over his head, feeling static crackle in his hair. “Ah? I don’t have one.”

“YOU DON’T HAVE ONE!?” Her head pokes around the corner, hair even more on end than it was just minutes ago. It’s been a while since he couldn’t help but imagine the children overlaid with their anime counterparts, but right now the red tick on her forehead is practically visible. “HOW DO YOU CLEAN YOUR FLOORS!?”

“With a broom?”

“DISGUSTING!”

Something comes flying at his head and he ducks. It clatters to the floor. An empty spray bottle of enzyme disinfectant.

“And a rag if there’s anything gross!” He raises his hands in the universal sign for peace.  “Maa, Sakura, it’s really not so-“

“SHUT UP, SENSEI!”

“Sakura,” Sasuke’s voice comes from the kitchen.

“SHUT UP SASUKE!”

…She’s probably not really mad about the cleaning supplies.

“I’m using the towels,” Sakura mutters under her breath, and stomps into the bathroom.

Kakashi returns to the slow and painful task of getting into dry clothes, to the sound of the kitchen tap running and wet towels being wrung out into the bathtub. There is a gnawing like teeth in the back of his mind, guilt creeping back in. He’s so useless that he has actual children cleaning up his mess. (At the same time there’s a rising hopeful bubble in his chest as their presence lets him know they’re okay, even after everything that happened.)

He foregoes uniform blues in favour of worn, bright green pyjama bottoms with clouds and rainbows and unicorns on them. They remind him of Gai, and he ruthlessly squashes another wave of guilt. Kakashi is a failure of a person. That’s nothing new.

The smell of miso starts wafting from the kitchen, warm and comforting. Kakashi makes his way across the room, peering in through the bathroom door as he passes. A lot of the water is gone, the floor still shiny with water but at least not flooded.

He makes eye contact with Sakura through the massive hole in the wall as she lifts a dripping wet towel. She keeps eye contact, then throws it through the wall at the tiles above the bathtub. It hits with a splat and lands a moment later with a slap, the tub now home to all but one of Kakashi’s mismatched towels.

He could stop the feeling as it rises, but he doesn’t want to. Kakashi laughs, for the first time he can remember in this world entirely freely. It starts with a chuckle, then builds to gasping, out loud cackles that feel like catharsis.

Sakura stares, wide eyed, through the gap in the wall Kakashi made with Obito’s magic eye and Kakashi’s bathroom cabinet is gone and Obito has his toothbrush now and it’s so, so stupid and what the hell is the leader of the Akatsuki going to think when he finds it and Obito’s eye is crying as Kakashi laughs, bending over and clutching at the door frame in his silly unicorn pyjamas with grey strands falling over his face and he probably died in another world but here he’s a murderer with super powers but maybe he can make a difference, wearing another man’s body and how is any of this real - it is so, so stupid.

“Sensei?” Sakura sounds so small and uncertain. He’s not given them anything but trauma, really, has he? It’s wave all over again, but by now he should know better.

The laughter turns into gasping breaths.

“Sorry,” he gulps for air through the mask. “Sorry.”

He’s so fucking tired.

“Come on-,” Sasuke’s words from the kitchen are interrupted by a loud banging on the front door.

Kakashi pulls himself together, one breath to the next from delirium to focus, the pressure of laughter and panic high in his chest, back tense, and steps away to go see what the noise is about.

“Hey! HEY KAKASHI-SENSEI!” Naruto. The door opens, a blur of blue, orange and yellow barging inside and behind him-

“Naruto! You can’t just-”

“Iruka-sensei?” Kakashi stands stumped.

Naruto runs past him toward the kitchen with a “Hey, Kaka-sensei! Are Sakura-chan and Sasuke-teme still..?“

“Naruto!” Sakura greets, though it sounds scolding.

“Kakashi-sensei.” Iruka bows politely. “Apologies for coming by like this,” The academy teacher stands outside the threshold and awkwardly scratches at the back of his neck. He’s in his uniform, smelling of ramen. So did Naruto, dashing past. They must have come from Ichiraku’s.

“Sure.” It’s weird. Like seeing a teacher out of school (ha). “Want to come in?” Kakashi looks back through the doorway toward the kitchen where Naruto just disappeared.

“KAKA-SENSEI!? WHAT HAPPENED-!?” There’s a slap and a muffled shriek, one of the others must have covered Naruto’s mouth.

Kakashi squints a smile at Iruka.

“I wouldn’t want to impose,” the academy teacher says weakly, weirdly transfixed on Kakashi’s face.

Right. Blood.

“Do you, ah, need any help, Kakashi-sensei?” Iruka asks.

Kakashi hums. He’s too tired to try and figure this out. His head hurts. The kids are loud in the kitchen, Sasuke yelling at Naruto to back off.

“Are we friends?” Kakashi remembers them fighting in the story, but he can’t remember why.

Iruka startles.

“Maa, maybe not. Acquaintances, then?” He continues.  Iruka is younger. If he graduated at more realistic pace than Kakashi, that’s practically a generational divide. And he’s a chuunin, so there’s probably not much overlap in their lives. Didn’t Kakashi fail a bunch of teams before this one… maybe that was why they didn’t seem to get on?

Iruka nods once, clearly confused. “I suppose?”

“Or maybe co-parents,” Kakashi tilts his head and refrains from squinting just to see how bright red Iruka turns despite his tan. “You have Naruto on weekdays, I get the weekends, Ebisu is the long-suffering tutor?”

Still red, Iruka hangs his head and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Kakashi-sensei…”

“Thank you.”

“Huh?” Iruka looks up at the sudden sincerity.

“For being there for Naruto. There’s a lot of people who should have been, and weren’t.” Including the real Kakashi. He keeps the smile to try and take the edge off his words. It’s unbelievable that Naruto is here after Kakashi failed so badly at handling the aftermath of Kimimaro’s death. He probably shouldn’t have been surprised. Forgiveness, kindness, it’s so deeply built into the kid. He should have known, even as he doesn’t deserve it.

“It was the least I could do, once I saw past fear and realised he’s just a kid,” Iruka says softly, briefly looking away.

Kakashi sighs. “Still.”

There’s a moment of awkward silence, where Iruka studies Kakashi's face. The evening view of the strip of park and distant houses behind Iruka is still active, with people moving through the area and heading home or out again after the day’s work. The scene is lit with glowing windows and pricks of streetlights, Iruka himself cast with slanting shadows from the lamp beside Kakashi’s front door.

"He doesn't hate you, you know,” Iruka says.

"Ah. I figured, since he,” Kakashi points toward the kitchen with a thumb. “Not that I deserve it.” He crosses his arms, shielding himself and trapping his hands, making himself less of a threat. “He's a good kid."

"He is,” Iruka agrees.

"You can stay for dinner, if you want." Kakashi says. He doesn’t have it in him to turn away Naruto’s precious people. Iruka’s eyes flick down over Kakashi’s shoulder, the visible ANBU tattoo, his undershirt, down to the ridiculous trousers and his bare feet, then up again.

"I really don’t want to be a bother,” Iruka looks flustered again. “And I did put away two whole bowls at Ichiraku’s." He chuckles self-deprecatingly.

"Fair enough."

So… should he just say goodbye and close the door? People didn’t ever just come over unannounced in that other world, with smartphones glued to every set of hands. Small talk isn’t something the real Kakashi ever bothered to watch with the Sharingan. This fake Kakashi doesn’t know the etiquette here.

“Oh,” Iruka jumps a little, as if remembering something. “I didn’t come by just to follow Naruto. He said he was coming here, so I figured I might as well bring this in person, rather than send someone tomorrow.” He pulls a mission scroll from his pocket, the tan and red and black unmistakeable. It still smells like the Hokage tower, as does Iruka, beneath the ramen and his own scent.

Kakashi takes it with a raised eyebrow.

“Non-urgent, not classified. Uhm. Read it tomorrow, maybe?”

Right. He’s in his pyjamas with a flooded apartment and blood crusted underneath his eye.

“Yeah. I’ll do that. Thanks.”

From the kitchen Naruto’s voice comes at full volume, “NO WAY! THAT’S SO COOL BELIEVE IT!”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” The concern in Iruka’s dark eyes is uncomfortable, and Kakashi’s looks away to escape it.

What is he even supposed to say? A no will just make things awkward, yes would be an obvious lie.

He crinkles his eyes, and only half lies. "I will be."

“All right,” Iruka straightens up and puts on a polite smile. “I’ll be off then.” He leans in very slightly and turns in the direction Naruto ran. “See you later, Naruto!”

“BYE IRUKA-SENSEI!”

“Bye Sakura-chan, Sasuke-kun!” Iruka adds.

”Bye Iruka-sensei!” Sakura leans out into view past the little hallway to the kitchen, holding a dog bowl of all things.

“Hn.” Sasuke stays out of sight.

Kakashi closes the door after the academy teacher with slow movements, the door handle warm in the summer night air.

Today has been… a very strange day

He goes to the bathroom and rinses his face in the shower, because the sink doesn’t work anymore. The red on his hands as the blood comes off threatens another spiral, but the voices of the kids bickering in the other room keeps him just about present. He wipes his face and hands on his shirt, as every single towel is soaked and now hanging haphazardly around the room.

Team Seven gathers around the kitchen table, the floor damp beneath their feet. The warm light from the ceiling lamp makes the hole in the wall even stranger to look at. Smooth cuts that must have been the edge of Kamui borders crumbling brick and drywall, hit hard to expose the leaking pipes.

All the random shit Kakashi had left out on the table has been gathered in the dog bowl and set to the side, stainless steel gleaming, a jarring assortment of items colourful like candies. The genin bully Kakashi into a chair and spread out the dishes they’ve made, miso soup and rice and fried fish, sliced cucumber and tomatoes. It smells amazing.

For some reason Sasuke and Sakura end up in a staring match over the rickety folding chair, Sakura eventually relenting to a smug Sasuke, who unfolds it with a snap and places it next to Kakashi. Naruto claims the desk chair and proceeds to serve himself a full meal, despite however much he must have eaten with Iruka just before.

It’s warm, and homely, and Kakashi must be suffering from some kind of mental whiplash, because he can’t quite make sense of any of it. They all stare at him wide eyed when he pulls down the mask and doesn’t try to hide his face, but they don’t say anything.

Sakura takes too-small portions, then throws a glance at Sasuke’s bowl and adds just as much again to her own. When she looks up to meet his eye, Kakashi smiles.

They finish up the food to Naruto’s chatter and Sakura’s occasional comment. Kakashi learns that Naruto is back training and running D-ranks with Ebisu, and that Sakura and Sasuke are still both on medical leave.

Kakashi covers his face up again. Sasuke serves tea, the ceramic set traditional, glazed in Uchiha colours. Kakashi has never seen it before, and he definitely did not have this many cups.

Asuma is alive, he learns, and still in hospital.

“I saw him yesterday after class,” Sasuke tells them, hands wrapped around a steaming cup. “He says he’ll keep teaching eventually, if Team Ten doesn’t graduate before he can, but for now… We’ll be reassigned.” He taps his fingers against the ceramic. “He won’t be able to walk.” They’re all quiet for a moment, painfully aware how hard that must be, when their whole lives revolve around physical action.

“Ne, ne, Sasuke-teme!” Naruto restarts the conversation. “You should be on a team with me and Ebisu-pervy-sensei believe it!”

“Moron I don’t think we get to decide that!”

“Ino-pig said they’re keeping Ino-Shika-Cho together,” Sakura says, thoughtful. “They’ve already got another teacher.”

“Hn,” Sasuke agrees. “They’re all in rehab and doing light duty, so it works.”

Kakashi clears his throat, and the three of them turn to him.

“I… wanted to talk to all of you.” He looks from one to the other, then settles on Naruto, who despite his focus is kicking his legs and bouncing ever so slightly in his seat. “Sorry to be serious,” he crinkles his eye but it doesn’t hold, so he just meets Naruto’s eyes instead. “I’m sorry about Kimimaro, and how we handled it at the end.”

The mood immediately drops. Sakura goes a little pale, and Naruto’s jaw clenches. Sasuke looks between the two of them, concerned.

Kakashi continues. “You were right, Naruto. No one deserves that.” He runs his hands over the cup in front of him, dark blue glaze melds into deep red and into white seamlessly. “You see the world differently. You’re…” Young. Inexperienced. Free, in a way, because he’s too valuable to risk alienating. “You can and want to see people differently.”

He lets go of the cup and turns his hands over. They’re clean, he knows they are, but the impulse to scrub them raw remains. He curls them together.

“First of all, I’m proud of all three of you. You went beyond what anyone could expect, and you saved lives.” He draws a deep breath. “Second, Naruto, Sakura, running off like you did was extremely reckless. If Shikamaru hadn’t been there, that would have ended very badly.” They both have the decency to look chastised, but there’s a defiant gleam in Naruto’s eyes. “Naruto. You know that you are valuable to the village, and this time that worked out. Your station, as well as Shikamaru and Ino’s, meant we could go after you. I’m not going to tell you never to use that to your own benefit, because what’s expected of you and what’s been done to you is fucking awful, but be smart about it.”

Naruto is tugging at the blue shirt over his stomach, tracksuit jacket hanging open. Kakashi wants to pick him up and put him somewhere safe and never let him out again.

“You all need to remember that if this had not been Naruto, and not the child of an important clan head in danger, you might as well have had an ANBU team coming to take you in for desertion instead of teams coming to your rescue. And Naruto, if you are taken or there is reason to think you have been, that could be more than enough cause for war.  In this situation it was the right call to leave the village without authorization, but please be careful.”

“So,” Sakura says, voice shaky, “if it was just me..?”

“I don’t know,” Kakashi says honestly. “It depends on how much influence I still have, as your sensei. And some of your colleagues in the future will never have this kind of freedom. It's something you'll need to be aware of on other teams.”

“Nepotism,” Sasuke says.

“Yes,” Kakashi agrees flatly.

“What about Sasuke-teme?” Naruto asks.

Kakashi sighs. “If nothing else, they’d send ANBU to prevent his eyes falling into enemy hands. If there’s a next time,” he can’t kid himself that they won’t go haring off again if something should happen, “at least have Naruto send clones to scout ahead and to report back to the village. The other day there were conscious witnesses who could vouch for you and report in. I have to assume Shikamaru took that into account. Did he share that with you?”

Sakura shakes her head. Naruto twists his lips and stares at the tabletop.

There is silence for an unnaturally long time with Naruto in the room. Sakura finally breaks it.

“Are you okay, Sensei? You were…” she seems to search for a word. “Not normal.”

He smiles and tries to make it reassuring, but it probably looks more like a stiff grimace. He is so tired, and his head feels stuffed with everything he’s learned over the last few days. Alongside cotton balls and razor wire, there's not much space for his brain.

“I’ve… had to face some things,” he hedges. The black haired teen in the forest, the target, going down with Kakashi’s kunai slitting his throat. Kimimaro’s face, eyes dim and mouth open in a silent scream around a budding tree. Naruto’s reaction. The faces of the other genin, seeing it. The clan children nowhere near as bothered and isn’t that disturbing too-

Finally he decides to just be straightforward. They deserve that much.

“This mission brought it to the forefront. Basically… I… remember killing a lot of people.” He can’t say I have killed a lot of people, because it probably wasn’t him, even as the images haunt him anyway, and it was these hands that ended all those lives. It doesn’t matter, he has taken one all by himself now, too. Monster. “Sometimes in terrible ways. Sometimes people who didn’t deserve it at all. I’m not the best at handling it. Mostly... I’m numb to it all.”

Numb maybe isn’t the right word. Dead to it. But not to the idea of what that means, the gaping dread that is the Mangekyo assures him. “You three should know that... My responses to things aren’t always… Logical. I can keep up in the field but…”

Unwilling to raise his head he gestures vaguely to the broken wall and to the dog bowl filled with all the things he counts and flips and spins to make sure the world is still real.

From the corner of his eye Kakashi sees that Sasuke’s knuckles have gone white as he stares into the tea. Jasmine. A little bit stale, a little bit scalded with too hot water. The steam is gone by now. The last Uchiha has already seen more death than anyone should have to in a lifetime.

Sakura moves to hold her injured arm, the sling bunching.

Naruto has looked up from the table and is staring at Kakashi, unblinking.

Kakashi keeps going. “Violence, causing harm to others, it is not a good thing. For what it does to those subjected to it or to those, us, who cause it. Especially when young. And war… I think you might have been told variations of this, now that we’re at peace, but it hurts everyone. Those who don’t deserve it most of all.”

He twists his fingers together to resist the urge to form seals.

“The adults and the elders in this village know that, and should be the ones to change things. But they, we, were shaped by it, and you can’t rely on us to fix it. One day that will be up to your generation.” He finally brings himself to look up squarely, instead of taking in the children through the periphery of his vision.

“My priority is always going to be your safety. I’ll probably fuck up again, but I promise, if you three ever need help, whatever it is, I will do everything in my power to give it. You are the future of this place for me.”

He thinks of how Sasuke and Sakura had to find him out cold on the floor, thanks to his own self-destructive choices, and how the real Kakashi must have felt finding his own father.

The man who isn’t Kakashi never saw his parents after the accident, they just never came home.

“I promise I won't leave you if I can do anything at all to prevent it, either. So, I want you to keep telling me what matters to you, even if you think I won’t like it. And if I do something you don’t like, please know I am still thinking of you.” Then he quickly tacks on, “but don’t think you can ignore orders in the field. That’s dangerous for everyone.”

The silence would be deafening, if not for the ringing in his ears and the dripping of water from the broken wall.

“Kakashi-sensei...” Naruto trails off before he even really starts.

Sasuke says nothing, and doesn’t move. He hardly seems to be breathing.

“Whatever happens, we’re a team,” Sakura says, determined. “Forever.”

“Maa,” Kakashi says, trying to soften his own dramatic declaration. “I’m just old and a bit broken. You don’t need to stick yourselves to me like that.”

Sasuke’s voice comes out nearly inaudible. “Those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash.”

“YEAH!” Naruto’s volume is ear-splitting. He stands up on the chair and points dramatically. “You can’t just say all that stuff and think you can be rid of us THAT EASY! BELIEVE IT!” The desk chair spins slightly as he puts too much weight to one side, and he ends up pointing at the wall above Sasuke’s head.

Sasuke turns to blink up at Kakashi. “Believe it.”

“BELIEVE IT!” Sakura punches the table and everything clatters, her own nearly empty cup falls over, spilling a few drops of tea on the scuffed wood.

Kakashi raises his hands in surrender. “Believe it?”

-

He reads the scroll that evening, head swimming with exhaustion while Sasuke falls asleep in a mission bedroll on the floor.

A-rank. Long-term, to be performed until further notice. Non-classified, as Iruka said. Personal, assigned to Hatake Kakashi only. To train Genin-rank shinobi Uchiha Sasuke in the use of the Sharingan.

-

In the morning he wakes in agony and ready to move, surprised to be in his own apartment rather than out on some diffuse mission. The dripping water and Sasuke’s breaths apparently enough to throw off the familiarity of the place.

Puddles have grown larger again overnight, and it seems like such an insurmountable task to deal with that he just stands in the bathroom doorway for way too long, slumped against the frame. His head sags, heavy with lingering fatigue. He forces himself onward, grabbing a ration bar rather than the leftovers from the night before for breakfast.

Out the kitchen window brilliant morning sun lights up distant buildings, and the many treetops in view glow brilliant green. The apartment block stands taller than most of the buildings around it, throwing the immediate view into shade.

He’s sagging by the kitchen table while the kettle heats on the stove, when Sasuke stirs in the other room. A rustle as the bedroll is shoved aside, quiet footsteps approaching. He appears in the doorway with ruffled hair and sleep-gummed eyes, suppressing a yawn. Like this, in the soft morning light of the kitchen and not quite awake, he looks more like a child than ever.

“Food’s in the fridge, if you want it,” Kakashi mumbles, chin heavy in the palm of his hand.

Sasuke silently helps himself to the leftovers, and finishes Kakashi’s abandoned tea making project.

They sit in companionable quiet until Sasuke puts down his chopsticks, then Kakashi slides the scroll across the table.

Sasuke glances up at him, then back to the scroll and unrolls it. He reads it quickly, and nods.

“Can I still go to classes?” his voice is raspy and strained, the damage not quite undone it seems. The previous day it had sounded better, so maybe periods of disuse make it worse.

“Of course.” Kakashi pulls down the mask to take a sip of tea. This one is familiar, a simple black tea he’s bought himself. He’d call it English breakfast, but England doesn’t exist here. “Using the Sharingan can be overwhelming, so it’s not like we’ll be doing full days of training. It might be easier on you, though.”

“Why?” Sasuke frowns.

“You’re born with it, so if I’ve got it right, your chakra system and your brain should be better adapted to fuel it and take in the details than mine are.” That’s what he’s guessing from the story, but it fits with what Tanaka-sensei had said as well.

“Okay. What about Sakura?”

“I’m going to see if I can apprentice her officially… It depends on if this means I’m actually cleared for missions yet.” He taps the edge of the scroll. “So you can hopefully make a small team. Otherwise I’ll be training her outside her missions and your Sharingan lessons.”

A nod. “Can I do more taijutsu training with Gai-sensei?”

“You’ll have to ask him about that,” Kakashi turns away to look out the window.

-

Going to book a regular appointment at the hospital, willingly and under his own power, is a surreal experience. The nurse (vaguely familiar, a young woman in the typical, minty green hospital uniform) behind the desk stares at him as he walks up, number slip held visible to confirm it’s his turn in the queue.

Sasuke is a short shadow at Kakashi’s right, affecting that aloof calm all the kids seem to think is so cool.

The room is quiet, a couple of chuunin waiting to the side, and next to Kakashi and Sasuke at the desk speaking to the other nurse is an academy student smelling of fear and blood and snot, crying in the arms of what must be a parent, both of them with auburn, curly hair.

“I’d like to book an appointment,” Kakashi says. Both nurses freeze. The unfamiliar parent, forehead protector glinting in the fluorescent light, also turns to stare as the nurses do, clearly reacting to them. There’s a clatter by the ‘staff only’ door off to the side. Kakashi glances over. An older, male nurse just walked into the wall next to the door and dropped a metal tray, head turned to look at Kakashi as well. The small child stops crying in confusion, hands wrapped in their parent’s blue shirt.

Sasuke stands on his tiptoes and leans over the tall partition at the front edge of the desk. “He needs to see a doctor. Chakra exhaustion. Soon would be good.”

“Ah, Sasuke-kun?” The nurse finally comes out of her frozen state. “Right! Apologies, Hatake-san. Just stay right. There.” She starts frantically flicking through a binder next to her.

“Maa, it’s all right,” Kakashi tucks the queue slip into a little pot for it, on top of the raised front of the desk that Sasuke is still leaning on. The white paint is scuffing, showing dark wood through the scratches and worn corners.

“No, no, please hang on. I’m just gonna… wait here okay?”

“Okay?”

They end up left standing by the desk as the young woman power walks away through the swinging doors, further into the hospital hallways.

Beside them the little kid is reminded of their injury when the parent re-starts a description of an accident at school.

Kakashi twists to look down at Sasuke who now slouches with his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

“So… that was interesting.”

“Hn.”

Helpful.

The nurse returns a few minutes later, Kana-san in tow.

“Thank you, senpai!” The younger woman bows to her colleague, and hurries back to her spot behind the desk.

“Hatake-san,” Kana-san says, surprisingly polite. “Come with me, please.”

“Eh? I’m just here to book an appointment, it’s not an emergency.” Why are they all acting like the world is ending? He feels like crap, sure, but that’s normal.

“Tanaka-sensei had an opening,” Kana-san says and smooths down the front of her uniform.

Kakashi narrows his eye. “Isn’t Tanaka-sensei your foremost chakra-dysfunction specialist, and always busy.”

“Exactly, so, we have to grab this opportunity. Come along now.”

Something’s clearly fishy here.

“Right.” Kakashi looks at Sasuke.

“I’m coming with.” The audacious child then goes ahead, shuffling over to the double doors into the hallway Kana-san and unnamed-nurse just came from.

Kakashi sighs. The slouch is easy, but he wishes he had something to do with his hands. He follows the others, defeated.

-

“So let me get this straight,” Tanaka-sensei says. Her short hair is ruffled, the grey, textured strands split into odd sections of short ridges as if she’s been running her hands through it again and again in the exact same pattern. She still smells like curry.

“You,” the doctor continues, “in a matter of a few days, ran far and fast enough to expend chakra continuously for several hours, overdosed on chakra pills, took part in a full scale ninjutsu battle, suffered chakra exhaustion and did not seek help. Then, before recovering, you decided to experiment with a new technique without anyone else present to assist. And your twelve-year-old students saved your life when they found you.”

Kakashi cringes. "Yeah. That's about it. Sakura's thirteen though."

"Do you have a death wish?"

He feels the flinch and squashes it hard, freezing in place instead.

"...Hatake" her eyes bore into him like blades.

"I don't. I really don't.” He makes himself breathe out, makes sure to fidget. “I did... Spiral. Mentally. Somewhat."

"You don't say." Tanaka-sensei sighs.

Kakashi shrugs, sheepish. He does his best to look innocent.

"Okay.” She stands and grabs her stethoscope from the desk, leaving her notepad and a half-drunk cup of what smells like melon juice behind. “Let's do a physical exam, and then I'll look over your medication. You realise I can't clear you for active missions? Please take time to rest."

"That's fair," he agrees.

She narrows her eyes.

“I will.”

She nods. "And send in Uchiha-kun when we're done. If he's going to run around performing medical jutsu without certification I want to check his technique."

"Understood.”

-

“So, what did Tanaka-sensei say?” Kakashi asks Sasuke when they’re finally out of the building, after the exam and a detour looking in on a sleeping Asuma. Kakashi didn’t think to bring a card, and has no drive to get back in there anytime soon, so left him a bad post-it doodle of Pakkun holding a sign saying 'get well soon'. (Sasuke judged him so hard. He counts that as an accomplishment.)

They’re walking through now familiar streets. Kakashi is leaning heavier than he’d like to admit on the crutches Tanaka-sensei forced onto him.

It’s not even midday but the heat is becoming oppressive, another thunderstorm looming even with the sky still intensely blue. There’s a trio of giggling academy-age girls following them, hiding badly around a corner two crossing streets back. They’re stacked like Scooby-Doo characters behind a dying plant vine, where it crawls up the drainpipe on a white wall. The smell of street foods is just starting to pick up, ahead of the lunch rush.

Above the heads of the stalker children, on a jutting piece of roof above a tiny balcony, someone is hiding under an ANBU-standard genjutsu. They're doing it quite well, but not perfectly. He can smell their presence, human, female, unscented soap and a tinge of bitter herbs, and the shadows of the blue roof tiles beneath them don’t hit quite right. He can’t tell if they’re the Hokage’s, or if they’re ROOT.

Saskue shrugs with one shoulder. “She yelled at me. Then I think she offered me a job.” He frowns. “It was kind of confusing.”

“Huh.”

“Hn.”

They decide to meet for training the following afternoon, and go their separate ways.

Kakashi should go and rest, resetting his chakra recovery plan to the earliest stages, but he can’t. The Mangekyo sits like a weight on his shoulders, scratching at the back of his mind, and there’s only really one place he can seek out.

-

The memorial stone gleams in the sunlight.

For once, he’s not the only person there. An older chuunin, his vest worn open over the standard blues, kneels with freshly lit incense when Kakashi arrives. The guy smells of the forest, and there is mud dried to his shoes. Closed toe, rather than the open style most people wear.

Kakashi gives him space, settling below a tree a little way away, watching quietly.

The unfamiliar man puts the incense in a holder at the base of the stone with slow, reverent movements. Then he pulls out a cloth, wiping down the shiny surface. When he’s done, he bows to it, and walks away quietly. Kakashi knows every name on the memorial by heart, and he wonders who the stranger was there for.

Standing up and gathering the crutches is annoying, but soon Kakashi is back in the spot he always ends up standing in. It’s a wonder there’s no dent in the paving stones, really.

His eye finds Obito’s name without searching.

It’s different, being back without the overwhelming despair that dragged him under just yesterday. It’s strange, with a clearer head to know the memories of brightly coloured anime and black and white manga panels are at least partially real.

He hates that he can’t remember in detail what Obito’s plot was. (He hates even more that he has no real memories beside the single one.) He knows Tobi of the Akatsuki; strange, childish, annoying Tobi, who sometimes acted as Madara, who could teleport and phase through things and was invulnerable. He knows that in the story Obito and Kakashi had complimentary Mangekyo Sharingan.

But the boy who would one day find himself Kakashi stopped reading the manga sometime in the fourth war arc (and fuck, more wars always come but he doesn’t want people to suffer another one), and he’d stopped watching the anime before that. He’d thought he’d outgrown it, and he can’t even remember if he read that Tobi was Obito himself or if he learned it second hand, years later.

And now he’s here, and he doesn’t know how to fix things. Doesn’t know if there is anything left to fix.

It’s one thing to talk to the dead, to share with them, to think of them. It’s another to talk to them knowing they’re alive.

Still.

The memories have him in a strangling, drowning tide of what if. He pulls off the headband, and opens Obito’s eye.

“Hello, Obito.”

The forehead protector dangles from one hand, and the other hooks around the handle of the now spare crutch, smooth aliminum and plastic clammy against his fingers.

He is entirely alone, no prickling presence, no mirage of chakra visible to the red eye. He thinks he can feel the tomoe slowly spinning. He doesn't know if some part of Obito will hear him through magic eye connection bullshit.

“I wanted to tell you something. It’s… maybe not all that important to you, these days, in the grand scheme of things. But it is to me.”

He can almost imagine that his own reflection in the dark, polished stone is someone else.

“Even with my mind replaced by an alien from another dimension I still think about you every day. And I miss you every day.” He probably couldn’t say this to Obito’s face, even if he was here.

“So I wanted to tell you that to me, no matter how little I remember, you are still my friend. No matter what happens, and no matter what we have to do. And I need you to know that what that man has done to you… and what was done to Rin, it should never have happened. You were just children, and you were failed.” Obito’s eye twinges, even though Kakashi is not feeling all that emotional right now. Crybaby ninja.

There is still dread and despair that will probably never go away (Obito’s face, half hidden by the boulder that’s killing him, empty eye socked staring out at them), but there is also a building, oddly peaceful determination.

“If there really is a crazy plan to turn the moon into a giant fuck-off Sharingan, I just have to let you know it’s a dumb, shitty plan, and you shouldn’t do it.” He smiles wryly to himself. “Because, despite everything, despite the darkness… there are good things in this world, and they are worth fighting for."

He lets the moment sit in stillness, then he snorts. “Fuck. I can’t even remember you well enough to know if you’d like Lord of the Rings. But I think you would.” He leans more heavily on the crutch still under his right arm. “It’s this story, and the most important thing in it… is about normal people stepping up to do the right thing, to fight for what is good in the worst of times against impossible odds, and for each other. It's about sticking together. I learned that same lesson from you too, before I saw that film. That those who abandon their friends are worse than trash.”

Kakashi’s own eye is entirely dry, but he tucks the headband under his arm and pinches the bridge of his nose for a moment, resisting the need to sniffle as the gathering tears finally escape Obito’s.

“So I just wanted to say. I’m going to get better again, and then I’m going to train so fucking hard. If you do turn out to be alive, which by the way, it’s insane that it could be real. I’m coming for you. And I’m coming for the people who hurt you, and I'm going to end them. So yeah, Obito. Be prepared.” He smiles at the stone, eyes crinkling.

Somewhere a frog croaks, breaking the moment.

-

OMAKE

It’s evening, streetlights making the two children just about visible.

Naruto looks around suspiciously, then he turns to Sakura and says under his breath, “Hey, Sakura-chan, I think Kakashi-sensei said he’d do treason for us.”

Sakura stares. For a very long moment. Naruto stares back. Then Sakura leans in close...

“IDIOT!”

Naruto jumps and flails his arms. “Wha- SAKURA-CHAN!?”

She huffs and crosses her arms. “Naruto, he already did! How’d you even forget!?”

“Oh… right. I didn’t really think that counted you know?”

“Do you know what S-class secret even means!?”

“Eh… super-secret?”

Sakura rolls her eyes with a groan and starts walking.

Naruto continues, jogging after her, somehow undeterred and with his hearing intact.

“Okay but you heard Sensei say he... remembers stuff, right? That was a thing he really said?”

Her eyes narrow. “Yeah... you’re right…” She gasps. “He did say that!”

"D'you think Sasuke minds if we go add it to the board?" Naruto crosses his arms behind his head.

"We can't just break into Sasuke-kun's house!"

"We break into Kakashi-sensei's all the time and he never cares!"

"Because Kakashi-sensei is crazy! We'll go find Sasuke-kun tomorrow."

"Yeah, yeah, but you gotta help me remember exactly what Kaka-sensei said then believe it!"

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