Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Kakashi opens his eyes, he realizes he’s drowning.

The world around him is waterlogged and muted, spinning in all directions. His chest is on fire, and when he gapes his mouth wide to gasp in a breath, there’s nothing there to breathe. His head is pounding and eerily silent all at once, as if there’s a war going on inside of it but he’s gone deaf to all the noise. He can’t focus on any one thing, but rather all of  it at once.

Eventually, he comes to figure out that there’s a pressure against him, at his left side. He shoves at it, and it falls away. Second later, it comes back a hundredfold, ramming into him with a force that, had he any breath in him, it would have been knocked out with prejudice.

He blinks moisture from his eyes, and finally realizes the pressure is a surface- two surfaces. A bed, and the floor. Currently, his body lay pressed against hardwood. It was cold and wet. Or, Kakashi was cold and wet.

He pushes up off the floor, uneasily putting feet beneath him and attempting to find a center. He wobbles upright painfully slowly, still uncertain which was was truly up. He thinks he’s home, because while there is blind panic and pain, there is a faint sense of familiarity. Not quite safe, but when was he really, anymore?

He carefully turns himself around and stumbles to where he thinks the bathroom door is. He grabs the knob and wrenches it open, body tilting forward precariously into the room, only to get an abrupt face full of dry, musty fabrics.

Kakashi tears himself back, feet falling over himself. He hits the floor again, hard, and stares up dumbly at the open bathroom. Except, it’s not the bathroom. It’s a closet.

Kakashi doesn’t have a closet.

Or, he ponders at the back of a sickenly pulsating mind, he hadn’t had a closet in a while- not in years, actually. He turns his head, eyes scanning the room he’s sitting on the floor of. His eyes go in and out of focus. They’re having trouble staying in place whenever he aims them at something. Things are close, and then further away and blurrier than they had been a second ago, and he doesn’t even blink. Eventually, Kakashi pieces together his location.

Yes, it’s his apartment. At the same time, it isn’t, because Kakashi hasn’t owned this apartment since he was ten years old.

Still, it wasn’t like he doesn’t remember the layout. Teetering on unsteady limbs, the ninja hauls himself back to his feet and maneuvers his body, which was being rather difficult with him at the moment, toward where he recalls the bathroom to actually be. This time, when he opens the door, it’s not a closet, and he practically collapses onto the tile. He almost doesn’t make it to the toilet.

When he finishes attempting to expel the nauseating pit of whatever it was from his stomach, and failing, he pulls the lever with a weak, shaking hand that his eyes are convinced is farther away than it should be, and rests his clammy, sweaty forehead against the porcelain seat. He closes his eyes, and just sits here for a moment, too tired and miserable to even think.

Kakashi isn’t quite certain how long he’s there, on the floor of the bathroom in the apartment he’d sold before he was even a teenager. He pukes three more times- he thinks, it might have been more, he wasn’t exactly counting here- and all that comes up is bile, burning through his esophagus and leaving a sick, acidic taste in his mouth. It could have been hours, or days, or minutes. Maybe he falls asleep, but he isn’t sure.

He blinks once, and finds himself on the floor, not sure how he got there and staring at his hand that lies on the tile next to his face. It’s still too small, too far away. Which is weird, once his eyes have finally stopped shaking all around in his skull, they are able to focus on everything else now except, it seems, himself. He blinks a few more times in the hopes to better adjust them, but his own body remains strangely distorted in comparison to his surroundings. Like the world is there, existing, but Kakashi is not. Or suppose to be, but having trouble doing it all the way.

Kakashi frowns, dizzy and sick and irritated that he is having so much trouble with something as simple as existing in the reality that he has, until now, had zero complications existing in.

The door thumps oddly. Kakashi stares at it with dull eyes, puzzled that it is making noise when, last he’d checked, doors were inanimate objects that generally remain silent when left on their own.

It thumps again, and says, “Kakashi?”

Kakashi blinks. He wonders what kind of reality he is trying to exist in here, where doors are able to speak to people, and sound like his old sensei.

He supposes that, in a weird, abstract way, it somewhat makes sense. Doors are dead trees, after all, and Minato-sensei is also dead. Is this what happens to people when they die? Kakashi pauses for a moment, and wonders if he himself is dead. Maybe that’s why he‘s having trouble existing here. He hasn’t possessed a door like his sensei had. Maybe he would become the toilet, instead, since he’s so close to it right now.

Kakashi can’t help but assume that to be a rather... undesirable existence. He doesn’t think he’d been that terrible when he’d been alive, had he? No puppies had been kicked, certainly, no babies eaten, no Icha Icha left unread.

Kakashi doesn’t think he really deserves to be a toilet.

“Kakashi?” The door asks once more, this time opening itself in its apparent worry for him. It was nice of it to be concerned like that, but Kakashi finds himself wondering when it was that it had closed in the first place. He doesn’t remember shutting it when he’d come in. Maybe it had closed itself, being sentient and all, to give him some privacy while he was upchucking his own stomach. How kind.

Kakashi’s eyes fall shut again, too heavy for him to keep open, and he turns his face against the tile. It‘s nice and cold. It feels soothing on his clammy skin. The world isn’t throwing itself in all directions anymore, and he definitely feels grateful that it has at last decided to settle down.

A pressure slips underneath his limp body, lifting him away from the floor. It feels like hands. Does the door have hands? Kakashi mourns the loss of the stable surface that the floor had provided. At least he isn’t drowning anymore.

“Oh, Kakashi…” the door sighs quietly.

The second time Kakashi wakes up, he thinks about the first, and has to pause for a moment, because holy fuck, what a fever dream!

Or not? He’d obviously been high on something last night. He’d been hallucinating pretty hard. Doors that could talk and sounded like Minato-sensei, honestly? What the hell?

He sits up, carefully, already anticipating the hangover before it even comes.

And it does come, crashing down upon him with a vengeful fury, angry that he’d made such terrible life choices. Kakashi doesn’t really blame it.

His head throbs so powerfully that he has to lie down again, but sits right back up and brings his hands around to his front, palms facing up toward the ceiling and fingers spread out wide. He stares down at them, absolutely befuddled.

They’re still too small.

Before he has a chance to contemplate whether or not he is still under the influence, as is so clearly the case, the door of the bedroom he’s in (again, his childhood apartment. Now that his heads a bit clearer, Kakashi realizes that this apartment isn’t even suppose to standing anymore. It had been destroyed in Pein’s attack on Konoha, and not been rebuilt. Which now begs the question; how is Kakashi here, when here doesn’t exist?).

“Kakashi,” someone says, and Kakashi thinks he’s sober enough now to know that it isn’t the door.

He still must be a little high, though, because that’s definitely Minato-sensei’s voice speaking.

Then someone steps into the room, and Kakashi looks at them, at him, and just blinks for a moment, hoping that‘ll clear up his vision a bit. He’s still hallucinating, clearly, because that’s Minato-sensei standing there, with Minato-sensei’s relieved smile and Minato-sensei’s blonde hair.

Kakashi pushes at the energy that exists inside of him, until it’s outside him and in the air, reaching outward, feeling, tasting, and- there. Minato-sensei’s chakra.

Just to make sure, Kakashi opens his mouth, and croaks out (in a voice that is not his, mind), “Minato-sensei?”

The Minato-sensei beams at him, and replies, “Kakashi! I’m glad you’re awake,” and, yup, that’s Minato-sensei’s voice.

Kakashi falls back down against the bed, closing his eyes. It’s too short of a way down, and he clenches hands that are too tiny and feeble and not his in dog-print sheets he hasn’t owned for decades.

Kakashi feels like crying. Why doesn’t it make sense?

Chapter Text

“Are you sure you want to go into training today, Kakashi?” Minato asks for what seems like the hundredth time, and it may be repetitive, but so is Kakashi’s answer of “I’m fine,” which, clearly, is an absolute lie.

Even forgetting the fact that Minato had literally walked in on the boy regurgitating his guts not half an hour ago, Kakashi looks like he’d just walked out of hell and hadn’t even received the complimentary t-shirt to smooth things over. The bags under the kid’s eyes look like they have bags of their own, standing out in stark contrast against his paler-than-normal skin. His clothes are soaked through with sweat, face clammy, eyes half-lidded and duller than Kushina’s kitchen knives. Minato had dragged the boy off the bathroom floor and plopped him into a kitchen chair twenty minutes ago, and he hasn’t moved a muscle since.

Kakashi’s eyes flicker up to his, and then back down to where his hands are clasped in his lap. “Yeah.”

Minato narrows his eyes.

“Are you,” he asks, “really sure that you’ll be able to, um, keep up with the others? You look a little bit…”

Like shit, he wants to say, but the last time he’d cursed in front of a kid, Kushina had somehow found out about it despite being away on a mission all the way in Grass Country at the time, and there had been some not-very-fun things to pay when she’d gotten home.

Kakashi coughs, and it sounds like his spleen has lodged itself in his throat for a second before he swallows it back down again. Minato grimaces.

“Yeah,” he repeats, dully.

“Well, I’m not sure that I want you out there, when you’re looking like this,” Minato says a little too loudly, pushing up from his chair.

There’s a short moment of silence. Kakashi glances up at him from beneath his lashes, presses his chapped lips together, and averts his gaze to the floor. Minato immediately feels like a jerk for raising his voice.

It’s been awkward between the two of them, since Kakashi’s father had… well. Minato is the only adult in Kakashi’s life left who has any sort of guardianship ties with him. They hadn't been a team for very long preceding the suicide, and even before then Kakashi hadn’t known Minato all that well. Right now, Minato is as good as a stranger to Kakashi, a stranger who has say in his life and can make decisions for him.

Sometimes Minato can’t help but think Kakashi probably resents him for that, just a bit.

He sits back down with a sigh, folding his hands into his lap and staring down at them like they held all the answers he was looking for. Kakashi stay still across the table from him, silent. Minato can feel his stare, but he doesn’t dare glance up to meet it. He doesn’t feel like he can face whatever he’d find there right now.

“I’m just,” He begins, quieter, and then trails of with another sigh, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “You’re sick, Kakashi.”

Kakashi stares at him.

“Wh-When people are sick, they tend to stay home and rest so they can get better,” Minato tries again.

Kakashi sniffs.

Minato looks up, blinking in alarm at the way Kakashi’s eyes have taken on a watery edge. He stands up again, this time circling around the table to kneel beside the boy’s chair.

“Uh, Kakashi, are you—“

“I don’t wanna be a toilet,” Kakashi mumbles under his breath, reaching up a gloved hand to rub at his face. He’s still dressed in his clothes from yesterday, hadn’t even bothered to change into pajamas, which is a sign that something is wrong in and of itself, Minato thinks, before he wonders briefly whether Kakashi even owns pajamas. He just, doesn’t seem like the type of person to have flannel in his life.

Also, what?

“Of course you don’t,” Minato soothes, rubbing a hand between Kakashi’s shoulders. He pushes his bewilderment aside for the moment, figuring Kakashi just means that he was tired of puking, which, who wouldn’t be? The poor kid shudders beneath his touch.

Minato bites his lip. “And, um, you probably aren’t hungry after all of… that, but you look like you could eat. Do you wanna try to get something down, or—?”

Kakashi is shaking his head before Minato can even finish his sentence. “Nngh,” He says, and looks increasingly queasy at the very mention of food.

“Alright, so,” Minato says, and gestures helplessly for a second, unsure, “we should—we should probably get you into bed, then, so you can, um, rest this away and all that...?”

“Mm,” Kakashi replies, and then doesn’t move at all.

Minato smiles weakly, and wonders what he’s suppose to do now.

Kakashi has absolutely no idea what’s going on.

It was one thing to hallucinate vision and sound, but touch? Smell? Even if Kakashi’s brain had the imaginative ability to dream up a delusion of this magnitude—which he wasn’t quite sure it did, but it has surprised him before, so who knows—Kakashi would have bet more on it choosing to base it within one of the many traumatic events that peppered his existence, rather than whatever this weird, slice-of-life type setting is suppose to be.

Minato-sensei, who was very much dead and gone, thank you very much, is making him chicken soup in the kitchen of his childhood apartment that didn’t exist. Minato-sensei didn’t cook, because he was really bad at it and Kushina-neechan had long since forbidden him from stepping foot within any room that even resembled a kitchen whatsoever.

Kakashi peels down his mask—a dark navy blue, instead of the mute black he’d taken to during his stint in ANBU and had never gone back—tilts his head back against the pillow and takes a deep inhale through his nose. He coughs roughly, tears pricking at the corner of his eyes, at the scent of burning rice.

Dream or not, Kakashi’s apartment is about to go down in flames years prematurely, and the only thing going through Kakashi’s head right now, because he simply does not want to think about anything deeper, is that he has to stop this before the consequences become irreversible.

He throws back the thin sheet he’s been lying under and stumbles his way out of the bedroom, somehow making it down the short, narrow hallway without running face-first into a wall which, honestly, counts as a small victory. He narrows his eyes at his socked toes, placing each foot carefully in front of the other on the linoleum, because apparently they refuse to do so themselves, and finally looks up when he sees another pair of feet encroach on his vision. He raises a shaky hand, and taps on the middle of the back—the only spot he can reach at the moment—of the Minato-sensei currently staring with great concentration at the stove top.

The man jumps, sloshing boiling water across the counter top, and spins around with a hand held to his heart. “K-Kakashi! Y-You’re suppose to be asleep!”

Kakashi blinks up at him, and slowly brings a hand up to point over at the rice cooker, which has a thin trail of smoke billowing from the vent. It’s a little concerning that this Minato-sensei had not only been startled by Kakashi, who doesn’t think he was being all that quiet, what with all the running into furniture he’d been doing on the way to the kitchen, but also hadn’t noticed the sharp smell of burning grains. Seems weird, is all, that a ninja would experience such tunnel-vision.

“Wh- Oh,” the Minato-sensei exclaims, and rushes over to fan at the smoke with a panicked expression on his face.

Kakashi stares at him for a moment.

“Could you, um, get some water, I don’t—”

Kakashi closes his eyes, sighs quietly against the mask he doesn’t remember pulling back up, and goes over to unplug the cooker from the wall socket.

Minato goes still, and stands there staring at the cord in Kakashi’s hand for a moment without speaking. After a few seconds, he begins to laugh sheepishly, scratching at the back of his head and averting his gaze to the kitchen’s open window.

A pang of grief strikes Kakashi in the gut at the familiar embarrassed tick, and for a moment the Minato-sensei standing before him has whisker marks on both cheeks, before they vanish when Kakashi blinks. The nin sucks in a ragged breath, drops the cord to the floor, doubling over himself and burying his face into his hands, like the action of covering his eyes would make what he is seeing disappear. He takes a shaky step forward and rests his forehead against the table just so that he doesn’t have to bear the entirety of his own weight anymore.

Despite being in a body too small, he feels heavier than he had when he’d been the right size.

A click sounds as the stove burner is turned off, and a hand places itself gently, hesitantly, against his back. “Kakashi?”

He presses his hands harder against his face, digging the palms into his eye sockets and making spots appear against the black of his vision.

“... Maybe I should take you to the hospital,” is murmured quietly, more to Minato-sensei himself than for Kakashi to hear, but he still hears and let’s his shoulder drop from where they’d been held up near his ears with tension.

“No,” he says, straightening from the table and looking up at a worried Minato-sensei.

There’s a strange sort of calm suddenly enveloping him, and he almost sighs at the absence of the incredulous panic that‘s been plaguing him since he’d woken up the first time.

Minato-sensei sighs, running a hand through his hair. And it’s definitely Minato-sensei’s hair, nobody else is that blonde, not even Naruto. “Kakashi, I really think—”

“What’s the date?” Kakashi asks, listing to the side a bit. He catches himself on the edge of the table and uses it as leverage to hoist himself into a chair.

Minato-sensei is eying him, a look of great concern on his face. “It’s the twelfth of April, Kakashi—are you sure you don’t want to see a doctor?”

Kakashi blinks at him. Who in their right mind wants to see a doctor? 

“Yeah,” he says, and looks around for a calendar, because it’s one thing asking for the day and month, but the year? Minato-sensei would check him into the psych ward for sure, which. Is a rather undesirable outcome, if you ask Kakashi.

There’s one on the fridge, held up by a weird smiley face magnet that smells distinctly of Rin, with a hint of Minato-sensei, and Kakashi wishes he’d looked for it before he’d asked, because all the information he wants is listed right there.

Well, hindsight.

It’s almost a year after his father died.

Kakashi looks away from the calendar to find Minato-sensei staring at him, glancing over the the fridge and then back at Kakashi with a look of sorrow in his blue eyes.

The blonde nin pulls out one of the other three kitchen chairs—why does he have so many when it was always only just him?—and hauls it next to Kakashi’s, sitting in it with a soft, quiet sigh.

“Kakashi,” he starts, and then stops.

In the ensuing silence, Kakashi risks a glance at the man from underneath his bangs—he has bangs again, this is weird—to find Minato-sensei looking more lost than he can ever remember seeing the man, and turns back to stare at the table in thought.

April, the year after his father died.

Minato-sensei has only been his pseudo-guardian for barely six-months, at this point. Though technically he’d held the position for the months before that, Minato had only become sensei of Team Seven when Rin and Obito had become genin, which was last November, going by the dates.

Kakashi wants to scream, but stops to wonder if he even has the energy for it right now.

“Why don’t you go back to bed? Call one of your ninken, maybe? I haven’t seen them in a while, I bet they’d like to stretch their legs,” Minato-sensei is saying from beside him. Kakashi glances at him to find him also staring at the table. He looks over to catch Kakashi’s eye, and returns his gaze to the wooden surface awkwardly.

“Plus,” he adds, sounding like he’s making excuses, “I’d feel better knowing you had someone looking after you, and Pakkun is a smart dog.”

“Don’t cook anymore,” Kakashi hears himself say, fingers already forming the Ram seal without realizing he's doing it.

“Right,” Minato-sensei has the decency to look embarrassed. “I won’t.”

There’s a puff of smoke, and Pakkun is there immediately, looking smaller and with a younger face. Kakashi can’t bring himself to look at him any closer than that, so he has no idea what expression the dog is wearing, but judging from Minato’s raised brows, maybe he doesn’t want to.

The sensei kneels before Pakkun, looking the dog in the eye. His ninken had always liked Minato-sensei, because he treated them like comrades, talking to them directly like they’re their own persons. Not everyone, even ninja sometimes, have the presence of mind to do that.

“Take care of him for me, alright?” Minato-sensei says, holding out a fist.

Pakkun raises a paw and touches it to his knuckles. Kakashi sees it from the corner of his eyes, refusing to look up from the tabletop. For some reason, something in him finds it hilarious, and he buries his face into his arms to stave off a bout of unwelcome laughter.

“Hai,” he hears Pakkun bark, softly.

Minato-sensei’s hand comes to rest on his back a few seconds later, staying there long enough to leave behind warmth when it leaves. Kakashi hears the door to the apartment open and shut.

There’s a click of nail against wood as Pakkun hops up on the table, nails clacking as he walks across it to nose at Kakashi’s hair.

“What’s the matter with you, Little Boss?” The dog wonders.

Kakashi breaks.

Chapter Text

He’s on house arrest.

Of course, Minato-sensei and Pakkun don'tcall it that, per say, but the results are kind of exactly the same. Can Kakashi leave the apartment? No, Kakashi is sick, and needs to stay home and rest. Does it matter if Kakashi has business outside that he needs to take care of? What sort of business could Kakashi, who is very sick mind you, have to take care of today? All he had was training, and Minato-sensei has already excused him from that today.

Excused him from seeing Rin and Obito again.

Kakashi can’t decide whether or not he hates himself, when all he can dredge up in response to that is feelings of bone-weary relief. He doesn’t think he’s ready to see them again. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be. They’ve been dead to him for years. He’d barely been able to handle seeing Minato-sensei and, as he glances down at the paper napkin he was mindlessly shredding in his hands as a worried ninken watches on, he wonders if he isactually handling that at all.

“Little Boss?” Pakkun asks again, insistent, and Kakashi grimaces beneath his mask.

Pakkun and the other ninken, the older ninken that he’d been handed down from his dad after the man’s death, had all called him this in the beginning. Back before Kakashi had proven himself as a capable ninja and, more importantly, a capable comrade. It wasn’t until he’d called for Pakkun in desperation during a rather botched mission at the border, when he was ten, that the old pug had started dropping the “Little” and just used “Boss”. The other ninken had followed his lead.

Kakashi hasn’t been called Little Boss for decades. Something deep inside his chest aches viciously at the reminder that, no matter how much he’d secretly been hoping against hope, this Pakkun isn’t his Pakkun. Not from the future, and not now, when a seven year old Kakashi has yet to prove he is a worthy summoner.

“I’m,” He starts, and then clears his throat when the word catches. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” Pakkun tells him, lifting a paw and striking it firmly, if gentler than Kakashi expected, over his head.

He winces anyway, and rubs at the spot. The pug looks down his nose at him. “What’s the matter with you, today? I haven’t seen you cry since, well…”

Pakkun falls silent. Kakashi glances at the calendar on the fridge, and shreds another corner off the napkin, letting it fall down to the table with the rest of itself.

The pug sniffs at him, almost reproachfully, and instead of continuing on the same vein, says, “You reek, Little Boss. You could use a bath.”

“Mm,” Kakashi replies, neither agreeing or disagreeing.

Pakkun narrows his eyes. “Since you’re apparently paralyzed, I’ll go draw one up for you. But you better take it, alright?”

“Mm,” Kakashi says again, eyes being drawn to the window. It’d be best, he thinks, if this past-version of Pakkun left him alone for a moment. He needs time to… adjust.

The ninken whuffs at his hair one last time before hopping down off the table. He casts one final glance back at Kakashi, who continues to stare out the window and doesn’t meet his gaze, before trotting off down the hallway to the bathroom.

The sky is bright outside, the overcast of thin white clouds reflecting the light of the sun down on the world. Kakashi drops what’s left of the napkin down on the table and leans back in his seat with a soft sigh.

He’s alone. Well, he is and he isn’t. He’s got Minato-Sensei, and Pakkun, on that hand he’s got the rest of his team and literally everyone else who’d died and, now, in this moment in time, hasn’t yet. On the other hand, everyone Kakashi had known and gotten close to and cherished from this point onward until the until the very last waking moment that he's just not quite able to remember, is… gone. Just, gone.

The edges of his eyes burn. He rubs at them, and they burn even harsher. Something is choking him, but he’s alone in the room. He’s alone.

He grabs the table’s edge and maneuvers himself out of the chair, getting his bearings before carefully placing his foot ahead of the other. Walking gets easier the more steps he takes, and by the time he gets to the window he feels more stable than he has since before waking up that first time. Kakashi places his hands on the sill, mindless of the chipping white paint that litters it, and lifts himself up to peer outside.

Kakashi’s childhood apartment overlooks a graveyard. He tilts his head as he surveys the neat, orderly lines of headstones and family shrines. He sniffles a bit, and rubs at his nose, and then shakes his head so roughly it pulsates in protest. He doesn’t remember this, but then again, he'd never been one for taking in the scenery when there was training to be done, last he was nine.

It’s an older cemetery, less crowded and smaller than the more frequently visited one off the main road. The graves are spaced out and well-maintained, from what little Kakashi can discern at this distance. The field is dotted with far-away pinpricks of color, flowers nestled close to the stones. Other than that, it looks deserted. There’s a tall wall of red stone that circles the field, topped with an occasional clay pot, that were probably full of flowers themselves.

Oh, Kakashi thinks, rubbing at his shoulder with clawed fingers. His eyes are drawn to the left of the field, to the newer headstones. To the looming shrines that denote clan heads and elders, and the like, shining obelisks that sit darkly under the sheerly clouded morning sun. This yard is where his father is buried.

No wonder he doesn’t remember seeing it through his window before. His past self had probably gone to great lengths to avoid looking out at it, and being reminded.

Something sharp tugs in his gut. Kakashi stumbles back from the window sill and finds himself leaning against the wall of the entryway. The world spins dizzyingly for a moment, and he blinks as a cold wind begins to buffet him in the face. Goosebumps rise up on his bare arms, and he glances around. He’s standing out on the street in a T-shirt, without shoes, and Kakashi isn’t quite certain how he had come all the way down here from his third floor apartment without noticing. That’s something that should probably be a bit worrying, perhaps. Actually, it is worrying, very much so, but as of this moment Kakashi can’t quite dredge up the motivation to feel upset over it.

Later, perhaps, he thinks absently as he turns his body to face the direction of the cemetery. He has a lot of things to say to a certain someone, right now, and they’re all bouncing around aimlessly inside his head, off the corners and colliding with each other, some fast, others slow, and all in all, Kakashi is unable to make heads or tails of them. The one thing he does know is that they can’t stay locked inside there. They've just gotta be spoken. Its a familiar feeling, one he's had before, all throughout his entire life since he was twelve.

He places a foot in front of the other, and walks.

There’s somebody else in the graveyard, and Kakashi is a second away from feeling perturbed about this before he realizes that it is sort of a public place, and other people are allowed inside here to visit the dead, not just him. It isn’t Kakashi’s graveyard, he doesn’t own it, and if he did, well, that would be a little sad, wouldn’t it? That isn't to say that people who do happen to own cemeteries are sad, just that if Kakashi were to own one, it... it would be. It'd be sad. That's all he can think.

The figure is blurring together with the tree that sits just behind them, and it takes a while for Kakashi’s eyes to adjust to the difference of not being in motion, because he’s stopped by the wall, under the shade of an entirely different tree. By the time his vision corrects itself, the person has been joined by another person, taller and yet hunched over, and Kakashi instantly recognizes them both. Somewhere in his chest there’s a sharp, niggling discomfort that slides to the back of his torso and climbs up his spine like the cold fingers of a half rotted corpse, and he feels uneasy as he watches Danzō place a comforting, fatherly hand on the hunched shoulder of Orochimaru.

It’s the clearest feelings he’s experienced since coming to the past—something in Kakashi’s head wails hysterically at the thought—and he clings to it for lack of anything better to do.

He thinks back on what he knows, trying to make sense of what he’s seeing. The only reason he can come up with to explain Orochimaru’s presence in the graveyard—discarding the more, uh, illegal reasons, and Kakashi isn’t sure whether this Orochimaru is quite that far gone yet—is that the Sannin is visiting the graves. What else would someone come to a graveyard for, other than ohaka mairi?

Kakashi stands there for a moment or two, watching Danzō converse in low tones with a silent and still Orochimaru, and it takes him longer than he feels it should to realize that the only graves Orochimaru would be visiting at this point in time are those of the his own parents.

An ugly, foul taste climbs up his throat. He swallows it down, and moves on the next thought. It’s just as pleasant.

The only explanation for the esteemed elder’s presence in the cemetery is that he’s here specifically to speak to Orochimaru. About what? What is so vital that Danzō couldn’t wait for Orochimaru to finish his grave visit before approaching him? It obviously isn’t an emergency, or the old warmonger wouldn’t be wasting time with pleasantries. Kakashi knows Danzō isn’t one for most societal norms in the least, but even he should know its an unspoken rule amongst shinobi or even civilians to leave each other be during such moments of vulnerability and grief.

Oh, Kakashi thinks, and steps forward out of the shade of the tree.

His back is straight and his head is clear for the very first time in what feels like actual days. He glances down at his feet, makes sure his footing is stable, and hurries over to the duo with as much aplomb as he can muster.

Danzō is at the cemetery, speaking to Orochimaru over the graves of his parents because the sannin is vulnerable here, right now, where he wouldn’t be anywhere else.

Two pairs of sharp eyes strike him almost like blows from a kunai as he reaches them, panting from exertion. It feels like he’s just run a mile, when he’s barely covered two hundred meters. Inwardly, Kakashi is a little mortified.

Still, he raises his head high after a quick bow, in which he is terrified he might actually fall over and greatly relieved that he does not, and focuses his gaze somewhere on Danzo’s shoulder. The left one. It is preferable, even if the moment in time his right is disfigured into a crime against everything sacred has yet to come to pass.

“Danzō-sama,” he says in the voice of giving the Hokage a mission report, straight to the point without room for anything less serious. His efforts earn him a raised eyebrow. “Hokage-sama requests your presence.”

“Is that so,” the slimy, underhanded war-lover says almost indifferently as he looks down his nose at Kakashi. “And why would he send a newly minted Genin to inform me of this, instead of, say, one of the ANBU that constantly sit around him at all times?”

If Kakashi could focus on anything other than a) his urgent desire to just go back to bed, and b) the goal of this current conversation, he might feel offended. Danzō isn’t nearly out of any loop at all, he would know that Kakashi, even at this age, was already a chunin, and the Hokage wouldn’t send any of his elite guard on something as D-rank as an in village courier mission.

If Kakashi could focus on anything else, he’d scoff. Inwardly. So Danzō couldn’t hear and send a ROOT agent after seven year old Kakashi for being a brat. Kakashi wouldn’t put it past the man.

He barely catches the scornful sneer that Orochimaru sends the councilman's way when he isn't looking. Kakashi feels a spark of smugness erupt in his chest. He sketches another bow, and then vows vehemently not to do so again as he straightens up sporting a brand new level of headache.

“Danzō-sama,” he says again. “He said only that he would like you promptly, and your location. I know nothing else.”

“Of course you don’t,” the bastard, who probably has herpes or something equally as gross, sneers at him. He turns back to the Sannin, who has remained silent.

Kakashi eyes him as well. Orochimaru hasn’t moved away from the headstones that he stands over almost protectively. His head is bent slightly to look at them, and he hasn’t said a word.

“We will conclude this conversation at a later date, I suppose,” Danzō sighs like it’s some great big inconvenience, to be called on by the Hokage. The wrinkled old militarist folds his arms into the sweeping sleeves of his robe and steps away. “It was pleasant to see you again, Orochimaru-kun.”

Kakashi barely withholds a shudder at the overly-familiar address. Orochimaru says nothing. Danzō’s eyes narrow as he takes his leave.

It leaves the two of them, the Sannin and Kakashi, alone in the cemetery. Kakashi must admit, he hadn’t quite thought this far ahead when he’d approached initially, and now he hasn’t a clue what to do after achieving what he’d come over for.

He lets his posture go, bone-deep weariness creeping up on him now that the adrenaline is seeping away—which, what? No? Come back?— and he slumps against the trunk of the tree that sits a snug five feet away from where the snake sage currently stands. His head swims viciously. Probably has fish in it by now.

Kakashi’s ninja-brain screams at him to stop, but he’s tired, and miserable, and he’d just lied to Danzō, for Orochimaru , so he closes his eyes and lets his head fall against the chilled, knobbly bark.

Chapter Text

When he opens his eyes a few moments later—though with how things have been going it may have been minutes or even an hour, Kakashi doesn’t quite trust his sense of time right now—he meets gold.

He immediately tries to lean away, but it seems he’s already self-sabotaged that option, as the tree he’s leaning on is, by the rules of this land, obviously still there. Orochimaru’s face is uncomfortable close to his own, though, closer than Kakashi’s allowed the snake sannin to ever be in regards to himself. If this were the future, around the time of the botched Chunin Exams perhaps, Kakashi would be dead right now.

Which makes it curious, to find that he’s still breathing, though Kakashi’s rational mind tells him that the times are different. This Orochimaru is still loyal to the village—whatever that means to Orochimaru, the nin still can’t very well harm Kakashi without retribution.

“You lied to him,” the sannin breaths, and Kakashi prays to whatever god that will listen that the burning curiosity he can see in Orochimaru’s eyes is just his imagination. “Why?”

Kakashi crosses his arms over his chest, going for a indifferent air, but he only succeeds in hugging himself. Orochimaru backs off a step, and Kakashi blinks.

He intends to give an excuse, something about how ohaka mairi shouldn’t be interrupted, and Kakashi was just being polite in the way that Danzō hadn’t been, but what comes out is, “You’re like me.”

It makes both of them blink, and for a moment neither of them speak, because for all that they are geniuses, encountering confusion somewhere they didn’t expect to throws them both for a loop.

Orochimaru overcomes the awkward pause quickly though, quicker than Kakashi, because while he’s still trying to gather his thoughts and figure out what the fuck , the sannin is already putting forth another inquiry.

“What makes you think that we share any similarities?” Orochimaru asks, and if the words are backed by a quality not unlike a sneer, well—Kakashi isn’t sure if Orochimaru actually means for it to be there.

It feels like both of them have been caught slightly off guard.

The question posed, however, makes Kakashi stop and think. He considers the spot in time that he’s in, what was currently happening in the village at this time, what had been happening in the village, the general behavior of the villagers, and ultimately what type of person Orochimaru was.

Despite his instinctual reaction to deny that he and Orochimaru had anything in common at all, the fact of the matter was that the two of them aren't actually all that different from each other. Both Kakashi and Orochimaru were highly intelligent from a young age, the bona fide Konoha-produced genii. Both have grown up in general isolation, during war time, and don’t quite know how to function in times of peace.

Both, Kakashi realized, have at one point or another, been shunned for who they were, for simply existing where other people determined that they should not.

Kakashi looks up at Orochimaru and, after a moment of contemplation, where it’s more him trying to struggle past all the cotton filling his head than actually thinking, says, “The eyes follow you around the village, too.”

It wasn’t because either of them were famous. Though, in Orochimaru’s case, that may be a part of it. Except, his reputation inspires fear, not admiration. Kind of like Naruto as a child.

And, great, now he's drawing parallels between the snake sannin and his student. A quick picture of a chibi Orochimaru with spiky blond hair flashes before his eyes, and he can practically feel the fight drain out of him in horror. Kakashi goes lax against the tree and brings up a hand to rub wearily at his eye. Something keeps trying to wrestle up his throat. He almost longs for the porcelain throne again, but valiantly shoves aside the flickering thought.

“Of course they do,” Orochimaru actually does scoff this time, but Kakashi thinks it’s a bit telling that the older nin hasn’t just up and left already. The graveyard or the village. He sounds bitter. Something like sympathy tugs at Kakashi’s gut. “I’m not exactly an unknown ninja.”

“They’re not friendly, though,” Kakashi points out quietly.

Orochimaru’s eyes sharpen, pinning him like shuriken.

“They aren’t kind, because they don’t like what you represent.” Kakashi continues. He tilts his head back and stares up at the higher branches of the tree they’re under. “...Or me.”

He pushes off the trunk, placing feet carefully in front of each other, and makes his way across the cemetery. The grave he’s looking for isn’t actually that far from where Orochimaru’s parents lie buried, and something inside Kakashi finds a sick sort of irony at that. He doesn’t have to glance behind him to know the sannin is silently at his heels. Like a hound following a scent, tracking, doggedly. Ha.

Kakashi comes to a stop in front of his father’s grave. Staring at it now, kanji he hasn’t looked at in far too long, set into stone that’s an entirely different color than the monument he’s spent too large a chunk of his life wasting away in front of, pondering regrets and, later, betrayal.

His father’s name should have been on the memorial stone, Kakashi understands that now. To stand here before the man’s gravesite, knowing that it isn't, and that there is not a single person in this village who would support it being counted among those who have given their lives for them—Kakashi feels sick all over again.

He reaches out and touches the stone. “They judge us, because they think they have the right to.”

He tells this to the man standing directly behind him. Orochimaru doesn’t move to reply, and Kakashi isn’t sure why, but he feels like he can trust the nin not to try anything here. Unlike Danzō, Orochimaru understands the respect that a grave visit demands. For all of a grave visit that this is. Kakashi hasn't even brought any food to offer. He's not even wearing shoes. He's practically in his pajamas.

Something that feels like hysteria claws at his chest, and for a brief, sharp moment, the longing Kakashi has for his father to be here with him now, alive, has never been starker.

“They assume that what they think matters,” Kakashi murmurs, feeling almost lost in thought and painfully in the moment all at once. His mouth is moving and forming these words all on its own. He lets it. “So they hold it over our heads, and teach everyone else to as well. And, somehow, they never understand that it’s their own faults, too. That we’re like this because of them.”

The world spins dizzily around him. Something tugs sharply on the collar of his shirt, and once he blinks, he finds himself dangling from Orochimaru’s grasp, swinging haphazardly over the ground.

The sannin pulls him up and sets him back on his feet without a word. Kakashi wobbles for a moment, and then gives it up as a bad job, maneuvering himself down onto the ground. It’s cold. There is a light coating of frost on the ground. He glances up at the sky, trying to find the glimmer of the sun’s position, but everything’s overcast with a thick layer of clouds that makes the entire sky a blindingly white blanket of light. He immediately squeezes his eyes shut and brings his hands up to cover them, turning his face down toward his lap. Is it actually in the morning? Kakashi feels like he’s been up for days already.

“He’d still be here,” he mumbles into his palms, “If it wasn’t for them. If it wasn't for them, he'd be alive." And if he sounds a little accusing, a little hurt, a little angry at the world and how cruel it can be to the ones who are only trying to protect it—well, Orochimaru doesn’t comment on it. "But he's not. And now we’re both alone.”

A cold, chilling hand presses against his forehead where his forehead protector would normally sit—he hasn’t seen it at all since waking up in this time, Kakashi realizes with a jolt—and pulls away after a moment.

“You’re practically boiling in your own skin,” Orochimaru diagnoses, and sounds almost impressed.

“But I’m cold,” Kakashi states confusedly. He tugs on the flimsy t-shirt he’d worn out, and turns an accusing stare on his bare feet, as if it were their fault that Kakashi hadn’t seen fit to clothe them properly before leaving the apartment.

A whispering chuckle sounds from above him, and he glances up with increasingly unreliable vision to see the sannin standing over him, looking amused.

“Where is it that you lived, again?” Orochimaru asks him, like he’d known the location before but had forgotten. It’s a bit alarming, something far off in the distance of his mind notes.

Kakashi’s eyes roll up into the back of his head.

Perhaps he’d overestimated himself.

“Where’s the sugar?” The snake sannin’s voice calls from the doorway into the kitchen of his childhood apartment. Kakashi struggles to sit up from the soft, tempting, siren call of the couch cushions to peer over at him. The androgynous nin stands between the two rooms, leaning a shoulder against the door trim. His arms are crossed across his chest, one eyebrow raised.

Kakashi squints his eyes, trying to recall the usual state of the cupboards of a Kakashi around this age, and decides, “I don’t think there is any.”

The look Orochimaru gives him would say ‘are you insane?’ on anybody else’s face, but on Orochimaru it just comes across as a sharp ‘I can’t believe I’m in the presence of such a complete simpleton,’ and it makes Kakashi feel like he’s just failed some sort of preliminary test that was supposed to be intentionally easy.

He flops back on the couch and stares up at the ceiling. With a thoughtful hum, he adds, “I don’t think I have much of anything, actually.”

“Why not?”

He closes his eyes and tries to shrug, but his shoulders don’t move much beyond a slight muscle twitch that is actually quite painful. He winces.

“Um,” he thinks aloud, “grocery shopping, either too difficult or just not taken care of because I’m busy training, because I can’t fall behind. Probably the later. Not sure.”

He can’t fall behind. Being a shinobi isn’t just his chosen career, doesn’t just run in the family, isn’t just his way of life. He’s lived all this before, and the end game went to hell in a hand-basket, because for all that he’d trained his ass off as a child, the older, adult Kakashi had let his skills rust in the time of peace. Stupidly, he’d settled with his level and had ceased looking for higher challenges, stopped trying to improve out of the mistaken assumption he was already good enough to take on whatever threats might come at him, a jounin of Konohagakure. Or that, wherever he did fail, he would have teammates there to cover his back for him. That’s why he’d been so caught of guard. That’s why he’d lost so much when he hadn’t expected to even be capable of losing anything else in the face of what had all already been taken from him.

Not this time. This time, he’s ahead of the curve, and he’ll stay ahead. He refuses to allow himself to fall behind a second time.

There’s a huff, and Orochimaru disappears back into the kitchen. At the foot of the couch, Pakkun sniffs contemptuously.

“He smells,” the pug mutters under his breath.

Kakashi lets his leg slide off the cushion, foot coming down on top of the ninken’s head. There’s a yelp, and Pakkun jerks upright to glare balefully at him. Kakashi gives him a cheery smile.

“What was that for?” Pakkun hisses.

“Don’t remember you being this rude,” Kakashi yawns, curling in on one of the admittedly threadbare throw pillows. He presses his face into the rough fabric, inhaling a musky scent born of dust. “He smells fine.”

“He smells like reptile .”

“And I smell like dog,” Kakashi mumbles, remembering Naruto’s wrinkled nose making the whisker marks curl inward as his entire face scrunched up. His gut clenches, his throat feels oddly slick, slimy. His eyes sting. Kakashi sniffs.

Pakkun goes silent. The couch cushions dips in slightly as the pug hops up next to him. A paw places itself on Kakashi’s leg as Pakkun stretches out his neck and sniffs at him.

“You smell sad ,” the ninken corrects, sotto voce.

Kakashi rolls on to his back, gazing down at the dog through half-lidded eyes. He fights off a yawn that cracks at his jaw, and feels his ears twitch at the soft clinking sounds coming from the kitchen as Orochimaru works the teapot in silence.

He yanks up an arm and sets it over his eyes. His head still pounds horribly, and everything in him feels too exhausted to work properly, yet was still working despite all of this. Kakashi feels stretched out, and over-used, and old , and—

“Yeah,” he breaths. He’s sad. Who wouldn’t be?

Even inside his head it sounds like an excuse.

Chapter Text

There is just something about this, sitting on the couch and watching such a notorious, duplicitous individual as Orochimaru putter around the small kitchen of a seven year old chunin’s shoddy apartment, fixing tea and putting together sandwiches composed of stale bread and the absolute dredges of a nearly out of date peanut butter jar, that is inherently wrong.

Or, maybe not wrong, just… incredibly jarring. Watching the snake sannin himself being downright domestic throws a great big wrench into the cogs of his image in the eyes of literally everyone else in the entire world (except, perhaps, the other sannin and his sensei). It’s just, odd, to watch a man that Kakashi has personally seen tear out the throats of grown, infamous ninja with his tongue, hum near silently to himself as he measures out the correct amount of loose leaf tea into a strainer. Where he’d found the leaf tin, Kakashi has absolutely no idea. He’d been pretty sure the kid-him of the past hadn’t the mind to buy anything other than tea bags or the instant stuff.  

Pakkun still sits, hunched, on his legs, as if he thinks it’s his sworn duty to make sure Kakashi doesn’t leave the confines of the couch cushions. Maybe it is, too. Hadn’t he’d promised Minato-sensei that he’d keep an eye on Kakashi while he was sick? And then Kakashi wanders off to a cemetery all on his lonesome, wearing nothing but shorts and a t-shirt, and brings back one of the villages most controversial and widely feared warriors like he's just another stray puppy.

Maybe Pakkun has the right to be concerned. Kakashi certainly is. Why is Orochimaru in his apartment, again?

He eyes the man’s back through the doorless entry to the kitchen, stares at the yards of inky black hair that tumbles over his shoulders and sways when the man moves, and then purposefully closes his eyes and plops back down on the cushions. He heaves out a great big sigh that makes his throat, shredded as it is, sting viciously, and ponders his own behavior.

Orochimaru and Kakashi are alike, in the way that Kakashi and Naruto— not Sasuke, Kakashi has made a lot of mistakes and that boy, maybe his entire team, was one of them—are alike. They’re three peas in a pod, them, and Kakashi really has no idea why he’s never seen the parallels before now.

There had just been something, about the line of Orochimaru’s shoulders, the angle of his head, the direction of his avoiding gaze, and the firm declination of even gracing Danzōu with a verbal response in that graveyard, that had just struck Kakashi as so achingly familiar. He’s seen that very pose in the mirror. He’s seen it in his students, not just Naruto, but all three of them at one point or another.

This person is like me, a small voice in the back of his head, that sounded so much like a mashup of Naruto and his own younger self, had spoken with an odd sort of wonder.

Maybe that’s why, Kakashi thinks.

He’s distracted by a commotion in the kitchen. There’s a surprised yelp and a crash of pots that is definitely not Orochimaru, and a short, curt hmph that is.

Kakashi sits up and peers over the back of the couch once more, to watch as his blonde-haired sensei staggers bodily out of the kitchen entry, stumbling over to him with a crazed, startled look on his face, and blue eyes that keep darting to the kitchen and back.

Kakashi shares a glance with a very unimpressed looking Pakkun, and wrestles himself up to his knees as Minato practically throws himself over to grab the back of the couch like it’s a lifeline. Their eyes meet, and they stare at one another for a few long moments, before the older ninja himself breaks the gaze and runs an aggrieved hand through his hair.

“Kakashi,” Minato begins in a low voice. It sounds kind of stressed, to Kakashi’s ears, despite how Minato-sensei is clearly attempting to keep it calm and level. “Why is Orochimaru in your apartment?”

Kakashi eyes him warily. “He’s making lunch.”

A strange look crosses Minato’s face, something that looks like it’s trying to be a patient smile, but is too busy fighting against a panicked grimace to look even a little bit natural.

“Why is he making lunch, in your apartment?”

The seven year old stares at his sensei for a long moment, eyes narrowed, and then nods slowly, realizing, ah. Minato was really asking why Orochimaru seemed to feel like he can come to Kakashi’s apartment in the first place.

“He’s friend-shaped,” Kakashi tells his teacher, expression blank, and Minato chokes on air.

Pakkun rolls his eyes, and hops up to perch on the back of the couch. In times such as this, Kakashi finds himself really appreciating the pug’s easy-going, no-nonsense nature. It’s a gift from the kami themselves.

“Little Boss,” The pug starts, and Kakashi has to work really hard to hide the flinch that tries to wrack his body at the nickname, “went on a quick field trip while I was busy running a bath for him. He was gone for about half an hour.”

“And ?” Minato looks about ten seconds away from tearing out his hair.

“Snake-boy over there-“ Pakkun nods toward the kitchen, and then bites back a yelp when Kakashi instinctively reaches out to box the small ninken over the ears.

“Wh-“ his sensei looks startled at the violence, but Kakashi is too busy giving his doggy partner a stern look full of narrow eyes and unfortunately pouting lips to see him.

Pakkun glowers back at him. After a few seconds, the dog huffs out an exasperated sigh and turning back to the befuddled Minato. “The esteemed Sannin of Snakes carried Kakashi here back after he reportedly fainted while standing, the idiot.”

“Hmm,” Kakashi hums ponderously, before relenting. Better, but still rude. His dogs of this time are so bereft of manners. His dad had spoiled them.

Minato’s eyes widen, and he starts casting suspicious glances over at the kitchen, which is strangely a lot more silent than it was before. The blonde leans in closer, so that his and Kakashi’s heads are right next to each other.

“Did anything happen?” Minato whispers worriedly.

Kakashi pulls back to give his sensei a long, wordless stare.

The blonde man looks so earnest. It tugs on something in his chest, even as Kakashi is feeling a cold sort of tingle at the edges of his lungs at the sudden realization he’s having.

“What?”

“I mean, did he,” Minato lowers his voice even further, edging in closer like he thinks this way Orochimaru wouldn’t hear him. Was… his sensei actually kind of an idiot? “Did he, do… something?”

“What are you talking about?” Kakashi looks at the man like he thinks he’s crazy, which… well? Aren’t they all?

A burst of breath escapes Minato, and the man hesitated for a second, before throwing himself over the back of the couch, to sit next to Kakashi. He reaches out to hook an arm around the boy and drags him down so that he’s practically in his lap.

“Sensei?!”

“He didn’t do anything to you, did he?” And now that he’s actually looking up at him, Kakashi can see the veritable storm clouds eclipsing Minato’s cerulean eyes, how they are narrow and sharp and keep glancing over at the kitchen like it’s the mouth of some nefarious monster's cave, and then back at Kakashi, to rove over the small Hatake’s body like he’s looking for any signs of mishandling.

Kakashi frowns. He places both hands on the man’s chest and pushes him away a little bit so he has room to breath.

“No,” he says shortly. “I was visi- I pushed myself too hard. I got dizzy and passed out, and Orochimaru-san was kind enough to take me home.”

Faintly, he can remember Orochimaru’s question of where his apartment was located, and silently wonders that, if the nin actually hadn’t known, then how had he gotten Kakashi home anyway?

A question for another day. Minato-sensei is still leering suspiciously at the quiet kitchen.

Kakashi pauses for a moment, unsure. After a moment, though, he figures to hell with it. Best to just treat Minato like another Pakkun.

He reaches out and lightly swats Minato’s shoulder. The man startles, again—he startles very easily, doesn’t he, Kakashi will have to work on that—and turns to give the boy a questioning look.

“You,” Kakashi says quietly, “believe the villagers?”

Minato blinks at him. “Sorry?”

“...Have you ever actually spoken to him?”

“Of course I have! Kakashi, I’ve been on the other side of the debate table in strategy meetings against him more times than I can cou-“

“Okay,” says Kakashi, impatient, “but have you ever actually talked to him? Outside of… work?”

Minato stares at him.

Huh, Kakashi thinks, and he’s not liking the ideas his brain is suggesting to him at all.

“How did you get inside?” He asks, mind running wild with all the new revelations he’s reading in the undertones of the latest events of his life. “I... didn’t see you come in the door.”

He pauses, and then casts a glance at Pakkun. The pug stares at him, before giving a huff and a short shake of his head. So Minato hadn’t come in while Kakashi was too busy being unconscious to notice.

He really needs to figure out how to get around that. It’s starting to get a little ridiculous, and him fainting everywhere isn’t going to help his case one bit.

“I, uh,” Minato coughs, hand reaching up to rub at the back of his head. Sheepish. “I came in through the window.”

Kakashi stares. “The window?”

“The one in the, ah, the kitchen…”

From the sound of it, his teacher had launched himself up two stories and broke into Kakashi’s apartment instead of, say, using the front door like a normal person would have, and had promptly found Orochimaru the Snake Sannin humming and making tea there, instead of his youngest and brightest, and currently sickest, student like he’d no doubt been expecting.

Kakashi can understand why Minato was so startled, but… that didn’t explain why Minato was being so Ignorant Villager Type 3 on them right now.

The silver-haired boy narrows his eyes, and Minato ducks his head under the gaze.

“Tomorrow,” a calm voice speaks from behind them, all velvet tones and lilting vowels, “someone is going to restock these cabinets.”

Minato jumps, arms tightening around Kakashi a bit too harshly, and he looks a breath away from screaming like a schoolgirl. Kakashi levels the blonde a look, before twisting around in his grip and looking up at Orochimaru, who stands there, cool as a cucumber, holding a plate of sandwiches in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. He gazes down at them with an expression that gives nothing away about what’s going on inside his head, and raises an eyebrow at the intense stare Minato is subjecting him to.

“I swear I saw cobwebs in one when I opened it,” he continues, like he hadn’t just scared the bajeebus out of Kakashi’s high-strung sensei.

After a moment of silence—which Orochimaru takes advantage of to make his way around the couch, like a blessedly normal person, unlike Minato, and set the plate on the coffee table—Kakashi struggles his way free of the death trap that is Minato-sensei’s arms, and perches instead on the edge of the next cushion over.

Orochimaru hands him the cup of tea. Kakashi accepts it wordlessly, bringing it close to his chest after his hands register how warm the ceramic is against his chilled skin. He glances down into its jewel-tone depths, and gets a whiff of cinnamon with a faint hint of citrus. Definitely not something the young Kakashi of before would have in his too-sparse cupboards. Kakashi wonders why Orochimaru carries a tin of such high-grade tea around with him, and carefully takes a sip.

He swishes it around in his mouth for a bit, ignoring the staring contest the two older men had going on right over his head, and can’t help the widening of his eyes.

Oh, Kakashi hums, and takes another, bigger sip. This tea is fantastic.

That’s it, he decides. Orochimaru stays.

Minato wrings the hem of his coat in his fists. It causes his knuckles to bleach white, and when he realizes this he attempts to loosen the grip he has on the cloth, and when that doesn’t work he draws his attention in to focus on his breathing.

In, and out. Slowly. In, and out. Two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four…

He opens his eyes after a few moments, pressing out a deep exhale, and finds that his gaze is still locked on the nin who sits across the coffee table from him. One leg is crossed over the other, spine leaning into the back of the wooden chair he’d dragged in from the small kitchen table, a cup of tea with a faint and subtle scent set in pale, artist hands.

Orochimaru brings the mug to his lips and draws in a mouthful, eyes locked on Minato’s, one eyebrow still raised.

Something in Minato’s chest tightens. The Sannin looks smug, somehow, and it’s playing on his nerves.

He bounces his leg a few times, up and down, before giving up and turning to his student, who lately is causing Minato a lot more stress than he feels he rightly deserves. Kakashi’s entire focus seems to be locked on his cup of tea, as it has been for the good few minutes since it had been handed to him. He sips at it occasionally with obvious relish, and gray eyes study the orange-maroon surface of the water with great interest.

Minato cut his gaze back to Orochimaru, who just smiles pleasantly at him, as if he for all the world belongs there, in that chair, in this apartment, and it i Minato who was the interloper.

“So,” He begins. And stalls. What… exactly is he suppose to say, here?

Orochimaru takes another drink, and smiles that smile again, teeth sharper than they have any right to be in the mouth of a human. “Indeed.”

After a few seconds tick by, in which the Snake Sannin remains unforgivably unruffled, whereas Minato is still fishing for words in a manmade pond bereft of any apparent actual life, the nin leans forward to peer unerringly at the still-silent chunin sitting next to him.

He clears his throat with a polite air, and smiles again when Kakashi’s gaze snaps to his. “It is good that you like the tea. However,” he reaches out and slides the plate of sandwiches across the table with a single finger, “I believe that some food will do you better, right now.”

Kakashi blinks at him, and brings a hand to his sternum when his stomach rumbles on cue. He looks startled. It makes Minato feel uneasy, because Kakashi isn’t ever one to let emotions show so blatantly on his face.

His student gives another quiet hum, that doesn’t sound quite like an agreement or not, and reaches forward to pick up one of the sandwiches. He then sits back against the couch cushions, tea mug cradles against his chest with one hand, and nibbles sparingly on the wedge. His eyes are staring at something in the middle of the distance, as if he’s already forgotten they are there.

Minato thinks back to that morning, when he’d nearly burned down the building to make soup that he already knew he hadn’t the ability to put together, and cringes internally. Has Kakashi eaten at all, since before Minato had found him lying prone on his bathroom floor two days ago?

Minato feels like the worst sensei on the face of the planet, that all it had taken was an eerily calm smile from Orochimaru to get Kakashi to intake the nutrition he so obviously needs.

You’ve never even spoken to him outside of duty, a voice says inside his head. It sounds both disappointed, incredulous, and sort of like Kakashi.

Something in Minato’s heart sinks.

He clears his throat, and sits up to now his head down in a show of respect.

“Thank you,” He says, and is faintly surprised at himself when it comes out completely sincere.

“For bringing him home,” he adds on, straightening up to find another shock, when he catches the stunned flash that gleams across slightly widened gold eyes. Orochimaru’s face quickly returns to its usual neutral expression, leaving Minato to wonder if he’d actually seen what he’d seen, but deep inside he knows that it had been there.

“I should have been here to take care of him,” he says, quietly, to himself, and feels like shit all over again. He isn’t just Kakashi’s sensei, he is his guardian. For all that Kakashi is, technically, of legal age due to his military rank, he’s still just a kid. Still just seven years old. And Minato had left him with only a ninken for company for hours, while suffering the throes of an illness that really and truly begs the attention of a doctor.

His elbows find purchase on his knees, and Minato leans his face heavily into his hands, palms digging into the sockets of his eyes. He feels so exhausted, all of a sudden. He wishes Kushina were here. She would know exactly what to do.

“You’re quite welcome,” a level voice returns at last, nearly as quietly as Minato’s last comment.

He glances up to meet that gold gaze, and finds himself sighing.

He doesn’t trust Orochimaru. For all that he’s Jiraiya’s precious teammate, Minato of all people knows just how conflicted Orochimaru’s very existence makes his sensei. They’d grown up together as children, and as adults they’d grown apart. Jiraiya knows Orochimaru, but it’s been such a long time since they’d even seen one another, that Minato thinks his sensei’s own knowledge of the man may just be slightly out of date.

After all, Orochimaru has had plenty of time to himself. First, it had been Tsunade, and then Jiraiya. Or maybe Jiraiya has been first, and this was just the second time. In any case, they both had left, and Minato still finds it strangely funny how Orochimaru is still the only one of the legendary sannin to actually stay in the village, despite everything. No matter what, Orochimaru has had their backs, not only in the war but outside of it, just like any loyal ninja should.

Minato thinks that this should be reason enough to, perhaps not trust Orochimaru, but trust that he wouldn’t turn on them in the middle of a mission. He’d proven himself, time and time again, even when he shouldn’t have had too.

And still, Minato is suspicious of Orochimaru, and sometimes he hates himself for it. He hates that Jiraiya has instilled a sense of constant vigilance where his errant teammate is concerned. Minato can’t help but keep an eye out for the Snake Sannin. Watch him from afar. Make notes of what he’s been doing. Pick him out of a crowd, which isn’t exactly difficult as the crowd itself avoids his very presence without even meaning to, and stare.

Minato looks to his side, at his student, who is still completely transfixed by the mug he cradled to his chest. There’s barely three of the tiniest bites he’d ever seen taken out of the sandwich in the boy’s hand. He remembers Kakashi, sitting at the kitchen table, with gray eyes darker than Minato had ever seen them, staring almost sightlessly at the calendar stuck on the fridge with the magnet Rin had asked Minato to pass along because she’d been too shy to gift it herself.

‘You believe the villagers?’

Kakashi sounded so accusing when he’d asked that. There had been this look on his face that spoke of quiet disbelief. Like he's disappointed that his own sensei is just another of the mindless masses who glare at what they can't understand, or don't want to understand.

Except, Minato does understand it. Even if he wishes that there was nothing to understand. Because it isn’t fair, and Minato hates watching his student walk through the village like he isn’t a part of it.

He looks up, and finds Orochimaru enjoying his tea and looking as if he hadn’t a care in the entire world. But there’s something in the line of his shoulders, the too-relaxed way he holds himself up in that wooden chair, which belies that.

Minato lets go of his coat, smooths out the wrinkles and creases he’d caused, and sits back against the couch.

He casts Orochimaru a sunny smile, as if the three of them had planned to take tea together all along.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and means it. “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of meeting outside of the war room or battlefield before.”

Orochimaru’s eyes snap up to meet his.

“...No,” the man replies curiously. “I don’t believe we have.”

Minato beams. “Well, I know we already knows each other’s names, but that’s no reason to let introductions slide in polite company.”

He leans forward and reaches a hand out across the coffee table. “I’m Namikaze Minato, Kakashi’s sensei. I’m glad to finally meet you.”

Orochimaru regards his offered hand with an unblinking gaze, and the quiet of the apartment stretches on for longer than comfortable. The muscles in Minato’s arm begin to tire as the seconds tick by, but he refuses to lower it.

After a moment, Orochimaru glances up to meet his eyes, and smiles that pleasant, close-lipped smile once again. He reaches out to clasp Minato’s hand, and the two of them them shake over the plate of sandwiches that sits between them.

“Orochimaru,” the nin intones. Ebony hair slides off a shoulder as he leans forward. “I’m delighted to make your acquaintance.”

Minato swears he can hear his sensei hollering across the elemental nations at him.

Beside him, Kakashi brings his mug up and sips at the tea straight through his mask.

Chapter Text

Despite what he’d said to Minato-sensei, Kakashi doesn’t have a clue what Orochimaru is doing in his apartment.

The man isn’t there for long, of course, stating some excuse for leaving soon after the odd, almost ceremonial-like handshake he and Minato-sensei had shared over Kakashi’s coffee table—what had that been about, anyway? Kakashi hadn’t really been paying attention at the time, too distracted by the godlike aroma wafting up from his humble, mortal, ceramic mug. He’s pretty sure something had gone down. He just isn’t sure what.

He doesn’t have a lot of time to ponder it, however, seeing as Pakkun sits on him practically the very second that Orochimaru takes his leave—through the front door, take notes, Minato-sensei—and curls his lip upward in the facsimile of a snarl.

His voice doesn’t have a hint of a growl, though, so Kakashi knows he’s all bark and no bite.

“If I go now to refill the tub, you’ll stay put this time.” The pug grumbles. “Right?"

Kakashi stares at him, empty tea mug still clutched to his sternum. It still smells like cinnamon and citrus, and Kakashi’s going to cling to it until someone pries it out of his cold, dead hands.

“Yeah,” he eventually sighs out, when Pakkun whuffs quietly for a response. “No more graveyard excursions,” Kakashi promises.

Minato gives a little jolt from where he’s been sitting next to them on the couch, staring blankly at the empty kitchen chair Orochimaru had left in the sitting room. The blond turns his head to cast a curious glance over Kakashi’s curled form. There’s an unreadable look in his eyes as he glances once toward the kitchen and then back at Kakashi, before meeting Pakkun’s gaze. Something passes between the ninken and the ninja, over Kakashi’s head, and Kakashi shifts beneath their gazes, not really liking that there’s an entire conversation going on in the room that he isn’t privy to. It’s his apartment, dammit.

He gives a yawn, and tips over onto his side to bury his face into the couch pillows, jostling Pakkun off his lap. The pug hops away from him, finding new purchase on the next cushion over.

“I’ll stay,” he mumbles into the couch. Maybe it sounds a little belligerent, maybe it doesn’t. He’s not admitting to anything.

There’s a shift of fabric as Minato stands up from the couch.

“I can get the bath going, if you’re really that worried, Pakkun,” the jounin-sensei says quietly.

“It looks like he’s gonna pass out again,” Pakkun says. “He probably won’t wander off….”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’?”

Pakkun gives a sigh, and noses the back of Kakashi’s head, pushing around a few of the wilder strands of silvery hair. “He’s hasn’t been particularly present this entire time, if you know what I mean. Sure, the kid says he won’t leave, but I’m not too convinced that he’s got the reigns of it right now.”

“What do you mean?” Minato-sensei sounds confused.

“When he woke up after Orochimaru brought him back, I practically had to interrogate him about why the guy was here before he actually seemed to remember what happened, or the fact that he’d left the apartment in the first place.”

There’s a moment of silence while the two contemplate this information, and Kakashi squeezes his eyes shut so tightly that spots dance before his vision. He stretches his arms out in front of himself, stomach dragging against the cushion, until something in his back pops. His entire body aches like he’d just finished a particularly grueling training regime, except it had been for two days straight, of all the toughest exercises and with no sleep or rests. Kakashi is so done feeling under the weather. Time travel, death hallucination, whatever this is or not, he’d like to feel like a normal living human being again, please. He hadn’t even been that old before this started. Why did he feel like an old man? This body hasn’t even started puberty yet, for crying out loud!

Kakashi goes still.

A whine escapes his mouth, smothered into the pillow that his face is currently paying respects to. It smells like dust. He fights the urge to sneeze.

A hand comes to rest in his hair, giving it a gentle, soothing ruffle, fingers threading through the strands. Kakashi soaks in the comfort it brings like a dying man who won’t see such luxuries again in life. Because he’s going to die. He knows it.

Above him, Minato sighs. “I think I’ll stay here for the night. I can take the couch. I just… I don’t want to leave him alone, when he’s like this.”

He steps away from the couch, and quietly says, “I’ll go draw up that bath for you, Pakkun.”

Kakashi listens to the soft footsteps leading him away from the room, down the hall to the bathroom that the man had found him collapsed in not too long ago—but, apparently it had been days since then?

The steps fade out. Kakashi then pops his head up from the pillow and finds himself staring at a silent Pakkun.

Pakkun regards him seriously. “How are you feeling?”

That’s a tone of voice that Kakashi recognizes. He’s heard it from the mouths of many a medic-nin, and he knows down to his gut that if he doesn’t answer promptly and with complete honesty, his life may as well be forfeit for all the good that his future might hold.

“Terrible,” he replies, and oops. Maybe a little too cheerfully, but oh well. “My head feels like it’s full of rocks that are all smashing into each other at shunshin speeds, and I’m pretty sure my body is on fire, but when I look down at it, it’s fine?”

Pakkun steps closer, pressing his nose right next to Kakashi’s temple, and gives a suspicious sniff. “Any sort of cold symptoms? Like sore throat? Sniffles?”

The man-become-boy gives Pakkun the deadest stare that he can manage, which, considering the circumstances, is more alike to a corpse than Pakkun is apparently comfortable with.

There’s a worried pinch between the dog’s brows when he nudges Kakashi’s cheek insistently. “Well?”

“No,” Kakashi huffs, and pushes the pug away from his face perhaps a little too roughly, not that he means to. “Sometimes I feel too tired to move, even though I just slept, and….” Kakashi thinks about his date with the toilet bowl when he first woke up, and shudders.

“And?”

“Stomach,” Kakashi grunts. “Not good.”

“Do you need me to grab the trash bin?” Pakkun asks in alarm.

“No,” at least, Kakashi doesn’t think so. Honestly, if he pukes now he’d feel a little guilty. Orochimaru didn’t have to make him those sandwiches, but he had, and it was strangely very nice of him to do so. Kakashi doesn’t want to throw that back in his face.

Really, it’d be rude. What if Orochimaru never gives him that amazing tea from heaven again, because Kakashi was rude to him? Kakashi thinks he might just give up on life entirely. If he can’t have that tea again, what's even the point?

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Kakashi will make damn sure he doesn’t meet up with the toilet again anytime soon.

The two of them sit there for a while in silence. Kakashi feels his head dip forward a few times, and can’t quite keep his eyes open. He’s pretty certain he doesn’t actually fall unconscious, but… no, he isn’t certain, actually. He might have dozed off a few times for all he knows. The sitting room doesn’t have any windows, and he’s not in the right spot to see into the kitchen from the couch. He blinks once, and opens his eyes after, feeling groggy and terribly exhausted and so, so tired. Kakashi struggles away from the pillow he’s nearly become one with, pressing his stiff back into the couch cushions and releasing a pent up sigh that tastes like irritation. He runs his tongue over his teeth in annoyance, and cringes. They feel like they’re covered in moss.

Minato peeks in on them from the hallway. “Tub’s ready for you,” He says when he notices Kakashi sitting up.

The boy blinks, and then edges himself off the couch and onto wobbly feet. Now that he’s thinking about it, he really could use a good wash. He kind of reeks. Orochimaru, with his sensitive snake senses, the poor man must’ve been suffering the entire time he was in Kakashi’s apartment.

Kakashi narrows his eyes on the floorboards in front of his socked feet—since when had he put socks on? Last he’d known, he’d been barefoot— and resolutely takes a step forward. Minato appears at his side to help him to the bathroom, because apparently Kakashi is crippled and can’t walk himself despite obviously doing it right before the blonde’s eyes not two seconds ago.

In any case, Kakashi finds himself beside the tub, wrestling with his shirt as he attempts to shuck off his clothing, and tries not to actually dive headfirst into the bathtub even though he kind of really wants to. It looks so inviting. It’s steaming. It smells clean. It feels like heat and he hasn’t even touched it yet.

The steam that curls up from the water clues Kakashi into the fact that, apparently, he is absolutely freezing. Despite that, not a moment ago, his body had felt like it was slowly and painfully burning into cinders. But, no. Now he is cold. Go figure.

He climbs in, and resolutely decides not to think about anything at all.

There’s a knock at the door about an hour and a half later, after Kakashi sinks under the welcoming depths of the water, and for a second his heart speeds up in panic and he’s taken back to the episode he’d experienced when he first woke up, how his body had tried to turn inside out and the door had talked—

No. “Kakashi?” It’s Minato-sensei. Not the door. Doors don’t talk.

Kakashi closes his eyes and pretends that they don’t sting just a little. Nobody has to know.

“Kakashi?”

“Mmf?”

“Are you alright? It’s been a while?”

Kakashi draws in a deep breath, sinking down in the tub. He soaks in the quickly escaping vestiges of heat still remaining in the lukewarm bath water, and sighs it back out, counting the second it takes until his lungs are empty again. He waits a moment, and draws in another breath that takes half as long.

“Kakashi?”

“I’m fine,” he calls.

“Well,” Minato begins, sounding like he’s worried but trying not to let it become too obvious, “are you all washed up? I think it’s about time you get out. You should probably get something to eat before you fall asleep again.”

“I just ate,” Kakashi states in confusion, dragging himself up to sit on the edge of the tub.

“That was a few hours ago,” his teacher tell him through the very inanimate door. “It’s about dinner time. Do you need any help?”

“I got it,” Kakashi says, a little too quickly and a little too sharply. He draws in another breath and presses it out as slowly as his lungs can stand. He feels lightheaded afterwards, but it eases something in the tight, complicated knots that plague his muscles.

Outside the bathroom, Minato hesitates, then wonders, “Are you sure?”

Kakashi isn’t. He doesn’t bother answering, though. He carefully pulls his legs up and over, setting wet, pruned feet on the bath rug. He hears Minato heave out a sigh, and listens to the man dither around at the door for a few more minutes.

“He’s back,” his teacher eventually says to him, when Kakashi’s finished toweling off and is attempting the arduous process of dressing himself in the sleepwear Minato-sensei laid out for him on the small sink counter. He’s having a little trouble finding the left armhole of the shirt, and feels increasingly pathetic for it. “He’s making dinner. He’s almost done.”

“... Who?” Kakashi asks, a little suspiciously, even though he already has a good idea of the answer.

“Orochimaru,” Minato says, helplessly bewildered but trying to hide it.

Kakashi stops wrestling with the shirt, and finds himself staring at his reflection in the squat little mirror that hangs above the sink. He looks… tiny, is a good word for it as any. Are seven-year-olds suppose to be this small? His bangs are a tangled mess over his eyes, and are brushed toward the left a bit, and there’s a gauntness to his face that Kakashi doesn’t remember there being. His eyes look sort of glazed, and both of them are gray. He traces a line down over the left one, and then pets down the damp, plastered bangs to cover it. The sight of it makes him uneasy.

“What’s he making?” He eventually ventures, turning back to give his clothing an annoyed glare.

“Miso soup,” his teacher tells him promptly, like he’s been waiting for Kakashi to speak. “You don’t need help?”

Kakashi puffs up his cheeks with another sigh that he tries his best to hold in. Some of it gets out anyway.

“No, I’ve got it,” he says, clenching the navy t-shirt in his hands. It’s creasing, making wrinkles, but he doesn’t care.

“Alright,” Minato doesn’t seem like he wants to leave, but his voice carries a tone of reluctant defeat. “I’ll be in the living room. Holler if you need anything.”

Kakashi needs too many things to count, right now, and more than half of them are so astronomically out of his reach that there’s this constant, rising pressure trying to climb up his throat, causing his heart to beat two times faster than it should and bringing his breaths up short. He hates it. But Minato-sensei won’t be able to do anything about it anyway, so Kakashi keeps silent.

By the time he actually makes it to the kitchen, Orochimaru is once again puttering around the counters like a particularly eerie ghost, and Minato-sensei is already setting out utensils next to soup bowls that Kakashi is vehemently certain he’s never owned in his life, in the past or now.

He trudges to a stop next to the table, noting that all four chairs are once again in their proper places, and stares at the unfamiliar dishes in silence. He feels Pakkun come up and lean against his leg without a word, pressing into him and providing a spot of warmth. Now that he’s out of the bath, Kakashi feels cold again, so he revels in anything he can get. It’s almost as if his very soul is iced over.

His confusion must show on his face, because Orochimaru is suddenly next to him, ladling soup from a pot into the bowls.

“I made a trip to the grocers,” the infamous nin comments idly.

“You did?”

Orochimaru flashes him a small smile that doesn’t show any teeth, that’s strangely soft-looking and seems out of place on the face that’s so prevalent for enemy in Kakashi’s memories. There’s absolutely nothing sinister about it, and even as Kakashi finds himself searching for an ulterior motive out of habit, there’s isn’t any there. It’s oddly satisfying, and Kakashi isn't able to figure out why.

He can’t help but smile back, even if it is just a slight uptick of the edges of his mouth. Kakashi can’t really muster the energy for anything more.

“I did,” Orochimaru confirms, placing the pot in the center of the table now that all four bowls are filled.

“Why?”

The sannin arches a brow at him, pulling out a chair and directing Kakashi to sit in it, before settling himself into the seat perpendicular.

“Your cupboards were offensively bare,” the man drawls.

“Offensively?”

Orochimaru waves a hand at Minato, who’s just standing there at the counter, clutching a set of silverware to his chest and staring dumbly around the room now that he has no chore to busy himself with. The blond blanches, and scrambles to sit in the chair directly across from Kakashi.

“Well,” Orochimaru says, “I was offended.” He smiles again, and this time it has a tiny flash of teeth, which screams danger, but is belied by the gleam of a dry humor hidden in golden eyes.

There’s a scritch of nails against tile, and Pakkun hops up into the only chair left, to Kakashi’s right. Orochimaru passes the ninken a smaller soup bowl full of water, and the pug gives the Snake Sannin a grin that’s in stark contrast to the suspicion Pakkun was treating the man with last Kakashi knew.

He once again senses that he’s missing something.

Kakashi feels like a broken record, repeating himself, but, “Why?”

Orochimaru actually sighs. “I really do need to spell it out for you, don’t I?”

“Spell?” Kakashi stares at him. “What?”

He’s definitely missing something, maybe a lot of somethings, because he has no clue what Orochimaru is getting at here.

Minato suddenly relaxes in his chair, very abruptly, which catches Kakashi’s attention, because, what? The blonde smiles across the table at him, a fond little grin that has an edge of amusement in it, and he says, “Orochimaru-san’s a staunch supporter of healthy eating. He took one look at the state of your kitchens and took insult.”

Kakashi narrows his eyes at his sensei. Yes, he realizes when he sees Minato’s shoulders trembling ever so slightly. The man is laughing.

“It comes with being teammates with a Senju medic,” Orochimaru comments idly. Kakashi lets his gaze slide over to his face, just in time to catch the odd look that slides across it and then disappears. It looks a bit like pain and recurring disappointment, the man-turned-boy thinks quietly.

Orochimaru picks up his soup spoon, holds it between his hands, and mutters an ‘itadakimasu' that is quickly followed by the rest of them.

Kakashi’s thoughts turn to Obito, his Obito, from the future, and… he thinks he can kind of understand, just a little bit.

He tucks into the miso without another word, and thereafter finds himself unable to speak again anyway, because kamisama preserve his soul the food is so amazing his mouth is watering for more even before he swallows the first bite. Kakashi sits stock still in his chair, eyes darting from the bowl in front of him to the spoon in his hand, before he ducks his head down and shovels another spoonful into his mouth.

Minato snorts quietly from behind his hand, and then tucks into his own meal. Kakashi watches vindictively as his sensei’s blue eyes widen in shock. Pakkun rolls his eyes at the both of them, grumbling nonsensical mutterings to himself as he laps at the miso in his dish.

Orochimaru isn’t looking at any of them, but that odd little smile is back on his face and has a smug edge to it’s curve.

They eat in silence for a good while. Kakashi spends the time practically inhaling his miso and taking small, savoring sips of the tea that Minato-sensei had poured when they’d sat down. It’s the same tea he had hours ago, and Kakashi kicks his legs (they can’t reach the floor?), existing blissfully for just a moment, surrounded by delicious smells brought down from heaven itself via Orochimaru.

Maybe he’d been mistaken, when he’d first arrived here. Maybe this isn’t hell, or purgatory. Maybe he was being rewarded for the small good that he had accomplished in his life.

Orochimaru isn’t exactly the first person Kakashi would have considered for a conduit of the gods’ blessings, but as he holds a warm mug of tea to his chest, he thinks that he might come to see the light.

If this is the reward for the small good Kakashi has done in his past life, then what would the reward be for a higher level of good? Like, Naruto-good?

Kakashi is resolved. He will try his best to emulate his sunny student’s morals from now on. It’s obvious worth it in the end.

(He hopes Naruto is happy, wherever he ended up after… well, after.)

He’s starting to finally understand why Anko had revered Orochimaru so much as a child, and still had admired him (even as she bitterly hurt and raged) as an adult.

Eventually, Kakashi’s peace comes to an end, when Minato sets down his eating utensils and sets his elbows against the edge of the table top, to clasp his hands in front of his face and stare at Kakashi over the table with an unusually serious expression.

Kakashi slows the rapid motion of his spoon from bowl to mouth, until it comes to hover uncertainty between the two destinations. A tendril of unease curls in his stomach, just beneath his diaphragm. It feels hot, and sour, and Kakashi lets his spoon fall back into his bowl with a quiet little clatter.

Orochimaru raises an eyebrow at him again. “Eat too fast?” He asks, and sounds entirely unsympathetic and unsurprised in equal measure.

Angels from the gods can be cruel as they can be kind, it seems.

Kakashi slowly shakes his head, regarding his stern-looking teacher with a level of wariness. He reaches out to grab his cup of tea and brings it close to his sternum to draw comfort from it’s warmth.

“When you left training that day,” Minato begins quietly, and the uneasy knot in Kakashi’s stomach spasms, “did you feel sick then?”

Kakashi lifts his mug to hide his mouth, biting his lip in an uncharacteristic show of nerves. He decides not to answer. He doesn’t even have an answer. Was he sick, at this time, in the past? Or was this illness a byproduct of—it still sounds absolutely crazy but Kakashi is running out of explanations here that make as much sense—traveling back? In any case, it’s been so long since Kakashi was actually seven that even if he thinks about it really hard, there’s absolutely no chance of him divining the thought process and decision making of his younger self on a specific day that Kakashi has not actually lived in decades.

Minato seems to take this as an affirmative. A crease appears between his brows. “So you did. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Kakashi turns slowly back to face his teacher, mulling over the tone in which the question was posed. It sounds hurt. He matches his gaze with Minato-sensei’s, and sees the ocean in them, roiling with feelings and thoughts Kakashi can’t possibly discern or name. But, yeah, his teacher sounds upset by this.

Kakashi sinks in his chair, switching his stare to an empty space on the table top. Nobody speaks for a moment, the four of them surrounded by a sort of silence that plays at half-comfortable, but is actually tense and focused underneath the underneath. Orochimaru keeps eating, steadily, and Pakkun seems to be paying absolutely no attention to the conversation going on over his head—but his ears are perked up. He’s listening. So is the sannin, judging by the gleam in gold irises that Kakashi catches out of the corner of his eye.

He reaches out to fish his spoon out of the dredges of miso. He cleans it off and sets it to the side of his plate.

He figures that the best option is to just tell the truth. “I don’t know.”

Minato doesn’t blink, but he sits back in his chair, with an agonizing sort of slowness that tells Kakashi he’s thinking miles a minute, that brilliant mind coming up with and discarding thousands of possibilities as to what the actual answers might be. He’s frowning.

“You don’t know?”

Kakashi doesn’t have enough energy for this conversation.

“No, I don’t. I don’t remember if I felt sick then or not, and I don’t know why I didn't tell you if I had. Or did I tell you? I don’t know, and,” the boy breaks off abruptly, sucking in a harsh breath when he realizes he’s rambling a bit. But his lungs have been wrung dry, so he sucks in another one and tries to pretend he doesn’t feel the stinging at his eyes. He fails when he brings up and fist to rub at them harshly.

“I don’t know,” he finishes, softly, and this time nobody talks again until the plates have been cleared.

Minato hovers by the apartment door—there’s no other word for it. The man is almost like a bee in that nature, Orochimaru can practically hear the buzzing he makes with his palpable worry and anxiousness. The color yellow suites him, there’s no doubt about that.

“I have nothing scheduled for this week in the least,” he hears himself saying, repeating in fact, and has to once again wonder why is he doing this? He could be in his labs right now, making another scientific discovery that will only work for the betterment of the villager and everyone in it, but instead he’s chosen to, what? Babysit a sick Chunin who is far too tiny to deserve the fraudulent dangers of the rank, so that his bouncing, absolutely bewildering jounin-sensei could continue training the rest of his students without (as much) concern for the boy’s wellbeing?

“I-I know,” the Namikaze says, wringing his hands and glancing over Orochimaru’s shoulder to where he can just barely see the young Hatake heir curled up on that pitiful, threadbare monstrosity that dares call itself a couch. “I just… he’s so out of it. Compared to how he usually is, it’s… it’s very concerning, you know.”

Orochimaru doesn’t, actually, having not truly met the boy before today—and what an incredibly peculiar creature, that boy is turning out to be—but he does know enough tact to not mention that little fact. Despite anything Jiraiya or even Tsunade might tell anyone, Orochimaru isn’t completely absent from societal niceties.

He can practically feel his expression begin to shut down at the direction his thoughts have turned, so he quickly forces it into a neutral look, waving a disinterested hand as if to physically banish the stuttering mess Minato was quickly devolving into.

“It’s fine,” he says, “I understand how it might be upsetting, but….” Here, he gives a little pause, raising an eyebrow at the blonde, “you do have two other students who require your attention, don’t you? Students who are waiting for you at their training grounds as we speak?”

The jounin visibly, ostensibly deflates. He drops his shoulders and runs an aggrieved hand through tastefully mussed blonde locks. “I—no, you’re right, you’re right.” As if there was ever any doubt. “I’ll leave him in your hands. Please send Pakkun if there’s anything you need.”

“Of course,” Orochimaru allows. And then he closes the door firmly in the man’s face. Maybe it would give him the kick he needed to actually leave.

He turns around from the entry and appraises the small, little form that’s balled up on the— Orochimaru hesitates to actually call it a couch, it most definitely needs to be replaced, and why in the world is Hatake’s heir holed up in this hovel when he has a perfectly good clan compound to the east?— furniture , an equally threadbare and ragged throw pillow clutched tightly to a tiny chest. He’s small, and Orochimaru is having a rather difficult time paying attention to anything else, because it keeps smacking him in the face. Kakashi Hatake is tiny, almost like Orochimaru had been, once upon a time. There a thinness to him, a delicate tautness that makes it easy for any observer to trace out the very fine structure of his skeleton beneath skin. It’s only made more apparent by the dreadful illness that’s currently ravaging his body. In the early morning and frigid white light of the graveyard, he’d looked almost like a ghost, and Orochimaru had been quite ready to believe he was one before the boy had walked up and addressed the esteemed council member Shimura.

Orochimaru steps forward on silent feet, as if this were a mission and he were to ambush an enemy. He places the back of his hand against the boy’s forehead, and is once again rather impressed at the sheer heat that emanates from the Chunin’s skin. This is the type of fever that would make Tsunade foam at the mouth before barking strict orders to subordinates to get their asses moving they don't have all day —

The boy should really be seen to a hospital.

Instead, Orochimaru climbs back to his feet and makes his way to the kitchen, pulling out a beaten tin of loose-leaf and setting it on the counter. He takes the pot to the sink to rinse it clean.

The boy seems to practically worship Orochimaru’s personal blend and, while flattering, the aroma would certainly wake him should nothing else, sick or not.

As he sets the water to boil, Orochimaru can’t help but wonder, again, what he’s doing.

The only thing he was certain about was that the answer lay in the boy.

Chapter Text

Kakashi wakes up smelling the very aroma of heaven itself, and the sensation is so absolutely unfamiliar that it startles him into complete alertness, which is a rather poor position to be in, considering how terrible Kakashi has been feeling lately.

He further escalates it by sitting up too fast and rolling entirely off the couch he’d apparently fallen asleep (again) on. He lands on the floor without a sound, mostly because the breath has been knocked out of him so spectacularly he can’t even wheeze.

Something wet and cold presses against the skin right behind his ear, and Kakashi flinches away from it. He lifts his hands up toward the couch and waves them around blindly, hoping to land on the blanket he’d been covered with until just a few moments ago. Pakkun inches in and noses at his face again, snorting at him.

“That’s one way to wake up, pup.” The pug drawls, and Kakashi whines quietly at the epithet, turning his face into the foot of the couch so that he doesn’t have to look at the ninken anymore.

He finally succeeds in locating the blanket, and rolls himself a bit away from the couch in order to slowly tug it off the cushions to join him on the floor. Then, after a pause to catch his breath, Kakashi rolls back into place, wrapping the blanket around him as he goes.

He hears Pakkun sigh, the sound muffled by the material now wrapped around his ears. A paw sets itself against his shoulder, and gives a few halfhearted pushes before apparently giving up and leaving him alone.

Kakashi lies there for a while. He doesn’t know how long. He lies there and aches with a weary, bone-deep pain that feels a bit like longing, though he isn’t sure what for. Probably a lot of things. There are so many things he misses dearly, that he knows he’ll never get back. His dad, for one, but that’s always been true, and it’s always hurt no matter how Kakashi learned to think about it. Minato-sensei, his teammates, how things had used to be before everything tore itself away from him seemingly all at once, leaving nothing left for Kakashi but a single drop of sunshine that was far too bright for Kakashi’s broken, slack soul to bear.

But here they all were, again. Kakashi could feel them, swimming on the edges of his senses, fleeting like dust particles in a far off sunbeam. Always on the edge of his senses, liked they’d once been so long ago. There they are, alive again, like nothing’s wrong.

Naruto, though. Sakura, Sasuke. Yamato. Genma and Gai and Anko and-

They were gone. All of them. Everyone Kakashi has ever known or ever will know from age seven on upwards is gone , and Kakashi isn’t going to kid himself with the faintest hope that he’s ever going to be able to get them back. Sure, they might still be alive; sure, most of them might still yet be born; sure , Kakashi has probably the best chance in all the universe of stopping the deaths of so many of his loved ones before they even happen, but .

But they won’t be Kakashi’s.

Kakashi is seven years old, stuck in a body he can barely remember how to operate, a complete stranger in a land that looks familiar but is utterly foreign in the way that only hindsight can allow a person. None of these people are the ones that he knew, and the new that he knew he’ll never reobtain.

He wriggles a bit, until he can bring his hands up to hover uncertainty before his own nose, barely enough room in the blanket burrito to move, and stares at the appendages. With a choked sound, and a voice that doesn’t even make it out of his throat, he mouths the words “itty bitty” to himself, and feels a strange sort of terror make merry chaos all across his nervous system.

Kakashi shakes against the hardwood floor. He pulls the blanket tighter around him, breathing coming in slow and steady. He can’t do anything but focus on the way it goes in and out, else he’d be hyperventilating and—well, why not? Passing out would be better than being awake to these horrible realizations.

A presence crouches beside him.  Kakashi tenses, and then relaxes beneath the blanket. His ears twitch.

After regarding him for a few long, silent moments, Orochimaru hums quietly from overhead. “You’ve been on the floor for quite a while now.”

Kakashi doesn’t move. He’s seven. Children fall asleep in odd places all the time. Shinobi children are even worse. For all the sannin knows, Kakashi fell off the couch only to go straight back to dozing.

A minute tremble wracks the form that still feels far too tiny to adequately contain all of himself. A large hand with long fingers places itself on his shoulder. It’s warm, and firm, and grounds him back in the reality Kakashi still isn’t sure he exists all the way in yet.

“There’s tea,” Orochimaru offers.

Kakashi lies there for a moment more, to gather whatever energy he has left, and then sits up. It’s a slow process, the blanket tumbling down from his shoulders inch by inch until he (or half of him at least, as sitting tends to go) is vertical. Before his mind can possibly think better of it, Kakashi is raising his hands up toward Orochimaru with a silent but obvious intent.

Kakashi feels like death is coming for him, but to his inward shock all the snake sannin does is raise his brows a bit, before he reaches forward and scoops Kakashi’s little seven year old body into his arms and stands up. It’s quite a ways up. The man is pretty tall. Or, Kakashi is just really short. 

With something rather like despair, Kakashi leans forward to lay his head down on the legendary nin’s shoulder. Long, silky black hair catches his eyes before he closes them, and the fingers of the hand he brings up to rest by his face get tangled in it. The other hand flops bonelessly against Orochimaru’s chest as he carries Kakashi to the kitchen.

He should feel belittled, irritated, ashamed, of being treated like a child when he has decades worth of wars and assassinations and failures inside of his head. Instead, he just feels warm. Kakashi can’t remember the last time he could feel the heat his body supposedly produced on its own. He’s always so cold now. His fingers feel like ice cubes. In contrast, Orochimaru is like a furnace. He burns against Kakashi wherever they’re touching. Kakashi is helpless but to snuggle in deeper and wish that the distance to his kitchen table was longer than just the few steps it takes Orochimaru to reach it.

He’s settled into a chair. Suddenly bereft of the pleasant and welcoming warmth, Kakashi feels dizzy. Moments later, the blanket is once against dropped around his shoulders, and tucked in by deft hands that almost immediately after place a steaming mug of the stuff heaven must be made out of on the table before him.

Kakashi sits there for a moment, confusedly content and upset all at once, eyes barely open. He stares through his lashes at the heat vapor drifting slowly up from the tea, and then blinks a few times in the hopes that his eyes will open a bit wider.

No such luck. Kakashi gives up and leans forward, carefully tugging the mug toward him and huddling over it like a moth who’s just found their first taste of flame. He inhales the spiced citrus scent and blows it back out in a slow, deep sigh.

After a few rounds of aromatherapy, Kakashi feels awake enough to attempt actual verbalization. He studies the steam curling up from The Tea, and breathes out a quiet, “Thank you.”

Orochimaru sits himself down in the chair opposite him, a mug of his own in his hands. Kakashi realizes that he’s never seen either of these cups before in his life. Where the hell did they come from.

“Of course.”

Kakashi won’t admit it in a court of law, but he thereafter zoned out almost completely. By the time the world comes back into focus, it hardly feels like any time has past at all, but his mug is entirely empty of the wonderful heat it had contained. He glances down to find his tea absent, consumed. As good as The Tea has proven to be, for all he knows it could have only been a few seconds that he was out that he downed it all, but Kakashi would like to think he has more restraint than that. He prefers to savour the good things in life, what with there being so few of them.

He glances up to find Orochimaru staring at him with the light of amusement gleaming in his eyes. He’s got one elbow on the table, propping up a hand to support his chin as he stares at Kakashi with that odd but quickly becoming familiar smile quirking at his lips ever so slightly.

Kakashi stares back at him, and then says, “You said you were going tomorrow.”

A single brow raises. “I’m sorry?”

“The shopping,” Kakashi says. “You said you were going tomorrow, but you went before dinner.”

Orochimaru shrugs, silk hair that Kakashi now knows for fact is actually softer sliding over his shoulder. “I needed some things for dinner. As I said, your cupboards were offensively bare.”

He gives Kakashi a neutral look, and then repeats himself, slower this time. “ Offensively. ”

And then he sips his tea. Kakashi watches him, and looks back down at his own, empty mug. He’s disappointed that its contents is gone. He wasn’t even aware enough to enjoy it. Kakashi , he inwardly berates himself, why are you like this .

“The silverware, though,” he recalls. “And the dishes. And these cups. They’re not mine?”

“They are now.”

“ Why ?” Kakashi asks, baffled.

Orochimaru sets his mug on the table. He looks Kakashi up and down, and something on the very edges of his eyes makes Kakashi sit up a little straighter and take notice.

The snake sannin is silent for a long, pensive moment, and Kakashi doesn’t dare speak, because he feels that if he does, something might break it. And he doesn’t want that. He isn’t sure why, but Kakashi wants Orochimaru to stay, and he wants it badly. He thinks that, if the nin were to leave now, Kakashi would go straight back to drowning again.

It’s a little bit of a shock to realize, but Orochimaru seems to be the miracle of dry land after the shipwreck that stranded him to this time in the first place.

Kakashi isn’t sure what to feel about that, but whatever it is, it’s nothing bad. It feels a sort of like relief.

Finally, Orochimaru regards him with a thoughtful eye, and shrugs, lifting his mug back into his hands.

“Because I wanted to,” he says, and leans back in his seat like that should be the end of it

Kakashi blinks. Well, he thinks to himself as he wordlessly holds out the mug to the snake sannin in a silent plead for seconds and actually gets a quiet laugh in return. That’s a bit more alright than he’d expected.

It’s when Kakashi’s onto his third cup of tea that there’s the knock on his door. It’s not too loud, just a fraction quieter than is average, and it’s four beats repeated one after the other. Polite to a fault. After that, there’s nothing, because why knock again when you’ve already announced yourself to the occupants within?

Kakashi sits in that kitchen chair, stiller than a statue, clutching at his tea with a white knuckled grip. He stares down into it, at the near centimeter depth of drink left. It’s gone a little lukewarm, but Kakashi has been pleased to find that the heat of the blend follows itself down into his core when he drinks it.

Orochimaru glances up from the scroll that was spread casually across his lap. He lounges in the stiff wooden chair like it was a throne, one leg propped up on the other knee. He studies the line of Kakashi’s spine, and cocks his head to the left.

“Shall I be answering that?” He asks curiously.

“... No,” Kakashi says quietly, shoulders hunched. “ I should.”

He gets a long look for that answer, before Orochimaru shrugs his shoulders indifferently and goes back to his scroll, hooking his tea cup by it’s handle and taking in a long draw.

Yes, Kakashi thinks. Angels can indeed be cruel.

He slides himself off the chair, experiencing a momentary flash of hysterical frustration at the fact that his feet when sitting are a good foot off the goddamn ground, before turning toward the sitting room, to where the front entry sits.

For every step that he takes to that door, Kakashi feels every single year he’s ever lived settle into the weight on his shoulders, bearing down and bending his spine. By the time he actual lays his hand on the doorknob, Kakashi feels like a slight breeze could knock him off his feet and send him tumbling to the ground.

It’s definitely not a good position to be in. Not for this. Especially not for this.

He opens the door anyway, because Kakashi knows that everything happening to him right now is inevitable anyway. It doesn’t mean he has to look forward to it.

The door swings in, and standing across the threshold is a girl just barely a head taller than he stands now. She holds a Tupperware container in both hands, and there’s a nervous but cheery and kind smile fixed on her lips.

Kakashi wants to slam the door closed in her face. He wants to so badly, but he knows it would go over well with literally no one anywhere, so instead he leans into it and blinks at her quizzically. It’s about all he has energy left to do. He’d spent most of it walking over here.

“K-Kakashi-kun,” the girl greets, smile widening ever so slightly. “Good morning! Or—or afternoon!”

“Rin,” he returns warily, trying his best to keep anything that he’s thinking off his face. She’s scarily perceptive when it concerns the people she cares about, which Kakashi counts towards for a reason only the kami and Rin herself likely know. “Is it?”

“... Ah?”

“After noon,” he elaborates. He casts a glance over his shoulder, to where he can just barely see Orochimaru sitting at the dining table, as if in hopes for a confirmation of the time. The man doesn’t even look up from his scroll. No help from him, then. Kakashi isn’t even sure why he tried.

The barest hint of worry crinkles the skin between Rin’s brows, and she's obviously trying so hard to hide it behind the friendly smile, but Kakashi’s read people for a living. There’s always the little tells, like the way she adjusts her grip o the container.

“Yes,” she affirms, taking a hesitant step forward and gesturing toward the Tupperware. “Um, may I come in? I brought you some lunch!”

Kakashi stares at her, for perhaps a second too long than was necessary, because she begins to fidget again. He carefully pushes himself off the door and, despite going slowly, almost falls over his own feet back into the sitting room.

“Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

He leads her into the apartment, and barely blinks before he’s sitting down on the couch again, staring into Pakkun’s grumpy scowl. “Huh,” he says, and glances around.

Rin’s sitting primly on the cushion beside him, wringing her hands in her lap, Tupperware nowhere in sight. She edges a millimeter over and gazes worriedly at him from behind Pakkun’s head.

“You sort of,” she pauses, and bites her lip. “You sort of tripped. Ah, your friend, um, Oro-“

“Snake-boy caught ya before you irreparably damaged your adorable little face and set you on the couch for safe keeping,” Pakkun says, deftly dodging around the hand Kakashi automatically lashes out with in retaliation for the perceived insult to the snake sannin. He’s not even sure why anymore. Apparently it’s instinct now.

Orochimaru himself leans over the back of the couch to look down his nose at Kakashi. Somehow he doesn’t even look snobbish, though Kakashi feels he rightly should.

“You’ve really got to stop all of this fainting,” the man drawls smoothly. “What’s the point of fighting it? Just go to bed and don’t get up until it passes.”

“Does that work for you,” Kakashi asks. It’s not exactly posed as a question, but he is curious about the answer. Does Orochimaru actually sleep? No, that’s stupid. Why wouldn’t he?

Kakashi side eyes the man a little suspiciously. There’s a question.

Orochimaru presses a quiet breath out of his nose—not quite a scoff, but it has the same energy as one. He turns on his heel and heads back toward the kitchen for his tea and his scroll.

“You should eat something,” he tosses over his shoulder as he leaves Kakashi to the nervous girl and the stressed out nanny ninken. Swell guy.

“Um!” Rin hops up to her feet, nervous energy making Kakashi feel a little jittery just by proximity. “I actually, I made—stir fry. Back home. But I had extra, and, well…”

She grins a bit uneasily, obviously still caught off guard by Kakashi apparently fucking blacking out on the floor after inviting her into his home. “I had extra, and I heard you weren’t… feeling well. So I thought…”

Kakashi eyes her from his peripheral. “What kind of stir fry?”

Rin’s shoulders smooths out a bit. “Um, eggplant. With garlic.”

Kakashi stares at her. Kami, he thinks, Rin’s an actual liar, the hell? She didn’t make this for herself and just end up with surplus, she made it for Kakashi with the intent of giving it to him after. Eggplant? Kakashi’s favorite. Everyone and their mother knew that… for some odd reason, Kakashi isn’t really sure of, just that it probably had something to do with Gai and shouting things from mountaintops. And garlic? Garlic ?

Kakashi’s no chef or village medicine guru, but—

“What did you think I was sick with,” he asks, and he’s so obviously out of his depth that he’s not even trying to cover it up with false bravado.

Rin’s face goes bright red, and she gives a sheepish little laugh, shoulders dropping in defeat. “Ha… um, sensei said you were nauseous, so I figured it was a stomach ache or the flu or something…”

She trails off, bites her lip again, and adds, “But, with what just happened, I think it’s a bit more than just being sick? Are you okay?”

“Absolutely not,” Kakashi replies automatically, “thank you for asking.”

Rin stares at him with a silent, slightly open-mouthed sort of shock, and Kakashi gives himself an inward shake.

He slouches down a bit into the seat cushion, and sighs. “I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s all really just… a lot.”

Rin looks alarmed. “Is it really bad?” She asks him, voice hushed. “Like, need a hospital, bad?”

Kakashi treats her with a suspicious stare, suddenly very much aware of the fact that, though she isn’t one yet, Rin has most certainly been a medic nin in another life.

“No, of course not,” he says.

From in the kitchen, Orochimaru audibly chuckles. Kakashi sends the man a narrow-eyed look, despite being unable to actually see him from the couch. The wall separating them would not be enough to shield Orochimaru from Kakashi’s unamusement.

Rin studies him a bit harder than Kakashi really wants her too, in this moment. After some time, though, he seems to check out as not immediately dying, so she just nods and steps back to give him some breathing space, a tiny little blush adorning her tattooed cheeks.

“So! Um,” she scratches her arm, and then gestures toward the kitchen. “Stir fry?”

Kakashi nods, and somehow they make it all the way to the table without him checking out from consciousness again. Will wonders never cease.

Eating a meal with Rin and Orochimaru is quality entertainment, at least for Kakashi, who is now apparently immune to the previously natural innate terror and wariness of the snake sannin that everyone seems to experience. Rin, decidedly, is not, and keeps glancing at the man from the corner of her eye as she pushes noodles around on her plate, unable to scrounge up enough appetite to actually eat. Orochimaru, bless the man, patiently ignores her very existence, which is a good thing, since Kakashi is pretty sure Rin might up and run from the apartment if he so much as spoke a word to her.

It’s sad, Kakashi suddenly realizes. Sad, because even Rin, who had been the standard of kindness that he’d compared everyone else to all throughout his life, is caught up in the villager’s fear mongering.

They tuck into the food quietly. Kakashi hasn’t been out long enough for it to need rehearing, and Rin has apparently trooped on over immediately after finishing it, because there’s still steam curling up from it when she takes the lid off. A noodle sizzles. Kakashi eyes her in slight alarm, but she determinedly ignored him, dishing out three plates of the stir fry and setting them at the table, one in front of Orochimaru with a hesitant but asking smile. The man stares at her for barely three second, but accepts graciously before her hand can start to tremble and drop the dish.

Pakkun’s disappeared, probably back to wherever he goes when he’s not babysitting Kakashi’s dumb ass, and the boy momentarily chases the thought of what dogs he has with him at this point in time, exactly. He sits down and picks up a pair of chopsticks—nice ones, polished black wood and definitely not anything Kakashi would ever buy for himself, living off take-out more often than not anyway—and digs in, figuring he has at least Pakkun, Bull, and Shiba. He thinks he might have Bisule and Ūhei, as well, but… no, he’s seven. Ūhei wouldn’t be here yet.

Kakashi eats silently, feeling substantially down. He suddenly misses his dogs so much that it feels like ice in his stomach, making it a bit difficult to eat the food, which is a crying shame because it honestly tastes amazing. Rin always did had a knack for cooking, and though it isn’t anywhere near Orochimaru’s level (because apparently that was a thing), it’s obvious she’d put a lot of effort into this.

Kakashi lifts up another bite, and slides it out from between the chopsticks with his teeth, achingly slowly and very much aware of every second that ticks past. Time passes like this for a while, and he sits there with one hand manning his chopsticks and his food while the other curls protectively around the tea cup, tucking it close to his chest as if someone might come by a take it from him should he let it go. Time crawls by and at the same time Kakashi feels like the rest of the day has passed even if it’s only bee fifteen minutes. He’s tired. And worn. And he doesn’t want to be here at all, because Rin keeps glancing over at him from beneath her bangs and Kakashi can’t stand seeing her smile at him, knowing everything he’s done to her and having it just be wiped clean like this. It grossly unfair. She doesn’t remember. Of course she doesn’t remember. She’d been dead, and now it hasn’t even happened yet.

His head swims confusedly.

Kakashi glances over toward the fridge, toward the calendar hanging on it’s door, and goes still at the date displayed there. Someone, probably Minato judging by the cheerful duck yellow ink, has been marking off the days for him since he’d come back, because he’s certainly not been doing it. Bright Xs lance across half a weeks worth of boxes, leading up to the current day, which is a Thursday.

Kakashi kind of hates Thursdays, because all the horrible things in his life seems to happen on them, every time.

He turns back to his plate with a more subdued pace, pushing the last few bites of stir fry around with his chopsticks. It’s been delicious, compliments to Rin’s hard-earned cooking skills, but now Kakashi can only stare sightlessly down at them, appetite vanished and stomach doing funny little flips that he really hopes settle down before he loses its contents in a most unpleasant fashion.

Rin frowns at him from across the table. “Kakashi-kun?”

He sets his chopsticks aside, placing them on his napkin.

“Nothing,” he says, and then winces internally, adding, “I’m fine,” when neither of his lunch mates looks like they believe him.

Orochimaru gives a small, nearly incredulous shake of his head. He’d finished his plate ages ago and was perusing his scroll once more, head bowed over his lap. Somehow, his spine didn’t seem to be suffering from the position, and Kakashi is envious, because he remembers back pain from when he’d been older. Lots and lots of back pain.  

“Whenever you say that,” the sannin comments, “you’re lying.”

Kakashi stares at his plate, at the last bite of stir fry that he knows he can’t possibly fit into his stomach. If he tries, that’s the end of it. He’ll be confined to the bathroom for the rest of the afternoon.

“Quite badly,” Orochimaru tacks on, almost as an afterthought. He stands up and goes to put on another pot. Kakashi’s beginning to think this is the reason his skin is so flawless, and the man himself so long lived. He inhales tea like it’s air. He must experience the health benefits to an infinite.

And, god, but Kakashi is definitely going to follow in his footsteps on that.

A hand touches his arm. He glances over at it—it’s small, but still a bit bigger than his are. Rin looks at him worriedly from where she’s sitting around the table corner from him, plate long since already washed clean and put away in the cupboards.

“Are you sure everything’s okay?” She asks, worrying at her bottom lip. “You’re not feeling sick at all?”

“I’m feeling sick no matter what all the time,” Kakashi says, because he has absolutely no brain-to-mouth filter at all. “It doesn’t really mean anything now.”

Rin’s brows meet, a contemplative frown pulling at her eyes, and Kakashi sinks lower in his seat, reaching out to push his plate away from him. He eyes his empty tea mug with an air of distaste, and turns an expectant look toward Orochimaru.

The man, curse him, doesn’t look up for a good few minutes, and Kakashi is content to stare intently at him until the message gets through, god forbid he use his words —until Rin apparently can’t handle the awkwardness any longer and gives a small, polite cough that makes the sannin glance up lazily from whatever it was he was so immersed in reading.

Orochimaru blinks, and eyes Kakashi for a moment, before snorting and reaching out to snag the boy’s mug and refilling it from the fresh pot he’d prepared.

Kakashi accepts the mug, unable to withhold the pleased little noise that bubbles up out of his throat when his hands come in contact with that pleasant heat that exudes from the ceramic like a siren call, and draws it close to his chest in the hopes some of it will emanate there as well.

Rin stares at him, and continues to until Kakashi offhandedly murmurs out an absent, “thank you.”

Orochimaru hums, returning to his scroll—Kakashi is starting to get curious about that thing—and the both of them leave Rin to sit there in the comfortable silence that follows.

Not very comfortable for her, though, Kakashi realizes when he she begins to fidget again. She has her hands folded in her lap and wrings them out almost obsessively as she locks her gaze meekly on the table grains, instead of looking anywhere else.

He sits there for a moment longer, pressing his steaming cup against his diaphragm and sighing quietly at the warmth it sends pulsing into him just from touch alone. Then, he gets up from the chair and uses the newfound energy to make his way to the living room.

“Come on,” he says over his shoulder when all Rin does is stare dumbly after him. “I skipped some training. Tell me what I missed.”

There’s a moment of stillness, before a shaky but real grin makes its way across her face, and she bounces up from the chair to follow him to the couch.

Kakashi doesn’t see it, but it feels like Orochimaru is rolling his eyes after them.

“—then,” Rin continues, eyes narrowed and tongue flicking out to push at the corner of her mouth as she stares at the string threaded around her hands avidly, crossing it over itself some here and tying a piece off there, “sensei put us both onto water walking drills again. Probably expected it to translate into a sense of admission and reformation.”

She’s finger-knitting, and Kakashi had forgotten all about this little quirk of hers. About how she did it, sometimes with her fingers but later on more often with senbon needles, in order to let out some of the bounciness that eternally plagued her. Otherwise there’d be no chance of her sitting still. He can just barely recall once having a long, soft scarf hanging up on a coat hook once, and finally remembers that she’d made it for him after a mission that had been rather difficult on all of them. It had given her something to do.

It had been light blue. Kakashi never wore it, not once, but when he’d been much older, and Rin long since gone from his life, he’d sometimes run his fingers over it when the moments of quiet that pervaded his life would become too much to bear. The scarf doesn’t exist now. That mission never happened. And Rin is here, sitting next to him, practicing a stitch that Kakashi now remembers her being a master at, before.

He presses his back against the cushions, moving his shoulder blades back and forth to feel the rough fabric through his thin t-shirt.

“Was it for punishment?” He asks.

Rin looks up at that, an absent sort of calculating glint shining in her eyes that Kakashi doesn’t remember being a characteristic of her, but perhaps that’s just another thing he’d forgotten about her as time had passed on. He’s been sitting here for a good two hours, listening to her ramble on about the three days of training he’d missed and psychoanalysing every single aspect of the interactions she’d had with their sensei and third and final teammate.

“No,” she finally muses. “I don’t think so. He’s been really distracted lately, and neither of us have really been putting our all into our training this week. I think he was frustrated. He usually reverts to teammate training exercises when he feels like he’s not doing well as a teacher. I think that he feels that, if he can’t impart anything more on us today, then maybe we can find a way to help each other out instead.”

She sinks her teeth into her bottom lip, staring at the far wall as she thinks. “It’s like he can’t stand not having any sort of progress happen when we’re all working to better ourselves. Maybe he feels like he’s a bad sensei, if he can’t teach us at least something every time we get together to train. Like that saying, ‘you learn something new every day’? I think he subconsciously takes it as an ultimatum.”

It’s odd. He hadn’t thought Rin was that observant, that good at reading people, that introspective. He’s heard more hypotheses about the inner workings of Minato-sensei’s mind in the last hour than he’d ever pondered in his entire life. Most of him had really just assumed the man winged it, all of it, all the time, but according to Rin’s theories, Minato actually gave quite a lot of thought to everything he did. Overthinking a lot of things, too, occasionally, apparently just to give his overactive mind something to keep it busy.

Rin might have an overactive mind too, Kakashi thinks, if this is what she goes on about when someone gives her a chance to actually chatter away at them.

He’ll have to watch himself carefully from now on, the man-turned-boy suddenly realizes. He’s surrounded by a lot more genii than he’d previously assumed. Maybe, or maybe he doesn’t have to keep his eyes open at all. Kakashi feels almost naked to everyone’s eyes. Like they can all see right through him no matter what he does. What’s the point in trying to hide anything from the people closest to you if they were all frighteningly intelligent in some way or another?

Is everyone in Konoha just that terrifyingly smart and observant and prodigious?

Kakashi thinks about Naruto, and has to withhold a bitingly sour scoff. No. The villagers had proved the opposite, time and time again, willfully flat out ignoring the obvious. Naruto and his sunny smiles and the paradoxical demon inked into his gut. He thinks about Orochimaru, and cooking, and his lips thin beneath the navy mask. He thinks about his dad, and swords—the actual weapons, and words that could be used as such, and suddenly Kakashi can’t hear Rin talking at all.

He’s looking down at his hands. They lie in his lap, clenched into white-knuckled fists around the hems of his shorts. They’re shaking.

He looks up in the silence to find Rin staring at him. The calculating glint is still there, and her face holds no expression, but Kakashi feels like his whole self is being exposed for her perusal and observation. He hunches forward a little bit, subconsciously entertaining the instinct to hide away from her gaze.

The energy approaching the apartment isn’t exactly helping his frazzled nerves in any way at all.

The two of them sit there, silently, Kakashi staring at his knees like they’re the most fascinating thing in the world, and Rin’s fingers are moving like a lightning jutsu. At this rate she’ll complete an entire sweater before the evening’s out.

Footsteps thunder outside in the corridor, and Kakashi really just wants to go crawl in bed, close his eyes, and pretend his very hardest that nothing outside his bedroom even exists anymore. He should have known.

Where Rin goes, there’s one person who typically tends to follow.

Kakashi sucks in a deep breath and steels himself as the familiar and bittersweet energy converges outside his apartment. Might as well just rip the bandage off in one fell swoop, he guesses.

Chapter Text

Minato runs a hand through his hair as he approaches the tower from the rooftops, hoping it doesn’t look as bedraggled and greasy as Minato feels. He hadn’t really had the time to even head home for a shower, and he can still feel the sweat from yesterday’s training coating his body.

Minato shudders and attempts to turn his thought in another direction. He hates feeling dirty.

It most certainly isn’t Kakashi’s fault, of course not. The poor boy hadn’t even been awake when Minato had left, and the last look he’d had of his student, Kakashi had appeared no better than the day before. It was greatly disheartening. Minato had really been clinging to the idea that this sickness was one of the ones that could be cleared with a good clean and some ample rest and fluids—but no. It seems like this isn’t just a really bad cold or the flu like he’s been hoping. Kakashi really has something wrong going on here.

It’s terrifying to think, but Minato debates with himself whether or not he should actually go through with taking the boy to the hospital after all.

Kami, when would Kushina be home? She was so much better at all this than Minato could ever hope to be. He’s not quite sure how he’d ever lived without her there to manage his life.

He’d told something similar to Hiruzen just the other week. The old man had laughed at him, and then admitted that he’d most likely be dead several times over were it not for his wife.

Wife —the word puts buzzing hornets inside Minato’s stomach. Weren’t they suppose to be butterflies? Whoever had some up with that phrase clearly had never actually been in love.

He vaults over the shingles of the final building and hauls himself over the window sill of Hiruzen’s office with as little sound as possible. He’d been yelled at the other day for being too loud—which, honestly… who complained about that in a ninja village? Every civilian Minato had ever met in his life had at one moment or another asked him point-blank to stop being to quiet , and Minato hadn’t even been trying to sneak then!

Ninja, Minato decides, are strange. Or maybe it’s the civilians who are the odds ones. Actually, perhaps it was just everyone?

The world would make more sense that way, wouldn’t it.

The Hokage gives him a gloomy look from over the multiple stacks of paperwork crowding for space on the man’s desk. Minato pretends not to see it, and cheerfully leans himself on a free corner of the wood, also resolutely ignoring the paperwork that looms over him threateningly. If he pretends it doesn’t exist, then it has no place in his future, at all, ever.

Minato can keep his fingers crossed, can’t he?

Hiruzen sniffs, and then frowns. “... Why do you smell like bleach?”

Minato’s face goes red. “Th—These are the same clothes from yesterday!” He yelps, forgetting for a moment that the Hokage does not, in fact, just naturally know every single faucet of his life inside and out (despite how the old man occasionally may pretend).

They both stare at each other for a long moment, Hiruzen blinking rapidly while Minato’s face feels frozen in some sort of grimace. He can hear an ANBU or two shift in the rafters, and embarrassment burns inside his chest.

“Okay,” Hiruzen agrees, baffled. “Why?”

Minato presses his lips together and turns to resolutely stare out the nearest window, which is left open simply because half the ninja in the village don’t understand how to use the door. He crosses his arms over his chest, and answers, “Well. I was over at Kakashi’s apartment last night to check up on him, and we all figured it’d do him some good to take a bath.”

He spins around, face morphing into a slightly upset expression. “But the tub was filthy —not that I’d have expected much else from a bathroom in one of the older apartment complexes, but there was no way I was letting Kakashi bathe in a tub with—with grime and scum and just—“

Minato pauses, rubbing both hands over his face like the action would wipe away the mental picture of the utter grossness of the tub from his mind. “So I just. I cleaned it. But now I smell like bleach, because I got some on my clothes and,” he gestures helplessly at the knees of his pants, which instead of the dark navy of typical ninja attire, there were spots of bright orange where he’d accidentally kneeled in a puddle of chemicals.

Hiruzen scrutinizes him, hand running through his beard in a way that Minato feels is a little judgemental. “Biyako tends to use baking soda to clean tile and porcelain. Leaves less of a stench, and gets more of a scrub in.”

“I know that!” Minato’s hands fly up to tear at his hair. “Kushina taught me better. And no ninja worth his salt would use bleach for anything other than… well, you know. What we use bleach for. Not cleaning .”

“It was technically invented for cleaning,” the Hokage comments mildly.

“Yeah, for civilians .”

Hiruzen’s lips twitch beneath his beard.

The blonde ninja harrumphs. “Kakashi doesn’t have any baking soda, not in his entire apartment. Who doesn’t have baking soda? It practically comes with a place when you buy it, already in the fridge or the laundry room or—something!”

“And why couldn’t you have just worn a clean outfit this morning? You do own more than one suit, don’t you? I should hope you’re not wearing the same one day in and day out.”

“Oh, I spent the night at Kakashi’s,” Minato says. “He really wasn’t looking too sharp, and I didn’t feel right leaving him there by himself all night. I didn’t have time to go home and change clothes this morning before training.”

“He’s been fine for the past two nights, hasn’t he?”

Minato makes a face. “Define ‘fine’ for me, because I’m not really sure Kakashi’s it.”

Hiruzen leans back in his chair, staring ahead of his desk at the wall where the portraits of the past Hokage hang, loomingly, ready to judge every single decision of the current one. He runs another hand through his beard, hums, and the absentmindedly shuffles one of the many stacks of papers on his desk.

Minato steps away from the window, finding one of the office chairs and seating himself in it with a tired sigh. He leans his elbows on his knees and clasps his hands together.

“Councilman Shimura asked after Hatake-kun the other day, you know.”

He glances up. The Hokage is staring at him with a unreadable expression on his face, one that’s belied by the intense watchful gleam that shines in his eyes. He’s fishing for something here, perhaps from Minato’s reaction, or reply, but Minato isn’t sure what.

“He seemed quite miffed, oddly enough.”

“How is that odd?” Minato asks carefully, holding himself still. “Shimura-san is always miffed about one thing or another. I thought that was just his default personality.”

Hiruzen gives him a look, but Minato firmly glances away from it. He’s only speaking the truth, anyway, and the old man knows it too, even if he is blind to everything else his old friend Danzou seems to get up to in his free time. Minato refuses to be non-verbally chastised for simply stating fact.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” He asks, when the man doesn’t let up. “I’m right.”

Hiruzen just sighs, and rubs at the bridge of his nose between his eyes. Minato almost feels a little bad, but not enough that he’ll do anything about it. Half the Hokage’s problems are created by the man’s own decisions and behavior. If Minato didn’t want to make a difference in the world so that it’d be safer and happier for the people that he cares about, he would curse his child self for ever thinking becoming Hokage was a good career path. Look what it’s done to Sarutobi Hiruzen, the so called Kami of Shinobi.

Minato tilts his head and looks his mentor over with careful eyes. He isn’t quite so old, by normal standards, but by shinobi standards? Hiruzen is practically an ancient artifact. Ninja don’t live very long, and people of their culture learn to accept that from a very young age, knowing that they can die from any means whatsoever at any time in the near future.

Minato doesn’t care much about himself, no. He’s done enough already that he’s content with whatever end the Kami have lined up for him. Sure, he could definitely do more, and he will continue to strive for that until the day comes where he actually does bite the dust. But the very prospect when applied to his loved ones terrifies him.

It may be why he’s been so off-kilter all week. Finding Kakashi nearly comatose on the boy’s own bathroom floor had nearly given Minato a heart attack, and even now Minato won’t kid himself by thinking Kakashi isn’t in serious trouble. He’s been dazed and confused and overly-emotional since he first woke up, and Minato might just go insane with worry if this goes on for any longer.

Now, if Kakashi were a normal child, he might not be so concerned. Kids, even ninja kids, cried or got moody when they aren’t feeling all that great. It would make sense.

But, Kakashi isn’t a normal child, ninja, civilian or otherwise. He’s never done a single thing that befits a normal child since Minato first met him. And all of a sudden, it’s like a dam’s been burst, and all of Kakashi’s repressed child instincts have flooded his system and taken over.

Minato isn’t exactly sure whether he should be worried or relieved . Both feelings war inside him, fighting for the top spot and mingle harshly with everything else swimming in his brain.

On one hand, it’s nice to see Kakashi acting his age. He of all people deserves to feel the comfort of childhood, and Minato knows of at least a handful of people—Orochimaru, bizarrely, now to be counted among that handful—who would definitely not mind providing the boy that comfort. On the other hand, watching the repressed emotions and instincts collapse over a person like a tidal wave is akin to bearing witness to the drowning of someone you care about without being able to swim out and help them.

Minato will swim out anyway, even if it seems like there’s nothing he can do. He’ll be the rock Kakashi can cling to to stay out of the roiling waves. He has to be. Kakashi doesn’t have a lot of people left. And Minato will be damned before he allows the boy to sink.

Hiruzen sets the papers down on a clear space of the desk and pulls out his pipe, fiddling with the end of it. Minato watches him pack the bowl with some sort of tar, and idly wonders if he should actually avoid the Hokage position after all.

“I understand that you don’t necessarily approve of him,” the Hokage begins genially, and Minato resists the urge to roll his eyes, because oh boy, here they go. “Danzou has had to make many difficult sacrifices for the betterment of the village. All that he does, is with—“

“The best for Konoha in mind,” Minato interrupts, quoting the old man himself, because they’ve had this same conversation too many times to count, and Hiruzen always says the same thing. “But can you, without a single doubt in your mind, say that what Danzou considers in the best interests of Konoha is really and truly what the village needs?”

The Hokage stares cooly at him from over the great wooden desk, and Minato has two vividly contrasting thoughts in that moment. The first is rather enthusiastic, a hollering This is why I’m going to become Hokage! To change things like this to the way that it should be! The second is quieter, more subdued, but it echoes hauntingly in the back of his head as Minato meets the old man’s gaze and sees a vast, empty weariness tug at their corners, strain at the man’s shoulders and claw at his war-beaten skin like it’s trying to drag him to an early grave.

Is it really worth it after all? What use is it to prune and cultivate a tree whose roots have been rotted through?

Grief is a funny thing, and not necessarily in a humorous way. Though some may see it that way simply so their minds can process it. Kakashi once knew a career chunin who’d lost all genin teammates early on, and who from then on until his own death joked and teased about mortality as if he were flirting with the shinigami itself, simply because otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to go on past the trauma.

And that was fine. Everyone deals with it differently. Genma had lost a lot of the same people Kakashi had, and the Hatake had first row seats to the Shiranui’s unique brand of grief—shoveling it all up to let loose on the battlefield. Genma would occasionally sit by himself at the bar, having a single beer—he was never one to drink excessively—and stew in a broody sort of silence, and everyone would know to leave him alone. But, generally, Genma let loose in spars and in battles and, later, in war. It had kept him better relaxed in more polite company.

It’s nearly the same for Kakashi. Sure, he uses his negative feelings as a driving force in battle—what good shinobi doesn't? Except, Kakashi never really unlocked the ability of turning it off elsewhere, like Genma had seemed to. And Kakashi wasn’t exactly one to joke or make fun about something that affected him so strongly. It just feels disrespectful to everyone that he’d failed to save.

Grief, for Kakashi, is like another physical scar. It sits there, carved out of your own skin, and you can feel it every day of your life as you live and breath while others can’t anymore. It pulsates with a distant, thundering sort of pain when it rains, and with storms comes a melancholy mood that is difficult to shake off even when the sun shows it face again afterward.

Grief clings to Kakashi like it were part of his own scent. Whenever he inhales deeply enough, he can smell it surrounding himself like a heavy perfume. It’s suffocating, occasionally, but he’s learned to live with it, because Kakashi was always both too strong and too cowardly to die from it. It had come close to killing him, too many times to count, but then he’d think of his father and how furious and betrayed Kakashi could remember feeling toward the man, and at the last second he’d find so many reasons not to let it win.

At first it was ANBU. The elite shadows had been down in numbers following the Kyuubi attack. If Kakashi were to die, that’d just be one less member to do the dirty work Konoha needed in the background to function in relative peace. Who was Kakashi to deny Konoha one of its more useful tools? And so he’d been useful, very useful.

After that, it had been—Kakashi won’t lie and say he didn’t have friends. How could he say that, when there was Gai? There was always Gai. And after Gai, there’d be Genma, who would drag in Raidou, and Kakashi shudders to think what Anko might have done to him should he go down such a path. Eventually there had even been Asuma.

After that, it doesn’t even bear thinking about. His team . His precious students. Need he say any more?

It makes him uneasy, to be in a time where he doesn’t have any of that, to ground him. Where once Kakashi looked to find a balm to the constant sting of panic that thrums beneath his skin always, there is nothing but  strange emptiness that throws Kakashi so off-kilter he sometimes isn’t sure how he’s standing. He has been increasingly uneasy with every breath he takes the longer that this new reality sinks into his head. Orochimaru has been a help, simply because he and his frankly unpsychotic behavior and stiff politeness is startlingly new to Kakashi. It's not something he’d ever experienced before, and Kakashi is truthful enough inside his own head to admit that it may be the one thing holding him upright. His brain isn’t sure how to take it. It doesn’t fit with what had actually happened in Kakashi’s past childhood— Orochimaru doesn’t fit with any memory Kakashi has of the man. And that’s good. Kakashi can cling to that.

But grief doesn’t just go away. It’s a permanent stench. It seeps into the skin and settles there like it’s just another biological layer, the griefidermus.

Kakashi never learnt how to handle it properly. Most days, when his students did their adorable antics and pestered him to pass along his knowledge, and fought with each other, and grinned pure sunshine at him, punched through a tree with her bare fist, or nonchalantly contemplated an enemy’s murder, Kakashi could ignore everything else.

It’s hard now. Kakashi doesn’t have any little genin—and then chunin and so on —to distract him, now. He’s in the deep end and doesn’t know how to swim, and the life buoy is sitting all the way in the other room drinking tea and reading a mysterious scroll.

A dark-haired boy slams the door to Kakashi’s apartment closed behind him, stomping across the room with a rather aggrieved scowl marring his face. Kakashi sits stock still as the boy hauls himself to a stop before him, and stabs a finger at his chest with an aborted, violent movement.

“ Ba-ka-shi ,” he grits out, shoulders trembling, and he must be really upset if he’s on the verge of tears like this. Obito didn’t usually cry when he was angry, just when he was sad, or hurt, or—well, any other emotion, really.

Kakashi swallows thickly, bringing up a hand to rub at his chest.

Rin glances over at him on concern from her seat beside him on the couch. She opens her mouth, with a slight frown, “U-Um, Obito—“

Obito’s finger collides with Kakashi’s chest, and he steamrolls right over her attempt. “What’s up with you playing hooky, lately, huh? I know you think you’re better than us somehow, or something—and you’re totally wrong, by the way!—but that’s no excuse to stop coming to training and abandon your team as if we won’t care, bastard !”

Kakashi stares at him with wide eyes.

Obito presses out a big breath, a bit too explosive to be a sigh, and crosses his arms over his chest with a great harrumph, eyeing him carefully. “Just because you’re ahead of us doesn’t mean—“

Kakashi was wrong. He’d thought, maybe, it wouldn’t be so bad. After all, he’s survived the first encounters with Pakkun and Minato-sensei, and even Rin. He’d thought he would be able to handle it. But, no. He really and truly can’t . There’s a white-hot feeling somewhat akin to terror climbing up his chest, and then his throat. There aren’t any friends nearby who understand to distract him with a well-placed mock-insult, or a story about how childish their students still are, or drive the conversation in a different direction without glancing at Kakashi at all. There aren’t any rambunctious and ambition-driven, prodigious teenagers to drape themselves over him and make a loud comment about how he hasn’t bought them lunch in a while, doesn’t he care whether or not that they were eating well enough anymore? There isn’t even a convenient life buoy nearby to crawl over to and hide behind.

Instead, there’s a high pitched sound, like Bisuke makes after he falls from the counter when Pakkun shoves him off—he realizes its coming from him , and Kakashi brings up both hands to bury his face into their trembling palms.

He hears a soft little gasp come from Rin. “Obito!” She snaps, and a line of heat presses into Kakashi’s side as she scoots closer to him in an awkward attempt to offer some sort of comfort.

“Uh?! Wha—“ the Uchiha stumbles over his syllables, and then his feet as he scrambles forward and ducks down to try and peer at Kakashi’s face.

“What the hel— I mean, are you— what’re you doing ?”

There’s a whoosh of wind, and a presence appears right behind Obito rather abruptly. Minato-sensei stares down at the three of them with an unreadable expression, before kneeling down and putting a careful arm around Kakashi’s shaking shoulders, drawing the boy in toward his chest.

“What happened?”

“Obito made Kakashi-kun cry ,” Rin tattles. Her voice carries a heated accusatory tone that Kakashi’s can’t remember ever hearing her direct at anyone before.

“I’m not crying,” Kakashi denies immediately. The words come out sounding like he’s got a cold, and he leans in to press his face into Minato’s shoulder. A hand comes up to settle on his back comfortingly.

“Obito?” Their sensei asks, with his Serious voice that he typically only used for lectures on the darker side of shinobi life, when he wanted them to listen carefully and not take the subject lightly.

Obito sounds shaky when he replies, like he’s the one who’s crying. “I’m—I don’t know , sensei! I was just—I was asking him—I was….”

He trails off, face twisted into one of deep contemplation warring with objection, and then asks in a subdued voice, “He must really be sick. Like, really sick, isn’t he?”

Minato is silent for a moment, and they just stand there without speaking, all of them listening to the sniffles and quiet sobs that Kakashi is desperately trying to smother before they can make it out, because Kami this is fucking embarrassing . He burrows further into his teacher’s arms, frustrated with the fact that he’s unable to keep his own body from shaking like a leaf in autumn, and is suddenly just dumbfounded by the simple fact that he can do this .

He can actually do this. Sensei is here for Kakashi to touch, and interact with, and talk to, and listen to, and he’s there , alive, because Kakashi hasn’t fucked up yet. Minato-sensei is here in the room with him, holding him, and Kakashi can feel the warmth of his body, can feel the breaths that exit his lungs flutter across the hair on the top of his head.

His throat closes up, and the next sob that manages to squeeze out sounds particularly strangled. Kakashi’s shoulders hunch, and his palms dig into his eye sockets, but he leans his entire body into Minato-sensei and tries his best to dig himself a place right inside all of that blessed warmth that the man produces just by being there.

“What exactly did you say to him?” Sensei finally asks, and there’s a bout of pregnant silence, where Obito squirms uncomfortably and Rin levels him with a hard stare where she says nothing, but condemns him without words.

Obito eventually caves, “I was just… I was just asking him why he was gone from training.”

“You know it was because he’s sick, Obito, I told you both that at the beginning of the week.”

“But, it’s been too long!” The Uchiha explodes. “He never misses training, and suddenly he’s gone for days in a row? I’ve seen him train with bronchitis before, sensei! If he’s out now , with whatever he has, he should be in the hospital ! What if he’s dying ?”

Rin speaks up, then, before Minato can reply, and she still sounds upset with Obito, but her voice is quiet.

“You didn’t say that. You came bursting in here and accusing him of faking it.”

“ Obito ,” Minato sensei begins, aghast, and Obito’s shoulders go up to his ears, but Rin isn’t finished.

“And then ,” she scowls, “sensei, he… Obito. Tell sensei what you said.”

Obito squawks, limbs flailing. His face is pale when Kakashi peeks out from between his fingers, but his vision is too blurry to make much else out.

“Wh— but, Rin ! I know what I said was bad, okay? I’m—I’m sorry , I won’t do it again, it’s just—“

Minato is calm, but firm, when he asks, “Obito?”

They stand there, suffering through another long moment, and Kakashi feels imaginary fingers tightening around his throat and chest for every single second in which nobody says anything. He balls up his hands, knuckles going white, and shoves himself away from Minato-sensei with a weak push. Sensei’s arms are grounding, but hesitant, and so they fall away easily.

Minato blinks at him in surprise, and there’s that worried little crinkle in between his brows as he stares at him, mouth turned downwards.

“Kakashi?”

Kakashi shakes his head, unable to articulate just how undeserving he really is of all this concern that they’re heaping at him. He spins around almost drunkenly when another presence comes up on his left, and finds himself staring from under damp lashes to find an equally silent Orochimaru looking down at him.

He has barely three seconds for his mind to identify the man before he finds himself cradled securely in the snake sannin’s arms.

Kakashi considers the possibility that this may just be an alternate universe, when his only reaction is to curl inward and plaster himself against the man’s chest, arms wrapping around his neck and face smooshed into the crook of his shoulder, but he’s just so fucking relieved to be lifted out of the churning waves. For a second, he can just breathe , and the sensation of feeling air enter his burning lungs is enough to make Kakashi tear up anew.

Kakashi is beginning to realize, just today, that he hasn’t really known Orochimaru at all, even back in his proper time. To see the man, in a village that is still very much Orochimaru's home, acting like he hadn’t been broken down and starved, created into the raging mess of trauma and betrayal and hurt and misplaced not-understanding that he’d been up until mid-war—it was an eye opener to find that, in the end, Orochimaru was human, too. Just like Kakashi, and everyone else.

Orochimaru is a familiar face that doesn’t invoke all that many nightmarish memories for Kakashi, personally, and it seems that the safety the man’s presence promises is a successful balm to the childish emotions that tumble about with all the grace of a drunken toddler within his tiny seven-year old body.

He’s still choking on his own breaths, but the hand Orochimaru splays over his back and across his shoulder blades, does a lot more to calm him down than Kakashi ever would have imagined.

“I said…” a small voice speaks up from somewhere beneath and away from Kakashi, and they all turn to look at Obito, who’s wringing the hem of his shirt in between his hands. “I said that… just because he thinks he’s better than us, is… isn’t an excuse to… to… abandon his team and just n-not show up … and….”

“... Oh, Obito ,” Minato says, and his voice is so thick with all sorts of feelings , including some sort of realization, that Kakashi brings his arms back from around Orochimaru neck just to press his hands over his ears.

It’s nice, actually, sitting there in that little bubble of silence, when all he hears is the blood rushing inside his own body, and all he feels is the gentle up and down motion of Orochimaru’s chest as the man breaths. He’s not sure how much time passes, but when he opens his eyes a little, he finds that Orochimaru's moved them both to the couch, and the other members of his team have vanished. He sits up a bit glancing around, and removes his hands from his ears when he isn’t able to find them in the sitting room at all. His pulse fades from his ears after a few long moments, and he’s just able to hear a soft murmuring coming from the kitchen.

Kakashi sniffs, loudly, trying to clear up his sinuses. He feels like he has a head cold—or at least a worse one than before—and regrets ever drinking water at all as he rubs a weary hand across both eyes to wipe away the dampness.

He’s kind of useless, he realizes. If the others had gotten this miraculous, kami-given second chance, he’s pretty sure they’d have halfway saved the planet by now. Naruto would have brought about world peace, or something of a similar magnitude, Sakura would have had all the villages getting along simply through pure force and screeching—he loves that girl but she has definitely got some banshee blood somewhere in her family tree—lectures. Sasuke… Kakashi isn’t sure, but a lot of people who deserved it would be dead, some through mysterious means and some decidedly not. Him, though? Kakashi’s been back maybe five days and all he’s done is throw up, potentially piss off Danzou, and cry like a baby.

He’s not certain, but he doesn’t think he’d ever cried even back when he was actually seven. His younger self is probably watching all of this from some higher plane of existence, or wherever he’d been punted off to when Kakashi took over their body, and thoroughly disgusted with him.

He isn’t sure. He just has this very distinct feeling that his past self is leveling a harshly judgemental look at him right now. It’s sort of uncomfortable. He thinks that, maybe, if he wasn’t so exhausted from being a fucking crybaby, he might level one back at the brat, because? Why couldn’t Kakashi just be a child when he was a child? Why’d he have to grow up so fast? Kakashi’s been an adult since what feels like age three, and that… just isn’t fair. Is it? Even Itachi had that childhood phase, short as it might have been, where he sat around and played some games, maybe, cried a bit when he was upset, and got to hang from his mother’s arms. Kakashi knows, because he watched him do it. Even then, ANBU had had special interests in keeping an eye on the Uchiha.

Kakashi pauses at the thought. There’s something to be pondered there, later, but right now Kakashi isn’t really sure he has the time or the energy to really unpack all of that, and the potential exhausting contemplation that trying to figure out, not only the causation, but the solution to the village’s prejudice against the Uchiha is something Kakashi really needs to schedule ahead of time. Because that could take months just trying to untangle all those threads.

He blinks, and it feels like it takes a whole minute to complete the action. When he’s done, he looks to the left a bit and finds Orochimaru sitting calmly, one arm wrapped around Kakashi to hold him in place while the other hand is occupied by the scroll he’s been busy with all day. Kakashi watches him read for a while, eyes roving over the quietly content expression the man is wearing on his face. He shifts down a bit to lean into the snake sannin’s side, propping his cheek against his shoulder, and asked quietly, “What are you reading?”

Glittering gold eyes slant over to observe him with careful precision. Kakashi thinks he should be feeling like some sort of bug being held under a microscope, but instead another warm feeling erupts inside his chest. He’s beginning to think he’s worse than sick because, life buoy or not, he’s had the feeling way too often when around this Orochimaru for Kakashi’s poor mind to even begin to understand.

Finally, the man’s gaze returns to the scroll, and he says, “Research on the intricacies of the chakra pathways that wind inside our bodies.”

Kakashi gives a slow, long blink. “... Okay. Is it interesting?”

“Any knowledge that gives one a better understanding of their own self and that of other peoples’ is knowledge worth having, don’t you think?”

“Oh,” He can’t say he’d ever given it much thought, but… “That makes sense. Learning anything new?”

Something about his question makes the corner of Orochimaru’s mouth tick up in that odd smile. “Possibly. I do already understand the overarching concepts, but this scroll goes better in depth of a more obscure study.”

“Like what?”

Orochimaru settled back against the back couch cushions. Kakashi’s head swims at the sudden, if miniscule, drop, and he turns to press his forehead into the man’s shoulder and close his eyes to wait out the dancing spots in his vision. He almost misses Orochimaru’s arm tightening around him.

“Oftentimes, a ninja is fine with knowing the bare minimum about the source of their own life and power—that it is what keeps them alive, it is separated into two distinct halves of a whole, and that when they shape it with their minds and their hands it can do wondrous tricks and bend even the elements to their will. In the end, that is all about chakra that is much relevant to the minds of the common shinobi.”

Kakashi opens his eyes and sits up again, sucking in a shuddering breath. Orochimaru isn’t looking at him, eyes roving over the scroll in front of him, but there’s a displeased tilt to his mouth now.

“On the other hand, it seems rather dimwitted to not attempt to divulge the secrets and gain a deeper understanding of the very thing that is so prevalent in the lives of everything that draws breath—and some beside that—on the face of the earth, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Kakashi finds himself replying thoughtfully. “Is that your main focus of study, then?”

Orochimaru gives him a strange look, but it doesn’t feel like he’s offended or anything, so Kakashi is pretty sure he didn’t just put his foot in his mouth. Like, seventy-five percent sure. He lets the scroll roll closed and sets it on the side table, adjusting his hold on Kakashi to sit them both up a bit. There’s something in his eyes that Kakashi cannot for the life of himself read.

“Among other things,” he replies, slowly, gaze locked on Kakashi’s face as if searching for clues to something. “I do try my best not to let myself become enamoured with just one subject. I feel that it cripples my intelligence, and lets the mind dull.”

Kakashi stares up at him, and belatedly makes a soft ‘aha’ noise when he realizes Orochimaru might be waiting for him to respond in turn. His mind is swirling with too many thoughts, but this serves as a great distraction, and now he’s gone off several bunny trails pondering the philosophy behind the human brain.

That same small, closed-lip smile crosses orochimaru’s face as he watches him, and the man carefully sets him to his side, on his own cushion. “Your question was a little peculiar, I must admit. Do you find yourself hyperfocusing on one single line of thought often?”

“Mm,” Kakashi says, gaze unfocused. He gives his head a little shake, careful not to let the motion disturb the soup inside of his skull that his brain has been of late, and leans himself back into a pillow. “I think so.”

And he does. Kakashi is, of course, a well trained shinobi, capable of a very high level of situational awareness—it was a necessity, in their line of work, and yet some were still better than it than others. Kakashi will admit that he is, at most, leaning toward the higher end of average at making sure not to let himself become distracted in the midst of battle.

Outside of battle, however… well, it’s not to say that Kakashi’s got his head in the clouds, of course not, he’s better than that . But there are times when his ever-roving brain latches onto something and he gets lost among the thoughts that it generates.

It’s honestly how he’d lost so much of his time in front of the memorial stone, back when he’d been an adult. He’d never once actually intended to go to the monument past the first few visits when he’d been a teenager, and get every so often he’s blink, and get lost in his own head, and when he opened his eyes he was staring at the names of most of the people in his life that he’d failed.

It had scared him. Even back then. He didn’t do it as much after becoming a jounin-sensei, if only because he’d never found enough time to wander around the twisting path of a long and perilous train of thought, being much too busy having his hands full with the lives of three little human aspiring ninja.

Even now, though, as he thinks on the honestly terrible bad habit of him, Kakashi feels… worry, or something much like it. How is he suppose to change the entire tide of the future itself if he was stuck inside his own head?

“Yeah,” he reiterates, tiredly. “I do.”

Orochimaru watches him with a quiet hanging in the air around them.

“Intelligence,” the man eventually says in a low voice as he makes to stand up from the couch, “is oftentimes a curse, more than it is a gift.” 

He slides the scroll off the table and into one of his long sleeves, and disappears into the kitchen, causing the soft murmuring to cut off abruptly. Kakashi stares after him, and frowns.

Well, when put like that, Kakashi can’t find it in himself to argue. Nor, he thinks, does he actually want to.

. . .

Chapter Text

It’s embarrassing, but bursting into tears directly after Obito ‘was being mean’ to him was probably the best and fastest way to get the thick headed boy off the path of rivalry with Kakashi, who doesn’t really think he’s up to going back to that. He’s had enough friendly rivalry to last a lifetime, what with Gai, and all. Trying to go back and do the same thing with nine/ten year old Obito, after everything Kakashi’s done, not to mention everything Obito’s done? Or, will do? Would have done ?

Yeah. Crying in front of him was the quickest way to tear down those preconceptions of Kakashi that Obito’s got going on. It’s just not the option Kakashi would have ever chosen willingly.

He’s not one to cry in front of people. He’s not one to cry at all . He’s one to bundle all the shitty feelings up in a tiny box inside and walk around with that box slowly corroding over time and feeding his crippling depression and post-traumatic stress.

Kakashi sits curled up at the very edge of the couch, trying to become one with the arm of it, head tucked down into the ratty pillow he’s hugging to his chest. He needs to get new ones, if this is going to become a regular occurrence. The dust and mites are going to make him sneeze, and with all the crying he’s been doing that wouldn’t be fun at all.

Obito’s kneeling right in front of him, trying to peer in at his face with a great big… it’s not a scowl. It’s a frown, sure, the one that pulls his eyebrows up the tiniest bit, full of concern, and it’s not a look Kakashi’s ever seen directed at him in his life.

Once, maybe. Once, on the bridge mission, before everything had gone to shit. Obito  returned from a quiet talk with Minato-sensei before the man had left for the front lines, and had been uncharacteristically silent, staring occasionally at Kakashi with the very same look that he wears now, though then it had quickly transformed back into the angry glare should he think Kakashi were looking at him.

Kakashi never found out what they’d talked about that night. He has some guesses, but nothing ever confirmed. He’ll never know now.

The look Obito’s shooting him right now, it’s just slightly different. It’s a bit softer, though that may just be because of the lack of the hard lines that war puts on the faces of everyone who enters into it.

It’s a startling contrast to everything Kakashi’s ever known—or rather, personally experienced—about his once-and-again teammate, though. He’d been under the impression that Uchiha Obito’s was one for holding grudges far past any expiration date, and running into him again after all those years had only reaffirmed that notion. This, however...

“Hey,” Obito tells him in what’s probably the quietest voice that’s ever passed through his lips in his life, “I have some tea for you…. Orochimaru-dono said it would make you feel better?”

He’s holding a mug in his hands. Kakashi recognizes it as the same one Orochimaru’s always serving him The Tea in. The very sight of it causes a faint memory of warmth to erupt within Kakashi’s chest like some sort of Pavlovian response. Kakashi stares at Obito from under his lashes. He blinks slowly, and doesn’t move.

He has no idea what he’s suppose to say to this boy. He has no idea how he’s suppose to act. Every emotion within Kakashi concerning Uchiha Obito is severely conflicted, and whenever he gives the token attempt of trying to sort them all out, they leave his head swimming dizzily with confusion and torment and hysteria.

Obito watches him for a moment, before he presses out a big sigh and adjusts his position so that he’s sitting lotus instead of kneeling on the floor. He sets the tea cup to the side, and his entire posture slouches like he’s got the entire weight of the world on his shoulders and then some.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs miserably.

“What?” Kakashi doesn’t mean for it to come out quite so sharply, but he’s just so surprised he can’t censor his tone.

Obito flinches. His head ticks up from where it had bowed so he can look Kakashi in the eyes. “I—I’m sorry. For what I said. It wasn’t… I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t mean it like what you’re probably thinking.”

What am I probably thinking ? Kakashi wants to ask, but he’s having too much trouble getting words past his throat.

Obito hurries on, “I mean, I was being a jerk, and you obviously don’t have to forgive me, I’m totally not asking for that, but I just wanted you to know—“

“No,” Kakashi interrupts numbly, and then almost stumbles over his own tongue to continue when Obito’s entire body slumps dejectedly, “No, I mean, that’s not— I’m just… surprised.”

The older boy glances up at him from the corner of his eye, still bent over himself. “... Surprised?”

“Nobody’s ever apologized to me, for anything, ever,” Kakashi tells him, and realizes that it’s actually true. Maybe it was one of those unspoken rules in life—of you ever wrong a Hatake, you don’t verbalize your regret over it afterwards, you just go on like nothing happened and hope it all smoothes itself over.

Kakashi rubs absently at his chest, heart buried beneath a thousand suffered insults, intentional or not, and feels just that much worse. It never smoothes itself over, he knows. He’d just spent so long also pretending it does that he isn’t sure how else to deal with it.

There’s a few blinks, maybe Obito’s got something in his eye? It would explain the rather blank look on the boy’s face.

“You…” the Uchiha attempts to begin a sentence, but then trails off into an odd sort of silence and gives a slow shake of his head. Kakashi isn’t sure whether the movement is to clear his own mind or deny Kakashi’s observation entirely. He’s staring down at his crossed legs with a weird melancholy expression that doesn’t look right on his face.

Kakashi eases himself up from the pillow, inching forward a few centimeters in order to glance down at the floor beside Obito as if to double check that The Tea the boy has brought over to him as an offering is in fact still present. He can smell it wafting up at him. It makes the icicles digging into his insides throb painfully in a distantly numb sort of way that makes Kakashi want to curl into a ball again and whimper like a kicked mutt.

Obito catches his searching look and dives for the subject change like a man dying of thirst. He grabs for the cup and carefully holds it aloft toward Kakashi and the couch as if he’s offering up a sacrifice to a displeased god.

“Here! You look sort of… pale? Paler . Than usual, I mean. And this is supposed to make you feel better, apparently, at least that’s what Orochimaru-dono said when was making it, except he sounded a little stiff. I think I was annoying him by asking so many questions—plus he seems to like you and I was really horrible to you so that probably pissed him off maybe a little bit—“

“Obito,” Kakashi breathes out, reaching his hands out for the tea. It falls short of the cup that Obito’s holding just the barest millimeter out of his reach, and Kakashi’s arms are beginning to get tired, but he’s not going to give up. This is The Tea. Anything is worth The Tea.

Obito blinks, and then blanches in that over-exaggerated way in which he seems to express every single one of his emotions, and pushes the cup into Kakashi’s waiting (trembling) hand with a bit too much speed. Some sloshes over the rim and splashes across Kakashi’s fingers. It might have burned him, he’s not sure, but judging by the horrified look of minute pure terror that slants across Obito’s face as they both watch it happen, it seems like it does. The Uchiha glances quickly toward the kitchen with a harried look upon his face, teeth bared in a grimace, as if expecting the hounds of Hell to descend upon him in retribution for his accidental slight.

It doesn’t feel like it’s burning Kakashi, though. Instead, it feels nice. Like the feeling of coming inside after hours spent lost in a blizzard you weren’t prepared for and immediately hoping into a steaming bath. A nice sort of almost-burn, as if it’s simmering you like a vegetable over the stove, but you’re too numb to feel it yet, so you’re just relieved instead of in pain.

Kakashi is aware that switching extreme temperatures so quickly is decidedly not how one handles frostbite, and in fact is exactly how one aggravates frostbite, but Kakashi doesn’t… have frostbite. Right? He’s pretty sure he doesn’t have frostbite. At least, he’s more uncertain as to where he’d have been able to get frostbite in the last week or two than he is uncertain of his own actual health, so… does that sort of cancel it out?

Kakashi’s eyes shutter, eyes focusing on the rim of the cup he’s holding against his diaphragm, when Obito clears his throat awkwardly.

“Are you…” the raven-haired genin gestures uselessly at Kakashi and The Tea. “Um… are you gonna… drink it, or…?”

“.... Oh,” Kakashi says. Right.

He raises the cup and inhales the scent of heaven itself—always a must, before partaking—and then immediately goes in for a deep gulp of the still-scalding liquid. He sits still for a moment, letting the warmth work its way down into his core, and then leans back into the cushions with a content sigh.  

“Um,” Obito says.

Kakashi opens one eye—his left one—to look at the boy, only to find him staring at him with wide coal eyes.

Obito points a questioning finger at him. “Have you always done that?”

“Done what?”

“Just, drink through your mask?” Obito affirms, incredulousness creeping into his voice.

Kakashi reaches a hand up to his face, only to come in contact with cloth instead of skin.

He blinks. “... Oh.”

“ ‘Oh ’?” Obito repeats, and the look he’s giving Kakashi right now is not one Kakashi appreciates. “What, did you forget it was there, or something?”

“Or something,” Kakashi echoes vaguely, refusing to tell Obito that the boy is correct. Not only is Kakashi not feeling up to making anything easy for his pre-Madara’ed Uchiha teammate (it’s that latent spiteful part of Kakashi’s soul, that rests just below the surface during every interaction with other people, ready to strike if Kakashi would just allow it to), but it’s also embarrassing, so. Yeah, nah.

Obito’s face morphs into one that tells Kakashi the other boy isn’t quite sure he’s willing to believe Kakashi’s answer, but Kakashi steamrolls right over any additional interrogation by bringing his cup up to his mouth to take another big gulp through the mask.

“Y—You did it on purpose this time!” Obito yelps, pointing another finger at Kakashi, this time in an accusing fashion. Obito points fingers a lot, Kakashi is finding. He’s a pointer .

At least he’s back to his usual loud self. The quiet was making Kakashi paranoid.

“Yeah,” the time-traveler agrees, and takes another drink. The way the tea filters through the cloth causes some of the liquid to dribbled down before it can get past it and into Kakashi’s mouth, so he can feel it sit in the material against his chin and upper neck.

It only spreads the heat further, and now Kakashi’s mask will smell like The Tea, so really it’s a win-win.

Unfortunately, Minato-sensei makes him go get changed when he finds out about it, which is about a minute later because Obito almost instantly hops up and scampers into the kitchen to go and report Kakashi’s apparently ‘weird’ antics to their teacher, like the scummy little tattletale he is. Kakashi treats the boy with a narrow-eyed look, pretty sure he’s not going to be willing to speak to the boy for the rest of the night. Or however long Obito ends up staying. Hopefully not long.

“You’re absolutely covered,” Orochimaru comments idly, pinching a part of Kakashi’s shirt and holding it away from his skin. Kakashi hadn’t realized he’d spilt about half of the cup all over himself, but now that the snake sannin is helping him into a cleaner shirt that’s actually dry, he can see exactly how soaked the one he’s been wearing actually is.

He can’t help it when his shoulders slump. “Sorry,” he says quietly, unable to keep the apology from passing his lips either.

“Why?”

“Half The Tea was wasted,” Kakashi sighs out mournfully.

Orochimaru pauses from where he’s picking the sopping shirt up from the ground, and raises an amused brow at him.

“....Are you apologizing to me or yourself?” He eventually asks, curiosity coloring his tone.

Kakashi watches him step across the hall to toss the shirt into the bathroom sink before returning. “Both?”

Orochimaru only shakes his head. The man holds the back of his hand to Kakashi’s forehead, and then frowns and reaches out to grab one of Kakashi’s (super tiny little) hands. He presses it in between his for a moment, and then tsks softly.

Kakashi leaves his bedroom wearing a thick sweatshirt of dubious origin and a pair of sweatpants that have probably seen one too many training sessions, judging by the number of holes and tears that are sewn shut—with thread and patches that doesn’t match the color of the pants in the first place. If Sakura had known of Kakashi’s younger self’s lack of care toward his own wardrobe, she’d have killed him with a single punch to the weakest part of the cranium.

Kakashi climbs back up onto the couch, right next to where Minato currently sits, and burrows straight into the man’s side. It causes the blonde to jump, startled—again, completely unacceptable for a ninja of his rank, and Kakashi mentally reaffirms his plans to fix that bad habit—and lift his arm to gaze underneath it at Kakashi.

“Kakash—“

“M’cold,” Kakashi informs him, voice muffled. “You’re not.”

Minato blinks down at him rather dumbly.

Orochimaru sits himself on the other cushion, since Kakashi has squished himself entirely into Minato’s and left plenty of room for another person to occupy.

“It’s almost as if he isn’t producing enough of his own body heat anymore,” the snake sannin murmurs curiously, golden eyes boring into Kakashi. Kakashi can practically feel the man’s stare on his back. Orochimaru sits in a manner that Kakashi wouldn’t have pegged the man for. In all else, the sannin is all graceful, fluid motions and straight spine and cold lines. When he sits, though, he reclines in a way that reminds Kakashi of the great tigers that lounge within the Forest of Death. Leg crossed over the other, back pressed against the cushions, elbow planted onto the arm rest and the other arm flung carelessly across the back of the couch, everything screaming not a care in the world to anyone who’d look upon him.

“I would say it’s preposterous,” the snake summoner drawls with a wry, saccharine smile, “but we happen to live in a world full of preposterous things.”

“Will he be alright?” Rin’s voice asks worriedly, coming from a ways to the right. They must have dragged kitchen chairs out into the sitting room. Kakashi might have to splurge and get some additional seating, if this is to become a regular occurrence. Wild.

Orochimaru doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Long enough for Obito to speak up from somewhere on the left.

“What do you mean he’s not making body heat? Isn’t that what blood does? Are you saying his blood isn’t running anymore? But then, wouldn’t he be dead?”

“Not necessarily,” Orochimaru answers, sounding rather certain about it in a way that makes the room fill up with an awkward sort of energy as everyone else attempts to ignore the implications behind that. “Blood does have something to do with it, offhandedly, but not nearly as much as you seem to assume. Most of the heat in a human body is generated within the mitochondria.”

“The powerhouse of the cell,” Rin and Obito recite in unison purely out of some leftover habit from the academy, and the dead voices in which they say it makes it sound like some sort of chant to a ominous ritual.

Orochimaru and Minato both chuckle at that. Kakashi’s too busy having flashbacks of when he’d actually been in the Academy himself to feel anything other than similarly dead.

“Yes. It controls a person’s metabolism by regulating intracellular energy production.”

“Metabolism is for food though?”

“The metabolism of a cell means the energy production that occurs within them,” Orochimaru corrects Obito serenely.

Kakashi is suddenly struck by the thought that the sannin would make a fantastic mentor, and teacher in—well, any subject, really. If Konoha’s shinobi academy were under Orochimaru’s direction, Kakashi is near absolutely certain it would produce more exemplary ninja than the general cannon fodder Kakashi had come to expect from it in the future.

The village—no, the world could have been so different simply because of one change.

Kakashi presses himself even further into Minato-sensei’s side, mind caught up in the contemplation of such a mind-blowing realization that he nearly misses the rest of the conversation.

“The mitochondria is special because of the way that it ties in with our chakra pathways. Humans are endothermic, and rely on controlled heat production and dissipation to regulate the body’s internal temperature and keep it within a stable margin. The way that our physical chakra is generated and dispersed from within the the nodes of our chakra pathways works in such a similar way to the mitochondria that, when something is wrong with one of these functions, it does tend to affect the other in a similarly adverse way.”

“So he’s broken,” Obito states, and Kakashi peeks out from under Minato’s arm in time to see him cringe away from the sharp looks both adults cast him.

“Of course not,” Orochimaru replies, a sort of humorously stern edge to his voice. “Our bodies malfunction all the time. They’re on the knife's edge of functional on a good day, and any number of maladies will occur should they teeter in any sort of direction.”

“Oh,” Obito both sounds and looks more chastised than Kakashi’s ever seen him in any life. “And… what causes them to… teeter?”

Orochimaru blinks. “It could be anything, in all honesty. The human body is both one of the most durable fortresses and the weakest defense at the same time. It’s quite the contrary subject to study, especially when you bring chakra and its effects into the equation.”

“So we don’t know what wrong with Kakashi,” Rin summarizes, poking her fingers together. It makes the strings that entomb them unravel slightly.

“No,” Orochimaru says rather flatly, and doesn’t sound happy about it. The fact that he doesn’t seem to have an answer apparently ruffles his feathers a bit.

Minato reaches his arm down to somehow give Kakashi’s head a few fond pets, like he’s a dog or something. He’s not about to admit that it actually feels nice, to anyone, ever.

“It’s getting about dinner time,” his sensei comments, causing Kakashi to do a mental doubletake. Hadn’t they just had lunch? “Do you think you’ll be able to keep something down?”

There’s a quiet pause while they wait for Kakashi to gather up all his scrambled thoughts, and he spends a good few moments reeling at the fact that more time had passed without him knowing. He hadn’t been hungry until his teacher had said anything, but now his stomach is pinching in a way that feels almost painful, hungry and putting him off his appetite all at once.

“I think so,” he says uneasily. He might be able to eat, but there’s also the chance it’ll come back up soon after. The way his stomach executes a somersault makes Kakashi a bit uncertain. It could really go either way.

“I’ll get something simple and bland going, just in case,” Orochimaru comments, rising from the couch. He raises a brow at the two genin sitting stiffly in wooden chairs across the coffee table from them. “Are you two going to be staying to eat as well?”

Obito ducks his head in a sheepish fashion. “Yes, Orochimaru-dono.” He says, and Orochimaru blinks at down at him in a slow way that Kakashi for some reason knows means he’s been a bit surprised by something.

“Oh!” Rin startles. “Um, it is kind of late, isn't it? I should actually head back home, I didn’t tell my dad I’d be out after dark or anything, so he’ll worry.”

“I’ll walk you back,” Minato says, giving Kakashi’s back a good rub as if to apologize for having to get up soon and leave him cold again. Kakashi nuzzles his face into the man’s side in response.

“I’ll be back for dinner though,” the blond says after Orochimaru, who’s already walking away. “I just need to take care of a few things at home first.”

Orochimaru waves a hand in acknowledgement, not even looking over his shoulder.

“You’re very respectful to him,” Kakashi comments once Orochimaru is back in the kitchen, unable to keep a faint hint of wonder from coating his words.

Obito blinks over at him, and then a weight pulls his brows together and he bounces up in his seat. “Uh, of course I am! Orochimaru-dono is a legendary hero of the village! He’s won tons of battles and defeated lots of Konoha’s enemies without even breaking a sweat! We’ve won one war already because of him and the other sannin, and were only doing so well with this one because we still have Orochimaru-dono. If we didn’t…” Obito glances up toward the ceiling with the tiniest of thoughtful glances, barely pausing before he says without hesitation, “we’d be in serious trouble. Konoha is safe because of great shinobi like Orochimaru-dono. That deserves all the respect, ever .”

The Uchiha nods his head decisively, as if to say ‘ and that’s that! ’ He crosses his arms over his chest to further prove his point, a stubborn set to his jaw and a scowl on his face.

The entire apartment is thunderously silent in the wake of the Uchiha’s small rant. Obito is breathing a little heavily when he sits down, having stood up sometimes in the midst of speaking. He’s a loud kid, and Kakashi can still hear his words ringing in his ears, because they are both true and anything but the quiet he’d been going for when he’d made his observation.

He doesn’t glance toward the kitchen, but he can feel it in the ambient chakra in the air. It’s completely still in there, like nobody is moving. It’s still in the living room too. Minato-sensei looks like Obito has just whacked him over the head with a particularly dense book, and Rin is staring down at the strings interlaced between her fingers as if they hold all the answers for any question she could ever have.

Kakashi looks back at Obito. His shoulders are somewhere up by his ears, his chin is jutted out, and he looks ready to throw down with anyone who might argue his points. He looks ready, like he’s expecting protests, like he’s received them before, like he’s fought people in this topic too many times to count already. On that thought, the rant had sounded almost rehearsed, as if Obito’s said it before, to anyone who would listen. Kakashi isn’t going to fool himself and think that anyone ever had .

Kakashi isn’t sure what it is, but something that’s been pressing painfully into his posture lightens up just a smidge, and it’s suddenly just barely easier to breath. The apartment air is stale, but the breath tastes like a small victory anyway.

“Yeah,” Kakashi says quietly, giving a little bob of his head. He lets himself fall back into the cushion behind him like a marionette whose string’s have been cut, trying his best to ignore the startled look Obito is shooting him for his easy agreement.

He eventually does glance over at the boy, when a minute passes by and everyone’s still rather speechless, and looks Obito over with a long, examining glance. “Okay,” he eventually decided. “I guess you can stay.”

The boy splutters. “Wh—What’s that suppose to mean?! I wasn’t gonna leave in the first place!”

Kakashi hadn’t really been expecting this reply, and for some reason the words make his eyes sting. He stares over at Obito with a startled look, unable to speak past the sudden limp in his throat.

“Oh…” he faintly hears himself say, voice thick with some unnamable emotion. “Okay.”

Obito eyes him with an odd look in his eyes, that’s strangely soft in a way that Kakashi really doesn’t want to think about right now, so the Hatake turns his head into the back of the couch and presses his face into it.

“Well,” Minato says, voice quiet. “That’s a perspective that I think should be shared amongst the village in its entirety.”

“But it’s not ,” Obito says tightly, and Kakashi didn’t even have to look at him to see the scowl scrunching his whole face up.

“I know,” Minato-sensei replies, still quietly. “But it should be.”

None of them really have a response to that. Yes, their village is broken. Yes, the villagers are ungrateful on a good day and downright greedy otherwise. Spoilt, even. Yes, the tree that houses Konoha’s inhabitants is rotted to the center. But, even though they all know these things, it’s not something they like to purposefully think about or spend time pondering. It’s exhausting. Living amongst the rot leaves something that just leeches the energy to fight right out of people.

It’s pathetic and sad to admit, but the broken and corrupt foundations of society aren’t easily tackled by one or even a group of people, powerful ninja or otherwise. There is just too much to do, too much to fix, while everyone is already so tired over it all. Every second left thinking about it makes one only feel more and more hopeless.

Kakashi feels hopeless, about everything , maybe that’s it. For all that he’s been given a second chance, he’s got absolutely no idea what to do with it. He doesn’t even know where to begin . There’s just… too much, for one person. And not just that, but a broken person. Obito was right. Kakashi is broken, and he doesn’t even know how to fix that , much less the future and the world and everyone in it.

He’ll fail. He’s going to fail, and Kakashi sits on the couch with his face buried in the cushions and listens to Rin and Minato-sensei leave the apartment in uneasy silence, listens to the door close on the uncomfortable air vibrating between him and Obito, listens to the slow clinking of pans on the gas stove in the kitchen, and… not quite despairs , because things are surprisingly okay, right now. But what about later?

Kakashi doesn’t know. That’s what scares him the most.

Obito bites his lip, making a big show of looking from toward the door to the kitchen and then to the couch with a rather poleaxed expression on his face, as if he couldn’t believe he’d just been up and abandoned to Kakashi by everyone. Which is absurd, because it’s Kakashi’s apartment—who does Obito think is going to be here?

Kakashi. Kakashi is going to be here. Here in this very spot, in fact. Kakashi is going to sit on this couch and never move again except to intake The Tea, and maybe eat food if it’s absolutely necessary. He’s finally found a position where not every nerve ending is screaming at him in protest. It’s a little uncomfortable and most definitely not a good way for his spine to be twisted, but Less Painful far outweighs How Comfy in this situation. Maybe any situation.

Or, perhaps, Less Pain is Comfy, in and of itself? Food for thought.

Obito seems to have finished rebooting himself, in any case, and edges forward a little bit to sit on the very edge of the couch cushion Orochimaru had vacated, furthest away from Kakashi’s crumpled form as he could be. He’s staring at Kakashi with an unreadable expression that looks faintly of morbid fascination and something else that Kakashi isn’t sure has a name, and twists the gem of his shirt in his hands so tightly Kakashi thinks it might as well rip the fabric.

Kakashi presses his lips together, looking away from the boy. He reaches up to flip the hood of the sweatshirt he’s wearing over his head to better ignore him, and then sits up with a speed that leaves him to sway a bit, slightly dizzy. His eyes are wide and he stares at the far wall with a distant look in his eyes.

Obito jumps, narrowing his eyes at at him. “... What?”

Kakashi doesn’t even look at him. He pulls down the hood, and then flips it back up again, repeating the action perhaps two more times before a soft sound of realization escapes his lips.

“ What ,” Obito asks again, looking an odd mix of irritated and worried.

“My ears and neck,” Kakashi says softly, eyes locked on a blank spot on the wall, “are warmer ... when I put the hood up.”

“Uh, yeah,” Obito says, a note of ‘ I’m beginning to think you’re a bit of an idiot, maybe ’ carried in his voice. “That’s, um, kind of how hoods work?”

Kakashi turns his stare on him. “What?”

Obito just stares back. “Um,” is all he says, shaking his head slowly at Kakashi like that’ll make the work make sense again.

The two preteens (inwardly, Kakashi shudders, and feels hysteria begin to climb in his throat) sit there in a rather awkward silence that stretches on until Minato-sensei comes barreling through the door, looking somewhat harried with a wild look in his eyes.

“Sensei,” Obito greets, warily.

“What the fuck,” Kakashi adds, and the Uchiha turns to gape at him.

Minato does to, eyes wide. “K-Kakashi?”

“Why do you look like that,” the Hatake asks him seriously.

He’s about to reply—he needs a moment first, clearly, to gather his wits—when Orochimaru steps out of the kitchen, crosses his arms, and raises an eyebrow all in one fluid motion, regarding the group of them like one would a bug on the ground.

“Food,” he says, and comes over to snag Kakashi by the hood and drag him into the kitchen before anyone can say anything else.

His stomach lurches dangerously, but settles as soon as he’s plopped down into a chair, so Kakashi reaches for the soup spoon set to the side of his plate with a quietly mulish expression and says his thanks before using it to dig out a large bite of congee and stick it in his face before he can doing anything similarly damning and ill advised, like curse at his sensei again. Really, what seven year old says fuck? Apparently, Kakashi. Whoops.

Minato entered the kitchen with a silent, ghostly Obito trailing behind him, both of them looking like that’d just witnessed something particularly traumatizing and were struggling to come to terms with it. They sit down without a word and stare at the porridge in their bowls with symptoms akin to shock.

Orochimaru takes his seat, eyes them all with contempt, and proceeds to ignore everything but the food in front of him.

It being a valid course of action, Kakashi follows suit, and doesn’t really hear anything else that night aside from the scoff Orochimaru makes as he kicks Obito and Minato out of the apartment after the meal and hustles Kakashi to bed.

Chapter Text

“I’m telling you, sensei,” Obito hisses over a bowl of ramen the next day, regarding the menma with rather more suspicion than Minato thinks it deserves. “There’s something wrong with him!”

“Yes,” the blond jounin replies tiredly, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “I do believe we’d all covered that already, Obito.”

Obito waves his chopsticks around in the air to gesticulate his frustration with Minato’s probably now repetitive answers—this is a conversation they’d been having all afternoon, and it’s been going in circles the entire time. Minato feels the beginnings of the frustration that wrestles with his young Uchiha student’s spine in himself.

“I mean, other than—than what’s obviously wrong. Like, I know he’s sick. He’s obviously super sick, I’ve got no idea how he’s not one hundred percent comatose right now—“

“As opposed to fifty percent?” Minato mumbles under his breath, and gets a mirthful grin from the ramen stall owner, who probably hears all the shinobi gossip in the village by now. Poor man. Minato’s totally jealous of him.

Obito soldiers on, probably not having heard him at all. “—with the way he’s acting he probably feels horrible , and like—in Bakashi terms, horrible for him is like how completely life threateningly devastating is for a normal person, and that’s, like, really bad , sensei!”

“Obito,” Minato sighs, exasperating tinging his words. “Regardless of what you think, Kakashi is a normal person.”

Obito spins around on his stool to squint at him, like he’s looking for the punchline of the joke, and Minato holds up his hands in surrender, shaking his head without a single clue as to how to… to… fix? His student’s unerringly staunch faith in his teammate’s levels of fortitude? For all that Obito acts like he despises the very ground Hatake Kakashi trods upon, he holds the younger boy to incredibly high standards. Or rather, Kakashi is the standard Obito thinks—knowingly or not—that everyone else should hold themselves to.

Which, Minato ponders worriedly, is quite dangerous for both boys. He’s tried nipping the altogether odd dependency in the bud, so many times, but nothing he’s tried has worked. He’s tried talking to Obito. He’s tried suggesting things to Kakashi to perhaps help Obito along to the realization that his silver-haired teammate is not, in fact, some sort of demigod—hell, he’s even tried having Rin help! Multiple times, in fact, and it’s gotten to the point where Rin’s In On It—‘it’ being the ongoing scheme of trying to repeatedly smack Uchiha Obito over the head with the fact that Hatake Kakashi isn’t actually indestructible.

It was slow going. Obito just doesn’t seem to be able to wrap his mind around the idea. It just doesn’t seem to click .

Even after yesterday’s display. Kakashi is having a hard time of things, and every time Minato’s thoughts stray to his youngest student, his heart constricts in a fit of worry. He’s trying his best to help Kakashi out, make him as comfortable as he can be in spite of the obvious pain he’s suffering—they all are. It’s discouraging, however, to notice that no matter how many blankets they pile on the little chunin, his skin is still several shades too pale, the crease between his brows still too deep, the shivers that wrack his form still too consistent. He’s such a champ, acting like nothing’s wrong as much as he can, but… it shows. It shows so much a blind man could see it.

Obito, though. Minato isn’t sure whether the boy is in complete denial, or holding on to the hope that Kakashi is going to come out on top, beat this sickness back and be right as rain again come the next day, like how the boy treats a difficult jutsu in training, keeping at it until he overcomes it. It’s Kakashi’s stubborn tenacity that Obito admires, Minato thinks, but perhaps Obito has come to expect it as the default and not just Kakashi’s response to the obstacles in his career.

Minato had hoped so, too, in the beginning, that Kakashi’s stubbornness would pull him through whatever this was. His hope is beginning to fade with each passing day. Whatever is going on with Kakashi, it’s not something that can be cured so easily.

Three more days, Minato promises himself. And then he’s dragging Kakashi to the hospital no matter what the boy says. And no amount of puppy dog eyes will help him (Minato had no idea before now that Kakashi could pull of a look so devastating, but given his summoning contract and his clan characteristics, he really should have guessed).

“I just,” Obito waves his arms frantically around in the air as if the gesticulation will help get his point across—whatever the point may be. “He’s obviously horribly , horrendously ill , so like… where the doctor, sensei? Why isn’t he at the hospital?”

Minato points a chopstick at the boy, not looking up from his own bowl. “Why aren’t you at the hospital?”

“Uh, because I’m not the one that’s sick?” Obito squints at him.

“Maybe not sick,” the blond jounin acquiesces, “but you’re not one-hundred percent either, right?”  

Obito stares at him, and Minato glances over long enough to see the panic the boy is trying to push down and hide behind an innocent mask. “I don’t know what you mean, man.”

“Sensei,” Minato corrects blaisely, eyebrow raising. He watches Obito lick his lips nervously and sighs. “I can’t believe your trying to—Obito, I saw that tumble you took in training. You have a concussion, don’t you.”

“No, of course not,” Obito denies immediately, grabbing his bowl of ramen and downing the dredges of it in one quick gulp before slamming the dish on the table with more force than necessary. He raises a hand to Teuchi-san and requests another order before continuing on, rapidly, “I honestly have no clue what you mean—have you met a Uchiha before in your entire life? Do you know how thick our heads are? It’s like they’re full of rocks instead of bra—no, wait, that’s an insult, I don’t mean that, but also, it could be true now that you think about it, because they’re all mostly insanely smart, but what do they do with all that smartness, huh? Means it must be rocks. Am I right? I’m obviously right—are you gonna finish that, sensei, or can I,” Obito switches tracks, eyes zeroing in on Minato’s half-finished bowl despite the fact that he had a second order coming up in a minute or so. The boy reaches out for the bowl and gives Minato a bequestent look.

“I like the way you think!” A voice chimes in, and Minato is assaulted by a strong force from behind with only that as a warning, arms coming around to catch him in a stranglehold.

He chokes, arms flailing as he’s almost dragged off the stool to his death. “Wah!”

“Hey, Kushina-san,” Obito greets with a mixture of happiness and relief. He doesn’t look the least bit alarmed or seem to have any intention on giving Minato a hand despite how his loving sensei was being suffocated right in front of him. How cold!

“Nee-chan, Obito-kun, it’s not that hard,” Kushina says, voice an decibel or two higher than the average person would normally speak at, as always. She’s got what Minato calls a theatre voice.

A whack gets Minato right in the ear, and he winces, lifting a hand to rub at it. “Kushin—“

“Haven’t seen you in like a month and I don’t even get a hug back,” the redhead huffs, finally releasing him to sweet, sweet oxygen and hopping up onto the stool next to him. “Oi, Teuchi! Three bowls of the house special!”

“Four, for my best customer,” the stall owner calls back cheerily, holding up as many fingers. “Think if it as a welcome back gift!”

“I knew I loved you for a reason!” Kushina crows, fist flying into the air in a victory pose. “Marry me, man!”

Minato groans and slumps forward until his forehead hits the wooden surface of the bar table. Obito is snickering beside him, and he blindly casts out a hand to smack the kid in the arm.

“Ow, sensei!”

Teuchi-san sounds almost genuinely sorrowful when he replies, “Unfortunately, Uzumaki-san, I must reject your proposal. I am promised to another.”

“Nooooo,” Kushina moans, and Minato turns his head to watch her clasp her hands to her chest dramatically. “How could the universe be so cruel? It’s not fair, you know!”

“My condolences,” Teuchi-san is perfectly regretful as he sets a pan of noodles to sizzle over an open flame, and Minato is just seconds away from rolling his eyes at the two of them.

Thankfully, Kushina seems content to leave it at that, because she turns back to him and socks him in the shoulder. Maybe it’s suppose to be a friendly greeting kind of punch, but—well, Kushina often forgets her own strength when she was excited, so Minato was used to having sore upper arms by this point. The last month has been a reprieve. But, hey, at least it means she’s happy to see him, right? That’s a win, isn’t it?

“So, how have things been?” She asks, leaning forward onto her elbows. “You hold the fort while I was gone?”

Minato finally sits up, but before he can answer, Kushina leans forward even further and strains her neck to peer around him at Obito instead. “Obito-kun, did he hold the fort?”

“Fort’s still standing,” Obito agrees cheekily, and Minato gives a loud, long-suffering sigh.

“I can hold forts just fine!” He argues, and then pauses, casting his girlfriend an uneasy look, and adds on a bit quieter, “But, yeah. Barely.”

Kushina turns serious like some sort of switch has been hit. She squares her jaw and levels him with a steely state. “What happened?”

Minato shakes his head. “It’s… well. Kakashi’s sick. It’s pretty bad.”

Kushina bites her lip worriedly, the bravado from earlier gone when faced with concern for someone she cares about. “How bad, though? Like, hospital-bad?”

“I’m thinking… yeah.”

Kushina pauses, and then squints at him. Minato is starting to think this is where Obito picked it up from. “Waiiit a sec… what have you been doing for—what are his symptoms?”

Minato blinks at her, and then begins to tick off his fingers, “Uh, nausea, vomiting, fever… um—oh, yeah, he’s passed out a few times, and I think he has dizzy spells…. What else….”

Kushina stares at him in horror, and Minato winces. Yeah. It’s pretty much as bad as it sounds. Actually, it’s worse. He doesn’t think he can convey just how worrying Kakashi’s condition is with words. It was the sort of thing you just had to see for yourself—if not because otherwise you wouldn’t believe it. It was Kakashi , after all.

“And what have you been doing to treat all this?” Kushina asks, faintly, and Minato winces again.

“He’s been sleeping a lot, which I think is helping. We’ve been trying to get food into him when he’s awake—that’s usually a hit or miss, but Orochimaru is pretty good at convincing him to—“

“Orochimaru?”

“Oh, uh—yeah,” Minato realizes Kushina hadn’t exactly been there to witness that development. “Uh, Kakashi found him in the graveyard outside his apartment and Orochimaru brought him back and made him lunch.”

Kushina stares at him.

“He’s been making him this tea,” Minato offers weakly. “Kakashi really loves it... I think it makes him feel better.”

Teuchi quietly places a bowl in front of Kushina before heading back to grab the other three. Kushina doesn’t seem to notice it for a moment.

“Okay,” she says slowly, at last. “So, rest, food, keeping him hydrated… that’s good, yanno. What else?”

“I got him to take a bath the other day—“

“In that bathtub?!” Kushina gapes at him, aghast, “ Minato —!”

“I cleaned it!” He helps, hands flying up to block defensively in front of himself. “Ruined a uniform in the process, even, but it was cleaner than a T&I lab before I let him into that room, I swear!

“What did you use.”

“Huh?”

“Ruined your uniform how .”

“... Listen, it wasn’t my fault that Kakashi only had bleach, I didn’t have enough time to go shopping for vine—Ow! Kushina!”

“I’m just gonna go,” Obito calls to them, amusement clear across his face. Minato will wipe that look away come next training session. “Sensei, you’ll pay for me, right—“

“Not with that concussion you’re not,” Minato growls, and finds pleasure in the way the amusement swaps for horror faster than he can blink.

“Oh my god,” Kushina says darkly, hand still fisted in Minato’s hair. He winces as her grip tightens. “All your kids are falling apart —How’s Rin-chan?! Is she okay? Please tell me she’s okay— Kamisama , I was only gone for a month —“

Minato muffles the whine that wants to escape his mouth.

“Teuchi! Make these orders to go, pretty please! I’ve got some place to be, all of a sudden!”

“As you wish, Uzumaki-san!”

“Ah! What a charmer!” 

This time, Minato does roll his eyes. 

Chapter Text

Orochimaru should open a restaurant.

That’s something Kakashi’s been thinking about ever since he took that first bite of miso a few days ago (has it only been days? It feels like he’s been back in this body so much longer than that). Every single thing he’s eaten since waking up that first time has been absolutely delicious. Rin’s eggplant stir-fry had been great, too, but it didn’t hold a candle to anything that came from Orochimaru’s hands. Kakashi’s too tactful to actually say such a thing out loud, though. At least, he’s like to think he is.

Hell, even the stale peanut butter sandwiches, though they had just been old bread ends with the dredges of the jar smooshed between them, had tasted way better than Kakashi thought they had any right to. Although, perhaps that had just been because he’d been actually starving at the time—seriously, did his younger self actually eat at all, ever?

Kakashi thinks back on his childhood, trying very hard to remember, but can’t summon up much memory of the time that concerned his own eating habits. It had just been training, training, rivalry, training, ignore trauma, training.

So, no. Probably not.

Maybe that’s why Kakashi’s current body is so tiny. He’s shocked he’d managed to grow into an actual healthy size as an adult, and then realizes that could be attributed to his own father’s looming height. Sakumo had been a giant, though it wasn’t noted at first glance as the man’s posture had been horrendous—yet another bad habit he’d inherited from his dear old dad.

“Can you stomach any more?” Orochimaru asks, legs crossed and leaning back with one arm thrown over the back of the chair across the table. He cocks his head to the side and watches Kakashi with an examining look.

Kakashi glances down at his still half full plate of rice porridge, realizing he’d stopped eating sometime in the duration of his thoughts. He really can only do one thing at a time, can’t he?

Unfortunately, now that they’re on the subject, he also realizes he’s definitely full, which is a crying shame because the food is absolutely delicious and Kakashi would love to eat more—but at the same time he can physically feel his face turn green at the thought of another bite.

Kami, but being sick is the worst . He’s hungry, but he’s not hungry? What a wonderful world.

“No,” he sighs out regretfully.

A fleetingly amused smile flitters across Orochimaru’s face, as he sets his own chopsticks down. He’d cooked up a plate of katsudon for himself, which Kakashi had sent various looks of envy, but suffered with the knowledge that his stomach wasn’t in any shape to eat any food more complicated than the traditional sick-food. When he feels better, perhaps. If he ever feels better. Kakashi slumps back in his chair and sniffs loudly, quickly followed by a series of wracking coughs. He’s been much more congested, today, than usual, and it sucks.

“Perhaps you should go lie down for a while,” Orochimaru suggests, standing up to fetch Kakashi’s unfinished plate. “I’ll put this in the fridge for later.”

“Okay,” Kakashi agrees—right now there isn’t anything else he rather be doing than lying down. Like, which is better, dying slowly while sitting in a hard wooden chair, or dying slowly while entombed within a heap of warm blankets? The answer is clear.

Orochimaru didn’t say anything else, turning away from the table to go over and deposit Kakashi’s empty tea mug—at least he’d been able to finish that , and no wonder as to why—and spoon into the sink on his way over the the fridge. Kakashi takes that as a dismissal. He heaved himself up off the chair and behind the long, stumbling journey down the hall to the bedroom, all twenty feet feet of it.

Kakashi presses the door shut with quiet hands, and doesn’t even have time time to turn when there’s the edge of a kunai held up against his throat. He freezes.

Hands yank him roughly around, and Kakashi peers into the darkness of his bedroom and sees… nothing. The sharp steel bites into the skin of his neck as he tries to move his head for a better visual.

“Dog boy,” a voice snarls near-silently into his ear. It’s suspiciously young. Actually, the hands that hold him are also suspiciously small. Kakashi’s eyes narrow.

He’s shaken none too gently, and metal bites into his skin almost teasingly. It’s familiar, and it would be even more so if the voice didn’t sound so genuinely upset.

“Who the hell do you think you are?”

Kakashi presses his lips together as his eyes finally adjust to the darkness—too slowly, must work on that—and says nothing.

The person scoffs, giving him another shake, oblivious to the way it makes the kunai slice the barest millimeter more into his neck. “You must think you hot stuff, having Orochimaru-sama at your beck and call.”

Kakashi pauses, and his head stops swimmingly long enough for him to jerk back at just the right moment to break free of the choke hold he’s being held in. He rams his elbow backward into soft flesh, and doesn’t ya any mind to the guttural gasp it induces as he scrambles forward a few steps and pivots on his heel to get into a more ready stance. That's about when the black spots come back for his vision, but Kakashi ignores them for now.

“I’m not, really,” he says. His voice has that airy quality it gets when he’s about to pass out at an inopportune moment, shit.

“What?”

“Not hot stuff,” Kakashi elaborates, “I’m freezing, all the time. Like an ice cube.”

His attacker stares at him, nonplussed.

“That’s not—“

“Also, I don’t have Orochimaru at ‘my beck and call,’” he continues, giving the very idea the tone of incredulity it deserves. “He’s just… there, because he wants to be. I can’t actually make him leave.”

The invader doesn’t seem to have an answer for that, so Kakashi poses the question himself.

“Do you really think anyone could ever get Orochimaru to do something that he doesn’t want to do?” He determinedly doesn’t think about the future, because the future doesn’t exist anymore, does it.

The person snorts, loudly, and lets the kunai clatter to the ground. Kakashi slumps against the edge of the bed, eyes fluttering shut with a tired sigh.

“That’s true,” is the concession given.

The door opens seemingly by itself, then—or rather, it was pushed open from the other side without any type of prelude or so much as a by-your-leave. Kakashi and his assailant both jump and spin around to look guiltily at it, as if they’d been doing something wrong—which, yes? Kakashi was almost murdered in his own bedroom by a lunatic? There are many things wrong about that.

Orochimaru stands on the other side in the dimly lit hallway, no light reaching his face but for his eyes, gleaming gold at them from the shadows. He takes a step forward into the better illumination of the room and raises a perfectly manicured brow at the two of them.

“How many times have I told you to use doors when entering, Anko?” He asks.

Kakashi’s attacker juts out her chin, eyes daring. “Whenever you get into a boring mood.”

The sannin purses his lips and actually brought up a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose in agitation. Kakashi watches it happen in wonder. Is the man actually irritated?

Anko takes a small step back, and then hops bodily into Kakashi’s mattress, which is coincidentally exactly where Kakashi himself wants to be. That was his goal when he first entered the room, in fact, before Anko derailed those plans in a spectacular way. He fashions her with a glare.

She sticks her tongue out at him and kicks her feet in the air—they don’t reach the ground when she’s sitting down. Because Anko’s a child—a baby. Kamisama. She’s even younger than Kakashi is, by at least two years, meaning she’d be about five or six right now. Kakashi blinks widely at her and shuffled forward a bit to stare more closely. Her little baby cheeks are so round .

She doesn’t quite notice yet, because she’s turned all her attention back to Orochimaru, and she’s whining at him. Which makes sense, Kakashi supposes, Anko’s always been a certain level of reckless and even more crazy than that.

“You can’t just break into people’s homes and threaten their lives, Anko.” Orochimaru is telling her sternly, arms crossed. Kakashi has come to recognize this position as the one Orochimaru adopts when he feels he’s obligated to scold, but doesn’t actually mean half of it enough for it to matter. He’s saying this like he’s had to say it a thousand times before, which. That’s concerning, a bit. Kakashi feels slighted. He could have died . Baby Anko could have killed him—Kakashi has no doubts that she actually might have, he knows how Anko is—and Orochimaru is standing there three seconds away from giving her that smile, ruffling her hair, and just telling her not to do it again.

Kakashi is offended. That’s not fair.

“Well, why not?” Anko demands, arms crossed in a similar fashion and little baby voice shrill as can be. As opposed to Orochimaru, it’s clear she’s trying to copy his pose, perhaps subconsciously, and doesn’t seem to have realized what Kakashi has about its meaning, because she looks pretty outraged that she’s getting told off over this.

“You can’t break into the houses of allies without permission,” Orochimaru amends gently, setting his shoulders back and slipping his hands to hide in the long sleeves of his tunic. “It’s considered rude.”

“By who?!”

Kakashi waves a hand around the air vaguely, as if gesturing at the apartment and the village that surrounds them, and butts in. “Everyone, basically.”

Anko’s baby head swivels around like an owl’s to pin him with a wide, furious stare, but Kakashi ignores it. He grabs fistfuls of the comforter and uses it to haul himself up onto the bed next to her, vision going hazy at the precipice of the action. He ducks his head down a bit and closes his eyes until the dizziness passes, and when he opens them again he’s lying flat on the mattress with his cheek pressed against Anko’s leg, his head using it as a pillow. He glances up, taking a moment to examine and purposefully ignoring the way she’s staring down at him, and is very distressed to realize that Anko makes for a very tall six year old, and perhaps dwarfs Kakashi by at least an inch. Somehow. He drops his head down and buries it into the dog-print sheets.

It must have been all the take-out his younger self had eaten. Kakashi will eat his vegetables from now on, he swears.

A big hand presses into his back, between Kakashi’s shoulder blades, and pushes him down into the blanket a bit. A weight is removed from the bed, Kakashi feels the mattress bounce up a little at the loss of it, and he peeks open an eye to see the blurry figure of Anko sitting on Orochimaru’s hip as the man straightens up again.

“Kakashi need to take a nap, Anko.” Orochimaru tells her, hefting her up a bit. Her tiny little baby arms reach out to wrap around his neck instantly, like she’s used to this. Kakashi is mortified to feel a sharp, hot spike of jealously nail itself through his chest. “Let’s leave him be. Come to the kitchen, I’ll make you some dango.”

Anko’s big round baby eyes burst into sparkles. They’re too bright. Kakashi squeezes his eyes closed and turns his face back into the mattress. He listens to Anko’s excited child-like blabbering as she’s carried away, the door being shut softly behind them to leave him alone to sleep, and feels a rolling, sick swell of longing for his students well in his chest and up his throat like bile. Naruto, specifically, he misses. Anko acts just like when the blonde jinchuriki had been smaller. Kakashi hold his breath until sports dance before his vision, willing the images of beaming bright smiles and sparkly eyes and whisker marts to go away.

When he wakes up, he doesn’t know anything except pure terror for a few long seconds.

There’s an intense, overbearing sort of energy pressing down upon the entire apartment, and it’s so thick and strangling that Kakashi is hardly able to breath. All he can think about is fire .

He must have made a noise of distress—he sure was distressed enough for it, he’s not gonna lie—because the door is swept open and Minato-sensei comes barrelling in to check up on him.

Kakashi doesn’t have any time to wonder why the man is here, Minato’s very appearance, hale and healthy, in the room is enough to jarr Kakashi's completely irrational terror entirely.

“Is everything all right?” The man practically demands once he sees Kakashi sitting up in bed, perfectly safe with no one else in the room. “Kakashi?”

“It’s,” Kakashi opens his mouth to reply, and then his brain goes abruptly blank when he catches the sight of deep, flowing red peeking out from beyond Minato’s shoulder and the door.

“It’s fine,” he croaks, and flops back down onto the bed with perhaps more force than necessary. He turns to lie facedown and uses his trembling hands to bundle the sheets back up over his shoulders, and holds them tightly against his cheeks.

Maybe the blankets will protect him from the universe and all the shit it’s been throwing at him lately.

The bed dips down, and there’s a sigh, and then a hand comes to rest on Kakashi’s back, and Kakashi lets out a whine.

“Oh, Kashi,” a voice that is definitely not Minato-sensei’s, but instead higher and strangely lilting with an accent that reminds Kakashi of Wave Country. “If I’d known you had it this bad I’d have wrapped up my mission much sooner and hurried back, ya know!”

“Oh my god,” Kakashi moans quietly into the blankets with mounting horror.

He slowly turns his head to the side to see a face with bright green eyes staring down at him. A thick curtain of russet shields both of them from the world as it cascades down around Kushina’s dramatic pout.

Belatedly, he remembers to say, “Don’t call me that.”

But that’s the one thing he can remember, if only because he spent so much of his life longing for someone to call him that again. There’s a strange, sharp stinging sensation that is curling around Kakashi’s heart. They always did say you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. And Kakashi took Uzumaki Kushina for granted his entire childhood the first time around. Except now, here she is again, like she never left.

He feels a little bit like crying again. The sharp pressure at the corners of his eyes and his upper throat is starting to become familiar and Kakashi hates it.

He feels a bout of coughs rising up from his chest, and rolls his entire body away from her to press his face into the covers again, because he doesn’t want to chance accidentally sneezing all over her—that’d be undeniably gross. Of course, this is the only reason.

“Oof,” Kushina says, rather loudly. “You sound like you’re about to cough up your lungs—good thing for you, I brought some ramen to make you feel better. Chilli garlic sauce included! The best thing for a cold, you know?”

“He’s been severely congested since yesterday,” another voice adds in, coming from the door. Kakashi turns his head just barely to the side, but it’s enough to see Orochimaru standing there, leaning on the frame, arms crossed. Typical stance for the snake sannin. “It’s curious, since it hasn’t exactly been a prevailing symptom until now.”

“Do you think he’s getting worse?” Minato asks, sounding horrified.

Kushina takes advantage of Kakashi’s peek, hand lashing out like lightning to press against his forehead. Kakashi rears back, but fails in escaping the temperature check, his very bones are just too exhausted to move quickly enough on command.

“Double oof,” she mutters, which isn’t exactly quiet in terms of Uzumaki volume. “That’s high. Has the cold compress been working at all to bring this down?”

Kakashi doesn’t quite catch a visual, but he swears that Minato and Orochimaru exchange something of a sheepish look.

Kushina straightens up, removing her hand from his head, and stares at the two men in stunned silence.

“Oh, my god ,” she breaths, and then begins, “if I hadn’t come home you guys would have killed him. He’d be dying right now, you know? I literally cannot believe you two, this—this is child endangerment , it’s neglect —okay, yeah, you’ve been feeding him and making sure he’s clean, but that’s not the end of it, you know?! It takes more than that to take care of a sick kid—who the hell in their right mind thought it was a good idea to leave you numbskulls with the responsibility of a kid— “

She goes on for a while, and Kakashi stops paying attention after the two minute mark, mostly because he’s stunned she’d be lecturing Orochimaru of all people, given that he’s pretty sure she’d never really actually met his before this point in time—but then again, this is Kushina. Of course she’d take the snake sannin’s presence and involvement here in stride.

The bed bounces a little, and a form that’s a bit more Kakashi’s size settled down near his head. He glances up to find Anko treating the ranting Uzumaki with an expression of pure awe.

“She’s like a mom ,” the girl whispers to him, any sign of her earlier hostile treatment of him nowhere to be seen.

Kakashi considers this, and then replies, a bit hoarsely, “So’s Orochimaru.”

Kami. He’s not even wrong. Kami.

Anko turns her stare at him, and then cracks a grin. “You’re right,” she says, entire being vibrating with some odd level of excitement.

Who are the two of them to say what a mom is, though. It’s not like either of them have any experience in the matter. Kakashi comforts himself with this.

Sounds like an excuse, a little voice in the back of his mind snickers, and Kakashi replies viciously, shut up.

The harsh thought spurs on another fit of coughs, for some reason, probably the universe acting out of spite. Kakashi wouldn’t put it past it. Anko pats his back, a bit too harshly, like she isn’t sure of her own strength in the face of a weakened ill person. At least she’s trying? Trying to comfort him, or help his sickness kill him faster, though, is the question. It’s a little adorable, either way.

His stomach cramps painfully, and he clutches at it. With the way things have been going lately, he isn’t sure if it’s hunger or something else.

“How long has it been since I fell asleep?”

Anko studies the loud, gesticulating Kushina, hands nearly smacking the men in the room in the face as she rants, and says, “Few hours? You took a nap at, like, nine. It’s two now.”

“In the afternoon?” Kakashi blinks, and Anko levels his with an unimpressed look that clearly states well, duh.

That’s five hours since he last ate half a bowl of porridge, then. And then thirteen hours since he'd eaten before that. So, it’s probably hunger. He doesn’t feel any bile trying to force its way up his throat, so it’s probably hunger. Probably.

Finally, it seems like Orochimaru’s suffered enough scolding for one day—and also had read Kakashi’s mind, because he’s amazingly talented like that—because he takes a step forward, ducks under one of Kushina’s flailing hands—catches the limb by the wrist, and holds it, and finally gives her a characteristically raised brow.

“Instead of lecturing us, perhaps time would be better spent giving him that ramen you promised, before it gets too cold to be of any help?” He asks, dryly.

Kushina freezes, staring at him with wide green eyes, appearing utterly startled. She doesn’t move for a few long moments, caught flat-footed and apparently made speechless.  Finally, she blinks, glances at the hand he’s holding her arm in, and then jerks back with a blush roaring across her face. Minato watches all of this with his jaw hanging wide open.

“O—Of course, I know that! I was—I was just about to do that, ya know!” She bumbles out eloquently.

“Indeed,” Orochimaru agrees with a wry tone, and Kushina’s face burns even hotter.

“I’ll go do that now,” she spits out, giving the amused sannin an abrupt glare, that rapidly melts into a mash up of confusion and embarrassment. She grabs the still wordless Minato by the ear on her way out of he room, scrambling for the kitchen. Orochimaru gives the two children a even smile, before ambling right after them with his signature stalk.

“What the hell,” Anko mutters, staring after the three adults with an odd look on her face. “What was that all about?”

Kakashi stares after them too, and then turns to the girl with a grimace. “Something I don’t wanna think about right now, preferably ever,” he replies. Then he coughs. He coughs again.

Anko raises her eyebrow at him, and Kakashi is now certain she gets all her expressions from her snakely guardian, because this one is on the dot.

“You need some cough syrup?” She asks. “We have some in our cabinet back home, I could run over and get you some before they even get back.”

Kakashi stares at her. “You’re being nice to me. Why are you being nice?”

“Well,” she grins widely, a strange light in her eye. “Someone’s gotta look out for you. If the grown-ups aren’t gonna, it’s gotta be me. What else are siblings for?”

“Siblings.” Kakashi echoes.

Anko reaches over and pats him on the head. It’s still to rough. He winces and pulls back a little, and she stops.

“Yeah,” she tells him. “I’ve decided you’re my brother now. I mean, it only makes sense.”

“How,” Kakashi asks, but she’s already hopped off the bed and perched herself on the window sill, which is still open from when she’d let herself in hours ago.

“Chill out. Big sister will be right back with the medicine,” she waves cheekily.

“I’m older than you,” he deadpans, but she’s already launched herself out of the building. He sighs and collapses back against the blankets.

How is this his life?

Chapter Text

In a bewildering twist that Kakashi never in his life saw coming, Anko actually makes good on her word. And when that girl says she’s going to take care of someone, she really takes care of them. 

Baby Anko Mitirashi, all two and a half feet of her, has Kakashi tucked into bed with a damp cloth across his forehead and nearly high on cold syrup before he even has time to get a word in. She’s perched herself on the bare top of his dresser, which coincidentally also serves as a sort of nightstand, and has crossed her legs over each other and hunkered down to stare at him avidly, as if she’s waiting for something to happen. 

Kakashi isn’t sure what she’s expecting, the inner workings of the minds of children are a mystery to him—which, ironic, given the circumstances, yes—and in all honesty, he’s already used up his meager reserves of energy for the day, so he can’t provide any entertainment for the girl in any way. 

Which really just begs the question, doesn’t it. 

He sighs. “Why are you still here?”

Anko blinks, looking a little startled or torn from a daze, and Kakashi takes a moment to ponder just how long exactly they’d been sitting there in silence for her to enter some odd state of almost-meditation as ‘zoning out’. 

She gives him a weird look, and Kakashi sighs again. 

“How come you haven’t left yet?”

“What do you mean.”

“You’re still here—aren’t you, I don’t know, bored?” Kakashi shakes his head. “You… you don’t have to stay. The help is appreciated, but… you have better things to do, don’t you?”

He gives his legs a little kick from beneath the blankets in an attempt to perhaps untangle them from the sheets they’ve become victim to, but it’s a futile effort, and he gives up after a moment with a short cough. Thankfully, whatever this horrid, debilitating illness is, it can be soothed slightly with the cough syrup Anko had gratuitously poured down his throat, and the cough barely rattles his ribcage this time. 

The tiny past self of one of his closer friends, however much they’d both liked to deny it, tilts her head to the side and considers him for a moment. Anko leans further back over the top of the dresser, arms stretching out over her head until her spine gives a relenting pop, and then straightens up to give him a derisive look. 

“You talk like an old guy,” she says. “I guess there’s a reason for that hair after all, huh.”

Excuse him. “What’s wrong with my hair?”

She peers at him narrowly. “It’s old man hair, that’s what! What kinda kid has white hair, anyway?”

“Hatake kids do,” Kakashi returns sharply. Just because he’s a generally laid back guy doesn’t mean he’ll just let people poke fun at his clan characteristics. He does have honor. “Every Hatake has white hair, even kids with a parent from outside the clan—the family genes are pretty obnoxious and win out over any—“

He paused. Anko stares at him quietly, watching him as he dips his head down to regard his lap with his gaze instead of the room. What’s he doing here? Anko is like, five, and he’s about to go off and lecture her about genetics and hereditary traits? 

Not that he thinks she won’t understand it if he does—kami, she probably gets enough of it from Orochimaru in her daily life, she doesn’t need to hear it from him, too. She’d only been joking. 

What’s he even doing here?

“Nevermind, it doesn’t really matter anymore.” He waves the buildup of unnecessary words away without letting them be verbalized. “It’s not like there’s any left. It’s just me, now.”

He glances up to find Anko looking back at him solemnly. He blinks. 

“Shut up,” she suddenly barks, and he jumps a little at the abrupt change in volume. 

Anko hops off the dresser and onto the mattress next to him. Kakashi winces a bit at the way it makes the bed shake, bringing a faint reminder of his constant nausea to the forefront of his mind, but he’s near-immediately distracted again by the incredibly puzzling—not to mention vexing—little girl sitting beside him. 

“It sure does matter,” she tells him in a voice that sounds oddly upset. “Don’t be an idiot.”

“... What am I being an idiot about, again…?”

Anko rolls her eyes and gives his shoulder a light punch. With Kakashi's current constitution, it still ends up hurting quite a bit. How frustrating. 

“It’s not just you, dumbass,” the five year old girl tells him in a surly tone. “I’m here now. Remember? You’re my little brother now? Do you have the memory of a goldfish, or something?”

“I’m actually older than you—“

“So, since I’m your big sister,” she continues, “I’m gonna look out for you. Cuz we’re family, now, dumbass. Whether you like it or not. So there!”

Kakashi watches her, mutely, waiting for her to continue on her tirade, but she just crosses her arms and squints at him. 

“You’re just gonna have to get over it.”

“I’m,” Kakashi starts, and then stops, shaking his head. He isn’t really sure what to say. 

Anko nods decisively. “Are you hungry?”

“...  I don’t know.”

“Well, I wasn’t gonna go get you food or anything,” she remarks rather snidely. “I’m your sister , not your maid.”

“Can you just, stop that, it’s weird?” Kakashi asks plaintively, but it’s like he’s not saying anything at all for all the acknowledgment she gives his words. 

“I’m pretty sure they’ve all been feeding you too much, anyway—like, you’ve got three grown-ups momming you, up in this joint. That’s crazy. And they’re all feeding you? Even crazier. How are you not completely round by now?”

Kakashi regards her wearily. “I work out.”

“I mean, I know Orochimaru has a problem with giving people too much grub,” Anko grins, “especially sick or injured people—food’s like, his answer to everything. Sad? Have some food. Angry? Eat some food! Broken leg? Ah, food’ll make it good as new!”

“No, he doesn’t,” Kakashi denies, simply because his brain is having trouble bringing up an image of Orochimaru ever being that chipper. 

She snorts. “Yeah, nah, you’re right. He just makes it and then sets it in front of you and stares at you all expectant-like, like he’ll be disappointed in your ability as a person if you don’t eat it.”

Kakashi nods slowly, relaxing a bit. That sounds more realistic. 

“... Does he make you The Tea, too,” he asks, so quietly he almost doesn’t hear himself, but he’s been wondering it for a while, ever since he’d seen Anko perched on Orochimaru’s hip like she belonged there. 

It’s loud enough for Anko to hear, though, because she pins him with a wide-eyed look. 

“He makes you The Tea?” She says, and it doesn’t take much for Kakashi to hear the capital letters. That’s really all he needs for confirmation.

The girl studies him for a second after he nods at her. Once her survey is complete, she crosses her arms.  “Well there’s no going back now.”

The words carry some sort of finality to them. Kakashi isn’t sure if he should fear for his life or not. 

He shakes his head slowly, turning to glance out the bedroom window. The ever-present trees of Konoha sway just slightly in the wind beyond the glass. The green leaves shuffle around too much for him to settle his gaze on even one, and if that’s not a good analogy for what’s been going on in his head lately, Kakashi doesn’t know what is .

There’s an odd sort of shadow to the leaves. It flits about for a second before becoming stationary above a branch. Something about it rings faint alarms in Kakashi’s mind. It makes him close his eyes, and he presses a palm over a socket. At the rate his headache is affecting the familiar dots that dance around his vision, he can’t be sure he’s actually seeing anything but swaying tree branches. 

Anko hops onto the floor, and reaches out to grab his hand. She gives it a little tug, still a bit stronger than Kakashi believes she’s got the permit to be, and nearly drags him off the bed and into a heap on the floor. 

“I heard your stomach gurgle,” she explains at the betrayed look he gives her. “Didn't redhead mom say something about ramen? Let’s go.”

Kakashi allows himself to be manhandled out of the bedroom. Food sounds as good as it doesn’t, right now. 

Kushina scowls at the shitty microwave, ancient and decrepit and probably haunted because she can feel it staring back at her, and secretly vows to, one way or another, get Kashi out of this dump and into a place that’s actually inhabitable . 

Like, just—the kids place is a dump , and she might have felt a little mean for thinking that if Kakashi actually took care of it (and himself), but all evidence points to the opposite being true, so Kushina feels justified when she mentally makes faces at every crack in the wall, every stain on the ceiling that might have once been white but definitely isn’t anymore, at the kami-forsaken mold creeping its way up the wall behind the fridge. Like, actual mold , climbing up the wall like some sort of grossly decorative wallpaper. Kami , no wonder Kakashi is sick. 

And he is sick, for sure. Even if there wasn’t mold growing behind his fridge, even if he ate like a fucking bird , even if he didn’t train until he was close to death probably every day and then some— it’s all plainly there in the way he’s been behaving. 

When Minato had first mentioned Kakashi being sick, Kushina hadn’t been super worried or anything. Minato realizing it or not, Kakashi gets sick all the freaking time. Yeah, it sucks, and it sure is concerning, but the kid doesn’t take care of himself on a good day , what are they suppose to expect?

But Minato had looked so concerned , and yeah he’s always concerned about Kakashi, but there was something different about it this time. There was a desperate little light in her beau’s pretty blue eyes, the barest hint of fear at the back of his voice that caught her attention like wolves to a bloodbath. Despite his almost eccentric enthusiasm and optimism, it takes a lot to shake Minato up, and he was definitely shaken at the ramen stand, and as she followed him and Obito-kun to Kakashi’s apartment, Kushina realized that he had been shaken up for a while already, and it doesn’t look like he’d relax any time soon. 

She isn’t sure she really understood why until she’d seen Kakashi for herself. He just looked so small curled up in that pile of blankets, and he usually had such a tight rein on his emotions even if he wasn’t feeling good, so the complete and utter terror that wafted from his bedroom and tingled viciously along the waves of his chakra signature when he’d first woken up had startled the fuck out of all four—Orochimaru had been a surprise, even if Minato had sort of warned her, but the snake sannin did seem to care—of them. 

She hadn’t been able to help herself from swooping in, though, after Minato had somehow calmed him down—his sweet little face had just been so sleepy, even if he did look like hell—which was suspicious enough. And he’d barely protested the nickname! Something is obviously wrong, disregarding the fact that he’d almost seemed to want her cuddles. Poor sweet boy. Precious little Kashi. He’s in a real bad way, and he’d been left with these uselessly inept shinobi as caretakers. Not even a cold compress! What the actual fuck?

Kushina finally wrestles the broken latch of the microwave door free, and yanks the door open with a victorious cry. At least the stupid machine still manages to do what it was created for. She wouldn’t know what to do with herself if she’d been forced to serve a sick Kashi lukewarm ramen!

Ramen is the cure to all ails—at least,it always makes Kushina feel better when she’s feeling down. She hasn’t actually been sick herself since she was around Kakashi age, but she kind of, sort of, remembers how it’s suppose to feel. And Kakashi looks like he can definitely use some good old Ichiraku. 

“He’s been given the cough medicine,” someone sidles up beside her to lean against the counter and cross his arms. She doesn’t have to look over to know it’s Orochimaru—Minato won’t ever in his life manage to get his voice to sound that smooth. 

Kushina busies herself with lifting the once-again scalding ramen out of the microwave with hot pads, scowling into the bowl once she’s set it on the countertop. “He probably wouldn’t even have the cough if he’d been taking medicine from the beginning, ya know?”

Orochimaru glances at her from the corner of his eye, but his face is turned toward where Minato’s sat himself at the table, hunching over it with his shaggy blonde head buried in his arms. 

Kushina turns herself all the way around so that she’s facing the room, and crosses her arms. “Isn’t that what you’re suppose to do, when you're sick? Take medicine ?”

Orochimaru lifts one shoulder up, and then lets it drop. He looked vaguely uncomfortable, just enough to try and hide it behind a mask of indifference, but Kushina has been reading people her entire life, so she sees it anyway, even if it is the snake sannin himself. “I had been under the impression he was already on something... I suppose that was remiss of me.”

Remiss to assume anything in the first place , is what goes unsaid, and even though Minato obviously hears it too, he still scowls deeply when Kushina turns a pointed look on him. 

“I don’t fucking know ,” he grits out, beyond frustrated and gripping at his hair, and Kushina winces, a little stunned (and from her peripheral vision she sees Orochimaru is too), because it must have really been a rough week on him if he’s cursing . 

Sunny Minato Namikaze doesn’t curse, it’s just not...him.  And when he does then it means he’s at his wits end, or feeling guilty about something and angry—and in either case it’s at himself and not anyone else.

Kushina leaves the bowl on the counter for a minute, letting the steam rise a bit so it won’t burn poor Kashi’s tongue when he digs in—she inches over and then hurriedly takes the seat beside Minato. She leans over to wrap an arm around his hunched and tense shoulders, leaning her cheek against one and rubbing up and down his closest arm with her free hand. 

“Hey,” she starts, all soft, and if Orochimaru hadn’t looked uncomfortable before, he sure did now, and it was almost funny. “You have a lot on your plate, y’know? ‘Course you know, what am I saying—what I mean is this,” she taps his chin a bit until he’s looking right at her, and she can see the damp ness that’s gathered at the corners of his eyes that he’s trying so hard to hide. 

“When people are sick, they take medicine for it, how were you suppose to know Kakashi wasn’t doing that? You’ve got three kids under your care right now, basically, and that’s a lot when you stop to think about it. Just one kid is already a lot, and you’d been doing alright with Kakashi this whole year, but now you’ve suddenly got two other kids on your roster that rely on you for so much—“

“I haven’t, though,” Minato, bless the dumbass, immediately jumps straight for denial. “His father killed himself, practically right in front of him, he’s the one that found that body, sat with him for hours before somebody found him—that sort of things leaves scars, Kushina, scars that will never go away, and he hasn’t seen help for them once. An entire year, I’ve been the person who’s suppose to look out for him, teach him, provide for him, and I… I haven’t done that. I tried, sure, but I put too much trust in the fact that he could look after himself too really see past that and realize that he really, really can’t. He’s a smart boy, he’s way too mature than anyone his age should ever need to be, but I’m the one who’s suppose to take care of him. I’m the one who is suppose to make sure his needs are being met. I should have fought harder to get him an appointment with a Yamanaka or a counselor, I should have fought harder against the council when they decided he didn’t require that, fought harder against the prejudices of the village—his home is suppose to be safe for him and it’s not! I—“

Kushina leans away from him as Minato cuts himself off abruptly, and watches him hunch forward over the table to press his face into his hands. The apartment is absolutely silent for a moment,before he mutters, “ I should have made sure he was taking medicine, instead of just assuming that he was. I should have…. I should have taken him to the hospital in the beginning of this.”

Kushina isn’t really sure what to say here. She bites her lip hard enough to draw blood, and glances around the room aimlessly until her gaze lands on Orochimaru, who just gives her the barest shake of his head to signal that he’s just as lost as she is. 

She’s only rarely seen Minato like this. The few times that she had, it usually had something to do with the hokage or the council making another decision that really ruffled his feathers, especially since he wasn’t in a position yet to really contest any of it. Sure, he was getting there, working toward it, and sure, they (mostly the hokage, and damn did Kushina have opinions about that old codger) made it seem like he was in the position to give suggestions and objections, but he really wasn’t. The second Minato gave even the slightest hint that his priorities didn’t line up exactly with what the council wanted, they’d push to have him distanced from power. Those three especially would lean their weight into Hiruzen Sarutobi until he gave in, and likely would . 

Damn them , she thinks viciously. Damn them all. Damn them for how corrupt they’ve let the government of this village, which had been born into the world as a beacon of peace and hope, become. Damn them for sitting aside, up on their high horses watching the people beneath them that they’d sworn to protect and work in the interest of suffer unnecessarily in the name of the so-called greater good, and damn them all for putting Minato through this. He hated not being able to help anything, she knew, hated not being able to do what was so clearly the right thing, and hated not being able to convince his mentor that was the case. 

Kushina throws herself back in her chair, utterly furious that she’s unable to think of anything to say that will make Minato feel better. In the end, she just crosses her arms over her chest, and says, “Then let’s take him to the hospital.”

His eyes snap to her. “He doesn’t want to go. He hates it there, and I don’t really blame him, knowing what happened the last time he went.”

Kushina withheld a flinch. Last time Kakashi was at the hospital, it had been any child’s worst nightmare. She could see why the poor kiddo would fight tooth and nail to never return, but…

She opens her mouth, but Minato is already sighing. “You’re right, though. I don’t know what else to do. I was going to give him three days, it’s only been one, but—“ he looks at them helplessly, and Kushina feels the rage stirring in her gut sharpen at the expression on his face. “I don’t know what to do.”

There’s a moment of silence between them, and then Orochimaru is pushing off the counter and moving to sit in a chair across from them. He leans back in it almost lazily, like it’s some sort of throne, and Kushina is relieved for the relaxed way he carries himself. It looks way less high strung than she feels, right now, and just the image is helping her breathe easier, helping her calm down by giving her a point of reference.

“The day isn’t over, yet.” He comments in a soft drawl. An eyebrow goes up almost fractionally, and Kushina probably only notices because she’s staring right at them. “Then again, the hospital never exactly closes…”

Minato stares over the table at him, eyes looking a little distant, almost distracted, until the blond sighs and runs a hand over his face tiredly—he does look exhausted, poor guy, she’ll make sure to kiss the hell out of him once this is all over—only to drop both of them into his lap and slouch back. 

“I feel like I’m betraying him somehow,” he gives a weak laugh, shaking his head dejectedly. “I know it’s silly, but…”

“Nah, it makes sense,” Kushina bumps his shoulder with her own. “You really want that little guy to trust you, and now you’re going to make him do something he’s not going to be happy doing. Doesn’t matter if it’s for his own good—he’s still a kid, ya know, and he’s probably gonna be upset about it.  But—“

“Still gotta,” Minato says. 

“And how do you propose this happens, if you’re so adamantly convinced that he will fight you on this?” Orochimaru asks, still looking like royalty even in the rickety, dingy little apartment dining chair. Kushina hates him maybe just a little bit for it. 

“Well…” Minato pauses, looking a little guilty, and then goes, “You’ve seen him. Does he look like he can fight anything right now?”

The man tilts his head forward in acquiescence. “But you’d still like to somehow soften the blow.”

Minato makes a face, nodding slowly. 

The three of them lapse into silence, sitting at that kitchen table like it’s a war room. There’s an odd feeling in the air, almost as if this were some strategy meeting to discuss plans for who-even-knows, except it’s tinged with an air of this-is-kind-of-ridiculous, and a small helpless feel of but-its-also-kind-of-important, so—

Kushina peers at him, eyes squinting. Slowly, as if not to startle the blond, she comments, “Kakashi looks like he could do with some fresh air, doesn’t he?”

Minato stares at her uncomprehendingly. Orochimaru‘s other eyebrow goes up to join the first. 

“We all could, you know. We should… take a walk. Outside. Through the village, maybe. See some trees.”

“What are you saying,” Minato says. 

Orochimaru isn’t taking any of his shit—Kushina knew she liked the guy for a reason. “You know exactly what she’s saying.”

“Well, I do, but I don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to,” Kushina informs him smugly. “Sometimes you have to do the dirty work yourself, ya know. Don’t be a bitch about it, Minato!”

Minato makes a face, maybe a grimace but mixed with something that looks really whiny (honestly, what does she see in this guy?) and Orochimaru tilts his head back with an air of mute satisfaction now that a plan had been made. 

There’s a squeak of tile, and all three of their eyes snap to the kitchen doorway at once. Obito freezes under their gazes, like a deer in the sight of a predator. His hands are wringing at the hem of his shirt, and his eyes dart to all of them before settling on the floor by his feet. 

“They’re coming down the hall,” he tells them quietly. You should start talking about something else , he doesn’t say, but the adults all hear. “Is the food done yet? I-I can hear Bakashi’s stomach all the way from over here!”

His voice gets progressively louder until he’s back at normal volume, and Kakashi scowls over at him—it’s definitely more of a pout, the boy can’t glare worth a damn, all it does is make him look like an upset puppy, ugh it’s too cute—as he’s dragged bodily into the room by a chipper looking Anko, who delivers him straight to the chair next to her mentor. 

“ Food , stat,” the adorable little girl says loudly. 

Kushina wonders how in the hell the graceful and articulate Orochimaru raised such a little scoundrel. Kushina might be in love. Maybe she should have kids one day, too? She glances over at Minato speculatively, who is staring at the uncomfortable Uchiha with a tight smile that tells Kushina he’s feeling slightly proud of his student but also guilty about being proud of why he’d just done what he’d done—eh, whatever. 

Her, Minato, babies? There’s a thought. Kushina rests her chin on her fist and gives a dreamy sigh. She hopes any brat she manages to eventually push out will grow to be just as much of a riot as Anko is. 

Chapter Text

There’s something Up, Kakashi knows, when Kushina loudly hoists him out of the doze he’d fallen into on the couch (it feels like all he ever does now is sleep , and it’s not even benefiting him at all, because he’s still bone-tired every time he wakes up, no matter how long he’d been out for), and announces that they’re all Going Out. 

Where? Kakashi had asked. Why?

Because Kakashi needs fresh air, clearly! All this time being cooped up in the—disgusting, crappy, musty, horrible, please move out and get a better place soon Kashi-kun, or better yet move in with me ‘n Minato! —apartment has obviously only made his illness escalate. It was time for Kakashi to go out and drink in some good, clean Konohan oxygen!

So yeah, something Is Up, because even for Kushina this is a bit overly cheery. She’s plotting something, and Kakashi isn’t sure yet whether it’s his demise or not. 

Though she calls it a ‘walk’, he doesn’t get to walk. Everyone else does, though, which, unfair? Kakashi does get to perch on Orochimaru’s hip though, and the man is warm. And very tall. Kakashi misses it. Both being warm and being tall. It’s nice to see things from up high again, even if it does make his stomach do a queasy little flip sometimes, when he lets himself consider how far away the ground is. 

He’d been bundled up quite good before Kushina had been allowed to take him out of the apartment. Orochimaru wasn’t satisfied until Kakashi had both a long sleeve shirt with a thick sweatshirt over it, all over the oddly patched training sweatpants that Kakashi finally remembers were actually hand-me-downs from when his dad was a kid—strange, that his younger self had just stuffed them into the darkest corner of the closet instead of getting rid of them. Winter socks covered his feet, which are stuffed into rain boots that Kakashi doesn’t ever remember owning. He doesn’t think they belong to him. They’re a little big and, even with the thickness of the socks, his feet swim around in them. 

All in all, he probably looks like either a homeless urchin or a hot mess, most likely both. 

He tips himself forward and plants his chin on the snake sannin’s shoulder, pressing his entire front against the man’s chest so completely he can feel his heartbeat. It’s a soothing repetitive thump that’s entirely too easy to focus on, so he does, as he watches the stone pathway fall away behind them while the group advances forward to wherever it is they are going. 

Because this isn’t just a walk. They have a destination, he can see it in their eyes. They know exactly where they’re going, and maybe they’re taking a winding, circling, off-road journey of some sort, but everyone here is on the exact same page except Kakashi. 

Well, he does have an idea. Context clues—the tense shoulders of the adults, even if they all try and act like everything is fine, the rather abrupt decision to go take a walk outside directly after they’d been discussing something is hushed tones before he’d come out to eat—considering the situation, it really tells him all he needs to know. 

He doesn’t like it, not at all, but he does understand why they’re doing it. He understands that it’s necessary. 

A tiny part of him (a lie. It’s far bigger than he wants to admit, really) is upset about it. Upset, because he’d asked Minato-sensei not to. Upset, because now Minato-sensei is doing it anyway, and he’s going behind his back to do it, and has gotten both Kushina and Orochimaru in on it as well, keeping it from Kakashi. He’s upset about that. It’s upsetting. 

But maybe he’d be more upset if Minato was forthright about it. Or less upset? Kakashi has absolutely no idea how he’d feel, he barely knows how he feels now, except Tired. 

In any case, he’s been expecting this to happen for some time now. He’s a little surprised it’s taken so long, actually. 

Kakashi has never liked hospitals. Even as a very small child, he’d never done well with them. Check ups for a baby Kakashi Hatake were hell for his dad and the nurses, because that little brat always threw ungodly fits every time. By the time he was two the regular doctors had protocol in place to deal with his stubborn ass. 

In the future, adult Kakashi handled hospitals with far more grace. Still absolutely loathed them, of course, especially considering—well. In any case, if it wasn’t him being checked into a ward, he was much better with it all. Didn’t mind too much walking through the halls to visit his students or friends from time to time if the circumstances called for it. Many of his peers had something against hospitals as well, now that he thinks about it, but they were all adults enough to handle any visit with aplomb. Mostly. There was an escape out a window from time to time, but he liked to think those were few and far in between. 

And then there was—well, it would be last year, now, even if in his mind it was decades ago. The last time this body had visited the hospital. 

He can still kind of remember it. Not in excruciating detail, or anything, but he did know what had happened, in a clinical way. Like recalling the points of a mission report someone else had drawn up. 

After his father’s suicide, they’d taken the body to the morgue. Which, coincidentally, was in the hospital, because why not have a house of corpses directly underneath the house of healing? It probably makes sense to someone . Makes some sort of funeral process more streamlined, or something. 

When they had taken the body, they’d brought six year old Kakashi along as well, most likely because they hadn’t had anywhere else to shove him. He’d sat in the waiting room of the hospital for hours, and the only thing he still remembers from that long, excruciating timeframe is the single thought of Why am I here? What am I waiting for? He’s dead. He’s dead and that's not something you can fix, so what am I doing here?

Minato-sensei had eventually appeared, as if from thin air for all that Kakashi had been paying attention to his surroundings. He’d sat with Kakashi and joined in on uneasy silence, until the mortician had come up from downstairs, escorted by a tokubetsu jounin with a cold look in his eye, and had called them over. 

They’d taken him down, then, because they wanted him to identify the body. The body he’d spent nearly an entire night and into the early hours of the morning sitting beside as the blood had cooled, watching as rigor mortis had set in. It didn’t seem to matter to them that it was clearly identifiable as Sakumo Hatake to anyone who‘d picked up a newspaper, or that this body had been taken right out of Sakumo Hatake’s home. No, they needed the man’s son, just to make sure. Just to make certain .

Minato-sensei had been absolutely furious. It was this first of only a very small handful of moments that Kakashi had ever in his life seen the man truly enraged. He’d argued against them, attempted to pull rank, had called it unjust, a cruel and unusual punishment. But then a superior had come in and forced him to comply. Said it was protocol . Said there was nothing else to be done about it. 

Kakashi doesn’t exactly remember much after that. He can faintly recall the endless lines of cold metal doors that were set into the walls of the morgue. He can recall the room being absolutely stifling, hard to breath in. And then he remembers opening his eyes and being in Minato and Kushina’s house.  

“Kakashi?”

He’s pressing his face into the sharp edge of Orochimaru’s shoulder, with enough pressure to make spots appear behind his eyelids. He can feel the small tremors that are running through his body, proof that the dark turn that his thoughts have taken actually are affecting him despite how he’s been trying to pretend the opposite. He carefully lifts his head and blinks the static away from his vision, giving a concerned Minato a bleary look. 

“Sensei.”

Minato-sensei’s shoulder tense under his scrutiny. Kakashi narrows his eyes. 

“Yes, Kakashi?”

Better to just... make sure. “Where. Are we going?”

Orochimaru’s pace slows a bit, not that he’d been going particularly quickly to begin with. For some reason, this makes the hair stand up on the back of Kakashi’s neck and arms. 

Minato glances to the side, off to where Kushina’s dragging Obito by the arm ahead of them. She’s got baby Anko perched up on her shoulders. Obito looks like he’s grumbling, but at the same time doesn’t seem to entirely mind the rough housing, listening with one ear as Anko points out different trees and plants they pass by on the pathway, and lists what types of poisons can be made from them with a little imagination. 

Kakashi drags his gaze back to his teacher, to see the usually sharp blue eyes aimed down at his feet. 

“Sensei.”

Minato winces, looking up guiltily. Despite already knowing what the answer is going to be, alarm bells are ringing inside Kakashi’s head. 

“Umm… well—Kakashi, we’re all just really worried about you? Whatever this is, it’s bad, and it’s not getting any better—actually, it’s getting worse . We just thought—well, we really need to get you looked at, by a professional, who actually knows what they’re doing, and—“

“You’re taking me to the hospital,” Kakashi nearly demands for clarification. He pushes himself upright and looks to Orochimaru, who just tips his head forward, silently acquiescing. 

Minato throws the man a betrayed look, but Kakashi is already attempting to wriggle his way out of the snake sannin’s suddenly unrelenting grip. Just because he acknowledges the fact that the hospital is probably a good idea for him right now, doesn’t mean he’s just going to lie down and roll over and let it happen. 

“Ah—Kakashi—“ 

Minato jerks forward, arms out to grab him should he actually manage to escape, but Orochimaru’s arms are like steel bars, trapping him in place. It doesn’t help that Kakashi’s own strength has been sapped, and he’s about as strong as a wet piece of paper thrown out into the wind, but he won’t let that stop him. The hospital isn’t Kakashi’s favorite place, no, it’s never been, and unless he is absolutely dying for complete certain, he refuses to step foot in the same place that—

He reaches out, around Orochimaru’s head, and slaps an open hand to the space between the man’s shoulders. He directs his meager chakra output to the center of his palm, thinks about the chidori, and lets loose the lightning. 

Perhaps it’s a good thing he’s so weak, because there’s no way he’d have been able to control the wild fluctuations of his chakra nature had he been at full strength, even at this age. He’s much too tired and wound up and nauseated. It does its job though—the shock of the surge causes Orochimaru’s arms to spring open, and Kakashi drops to the ground, landing not-so gracefully on his heel. It’s almost worth the suddenly all-consuming agony that he suddenly feels lighting aflame along his chakra pathways, to hear the normally so composed sannin actually yelp. 

“ Ouch ,” Kakashi whines , but nonetheless springs forward to get away. 

Except he doesn’t, because he’s scooped up within the next second by a pair of arms decorated in jounin blues. 

“I’m sorry, Kakashi,” Minato says, and he does look perfectly upset about it all. Kakashi just tips himself forward to bury his face into Minato’s neck and whines again, because his entire body feels like he’s thrown himself into a pool of the Kyuubi’s poisonous chakra. His stomach jolts queasily, his lungs are on fire, and each and every one of his limbs feels like they’re dripping in molten metal. 

“ Ow ,” he sniffles, unable to do anything else. It’s almost like his chakra has pulled a muscle, except it’s all of his chakra, at once, and it isn’t a pulled muscle but torn ligaments, all of the ligaments everywhere, completely shredded, and ow , it fucking hurts , why did he just do that?

A cold hand placed itself against the back of his neck, sitting there like ice, and Kakashi whines again as an amateur mednin technique washes over him. 

It’s not Sakura. Kakashi wishes it were Sakura. If it was Sakura, he’d be fixed already. But it’s not, it can’t be. It can never be Sakura again. 

“Lets go,” says Kushina, who’s suddenly right beside them, at Minato’s shoulder. “Lets go now.”

Kakashi turns his head just barely enough to see Anko and Obito at either side of the redheaded kunoichi, staring up at him with wide, grim eyes.  

Kakashi squeezes his eyes shut and presses his entire face into his teacher’s neck, shakily attempting to listen to the quiet, somewhat nervous hum reverberating through Minato’s throat. Maybe it’s trying to be soothing. Kakashi wants it be soothing. It doesn’t really work. 

Of course, the universe still has a shitty sense of humor, and as usual Kakashi’s life seems to be the butt of its latest joke. 

“Hey there!” The brown-haired man in the white coat says to them with a winning smile. “I’m Doctor Yakushi, I’ll be visiting with you today and doing some checks to find out what the problem seems to be.”

At least Orochimaru seems unimpressed—Kakashi can always count on him to be the voice of reason. “The problem, I would think, is quite clear.”

Minato shushes him, reaching out without looking to put a quieting hand on the man’s arm. His attention is so fully on the doctor that he misses the offended look the snake Sannin gives him for this choice of action. Kakashi watches them silently, safe on Minato’s lap, presses up against his chest and head turned to the side so he can see. His body isn’t ablaze any more, the feeling died down just before they reached the hospital, but there’s a sort of distant, background sensation, staticky and filled with an odd kind of anxiety. Like the calm before the storm. Kakashi shudders and presses himself further against his teacher. He wishes this was all over already. He’s so fucking sick of being sick. 

Dr. Yakushi only smiles again, wider somehow than the first. Unlike his eventual-adoptive son, it doesn’t make him seem any less genuine. The man truly doesn’t seem to have anything to hide. 

To a shinobi, however, that’s all a sign that there is something there, isn’t it? Hidden underneath? Kakashi glances at Orochimaru’s narrowed eyes and feels vindicated, but one look at Minato’s attentive and unchanging open expression brings doubt. 

Maybe Minato-sensei is a bit more dense than Kakashi remembers him being? He wishes Kushina had stayed, instead of taking Obito and Anko to a training ground near the hospital to wait out the appointment—if only so she could hit Minato upside the head for Kakashi. She always had been the one to observe everything Minato missed. 

“Could you begin by listing off his symptoms? In the meantime, Hatake-kun, I’m going to check your vitals. Is that alright with you?”

“It’s not like it’ll kill me,” Kakashi mutters, and receives a stern poke in the arm from his sensei. 

He glances up at the smiling doctor dubiously, before glancing away again. He’s not Sakura either. For some reason, despite already knowing , when they’d entered the hospital doors, something inside his chest had been hoping…. 

No. 

Dr. Yakushi takes his grouchiness as an invitation, irritatingly enough, and comes forward to bend over him and press the end of his stethoscope against the front of his sweatshirt, before pulling back abruptly. 

“I’m going to have to ask you to take the jacket off,” he says apologetically. “It makes it harder to hear.”

“Whatever,” Kakashi says, and lifts his arms up into the air in surrender when Minato stands up and looks over him like some foreboding enemy. 

He lets his sensei gently wrestle the article of clothing over his head, and then settled back down against the examination bed, watching sullenly as Minato folds up his trusty warmth-provider. He’s cold now. He shivers when Dr. Yakushi then presses the metal of the stethoscope against his chest, despite the fact that there’s still a nice sturdy t-shirt between it and him. The medic nin frowns, tilting his head toward Minato as the man rambles on about Kakashi’s latest experience with illness. 

“—he’s always very dizzy, when he does have enough energy to walk he stumbles around like—well, you know. As if his equilibrium is completely shot. He mostly just complains about feeling nauseous and cold all the time, that hasn’t really let up at all—“

Kakashi glances around at the room from the corner of his eye, taking in the helpful medical posters and diagrams pinned up on the white, white walls and the cold, metal, sterile furniture. His gaze lands on Orochimaru, who’s planted himself in the chair in the corner of the examination room, somehow making it seem like he’s lounging in the absolute height of luxury even though Kakashi knows from personal experience that those steel chairs are contraptions straight out of the lowest pit of the torture chambers of hell itself. He finds a small amount of comfort in the fact that the snake sannin’s gaze roams the room holding just as much disdain as Kakashi can feel in his heart for it. 

Also, it maybe makes him feel a little better, knowing that Orochimaru obviously would rather not be here, but still is despite that. 

Is this Kakashi being selfish? Maybe it is. Should he feel guilty for feeling the tiniest bit pleased over this? He’s… not sure, but he is . 

Not pleased enough to get over the fact that he’s in the one building in Konoha he might hate more than the Root Headquarters, barring perhaps his own family compound. 

The kids had made it better. Slowly, over time, it had been better. 

But his kids aren’t here. 

“I see,” Dr. Yakushi murmurs as he scribbles down the numbers of Kakashi’s blood pressure onto a notepad he has set against his knee. He stares down at them for a moment, before looking up with a small, miniscule frown of the most passive concern. 

“This is a bit low… how has he been eating? Numbers like this can be caused by several factors, but the one I can think of that’s most relevant to the circumstance is that he’s not getting the right amount of nutrients in his diet—“

“Food?” Kakashi says, and then adds with a scrunch if his nose, “bleh.”

Dr. Yakushi pauses, turning to stare at him. “I’m sorry?”

“Kakashi—“

He cuts off his teacher with a quiet harrumph. “No thanks,” he says, and smooshes his face against Minato’s chest. The man looks like he wants to shake him and demand he behave, but is too hesitant to possibly upset his constantly roiling stomach further. 

“Well, I don't think that attitude is going to help you get better,” Dr. Yakushi says, unnecessarily, looking just faintly unsure. “But a lack of appetite is certainly another symptom to make note of—“ and he scribbled something else onto his notepad in completely unintelligible kanji, as anyone in the medical field does. 

Sakura did it too. Her penmanship used to have been so neat, so perfect, right up until she entered the mentorship with Tsunade. Bad handwriting must be contagious amongst those of the medical world. 

Kakashi turns his head to exchange a glance with Orochimaru, who nods once and then rolls his eyes, just barely —it’s startling enough that Kakashi isn't able to stop the grin that sparks across his face. 

Minato shakes his head slowly in disbelievement as he watches them. He looks like he’s starting to regret bringing either of them here despite the fact that it was apparently necessary for Kakashi’s continued health. 

“ Kami-sama ,” the blonde breaths, and then straightens back up to smile a little lopsidedly at the still bemused Doctor. 

“No, he hasn’t really been eating regularly. We've all been trying to get him to eat as much as he’s able to when he’s awake, but a lot of the time he isn’t really up for anything that’s meal-sized.”

“He’s been sleeping a lot?” Another scribble. 

“Oh, all the time. He’ll sleep—he’ll wake up, try and eat, then try and get up and move around but usually that only lasts for a few minutes before he’s out of steam and takes another nap.”

“Hmm.” Scribble. “And these naps, how long would you say they last for?”

Minato squints up at the ceiling. “Depends. When I say naps , what I really mean is he passes out and stays that way for a good few hours. Sometimes they’ll only last for about fifteen minutes, but when he’s really down and out, he’ll stay there for most of the day.”

“The longest I’ve clocked was around eighteen hours,” Orochiaru reports, offhandedly, and Kakashi puns him with an narrow-eyed look. The man meets his eye, completely unrepentant, and Kakashi huffs. “There is also, of course, the problem with his circulation.”

“Problem?” Yakushi looks up, pen pausing on paper. 

The Sannin nods, inky hair sifting mesmerizingly down from his shoulder. It makes Kakashi kind of dizzy just looking at it, but at the same time he can’t look away. “It seems to be a prevailing issue with the illness. He constantly complains of being cold and, aside from the fever, it’s almost as if his body is having trouble producing its ow heat.”

“Hmmm... I see ...” Dr. Yakushi scribbles one last indecipherable note on the pad and then stands up from the rolling stool. “I’d like to run a few scans, see what the state of the circulatory system is and how the chakra pathways are interacting before I say anything definite.”

“Do you have a guess, at least?” Minato-sensei asks hopefully, and Kakashi shrinks down against the man’s chest, feeling horrible—clearly, Minato wants this ordeal to be over just as much as Kakashi does. He wants things back to normal too—just…. Kakashi knows that won’t be possible, sickness or not. 

He isn’t sure how to tell his teacher that things won’t ever be the same as they once were. 

Kakashi isn’t even sure if he wants them to be. 

“I’m sorry, I can’t say anything until I get a look at the scan,” Dr. Yakushi says apologetically. 

“No, I know,” Minato acquiesces. 

Then, he turns to Kakashi. “You okay?”

“Yes,” Kakashi says around the lump on his throat. He tries to swallow it down, gags, and presses his cheek against his teacher’s warm collar. 

“Right,” Minato replies, uneasily.

“This will just be a quick scan using chakra, Hatake-kun,” Yakushi assures, pulling two rubber gloves, seemingly out of nowhere, and entombing his hands inside them. “We’re just going to have a look at how well your blood is flowing, see if we can find anything that might be causing the chill, and go from there.”

“My favorite pastime,” Kakashi drawls slowly, because if he doesn’t have sarcasm then what does he have going for him here? 

Minato gives him a Look, though, and Kakashi ducks his head mulishly. Orochimaru looks faintly amused, though, so he counts that as a win. 

Yakushi directs Kakashi onto the examination bed proper. He has to leave Minato-sensei’s lap, so it’s not exactly ideal, but Kakashi tugs on the strings in the hood of the oversized sweatshirt until it bunches up around his neck like some sort of misshapen scarf, and decides he’ll have to just make do with that for now. 

Yakushi has him lift the sweatshirt though, so he can have closer contact with his chakra that thrums just under the skin, and the man’s gloves are fucking freezing . A shudder wracks Kakashi’s body, and he ignores the doctor’s murmured apology to glare scathingly up at the ceiling, a quiet moan of unhappiness escaping his lips. 

There’s the telltale green light of a medical technique that washes over him, and Kakashi hates all this even more, because it’s not Sakura. Of course it wasn’t. He knows it wouldn’t be. 

Fuck. He wants Sakura . She’s the only one Kakashi ever really and fully trusted with the maintenance of his health. She’s family . This guy isn’t. 

Well. 

Sakura… was family. 

Minato’s face poked into his vision after a few moments. There’s a crinkled between his brows and he’s worrying at his bottom lip with his teeth. 

“You holding in there alright?” He asks, and Kakashi blinks a few times before he realizes there are tears at the corners of his eyes. 

“I’m fine,” he says, and it comes out a little bit raspier than he intended. His teacher doesn’t look convinced at all. Kakashi takes in a rattling breath, and in the next second let’s loose a long string of harsh coughs that makes spots dance before his eyes. Yay. 

Before Minato can reply, the green light cuts off rather abruptly, and they both turn to look at the doctor, who’s frowning. 

“Yakushi-sensei?” Minato asks. 

“Well,” the man starts, and then shakes his head. “One moment… that can’t be right….”

Minato’s brows get a little bit closer together, a little more pinched, and Kakashi just looks up at the ceiling again. This is it , and small, entirely irrational, panicked part of him wails dramatically. This is where they find out I traveleved through fucking time, and that I’m actually my grown ass adult self shoved into a teeny tiny seven year old body, because—because that’s totally the logically conclusion anyone would come to . 

Anyone who wasn’t Kakashi, of course. Kakashi, who has fought dead men come back to life alongside chakra beasts of legend, who has watched his entire village be utterly cataclysmicaly destroyed, only for every single resulting casualty to be reversed in the spa of a few moments—who has had two of his students travel to a parallel fucking dimension like it was a weird sort of spring vacation destination, for kami’s sake. 

This was just another Tuesday for him, at this point. 

Except the Tuesday’s been going on for a good week now and hasn’t ended, so doesn’t that just make it his life, now?

Dr. Yakushi shakes his head slowly. He sits back in his chair for a moment, looking thoughtful. 

“That’s… not right,” he says, and then runs chakra-enveloped hands over Kakashi once again. It only makes his frown deeper. 

Minato jolts up from his seat beside the table. “What is it, what’s wrong?”

Orochimaru leans back in the steel hospital chair and crosses his arms. 

The mednin looks up. “Have any of you scanned him since he’s been sick? Did you notice anything… off?”

Minato runs an anxious hand through wild blind locks. “Uh, I’m not the best at it. I know enough to get back with patching people up in the field but…” he shrugs. “It didn’t really occur to me to do it on someone who’s sick.”

“I’ve conducted a few,” Orochimaru admits immediately after. Because of course he had. “I’m not a medic nin myself, but I’ve noticed some concerning anomalies in the differentiating chakra levels. I have a hypothesis as to what they might mean, and I’ve been doing a bit of studying on the matter with varying and inconclusive results. It is not necessarily my field of expertise.”

“Could you describe the anomalies to me?” The doctor asks distractedly, wheeling back in his chair to poke at his notebook with a pen, writing in that detached yet furious way only people in the medical field can. 

Orochimaru opens his mouth to reply, and then pauses. A pensive frown comes across his face. 

“I… haven’t had the opportunity to put it into words, yet. At most, I would likely describe it as… his chakra doesn’t fit together quite right. To my observations, it seems it had been perfectly fine before, but something must have happened to cause there to be some sort of disruptive shift… I just haven’t been able to pinpoint what , exactly.” He says, looking displeased at the fact. 

Yakushi nods along, running another scan over Kakashi while he listens. Kakashi wish he’d hurry up and get it over with already—his hands are cold, the gloves make them even colder , and if Kakashi doesn’t get to put his big comfy sweatshirt back in its rightful place soon , he may just end up acting his age for once and throwing a godawful tantrum. 

Yakushi does a couple more scans, just to be sure of whatever results he was getting from them—can’t be much different from the first time, Kakashi thinks with great annoyance—and then allows him to sit up, which Kakashi does with much gusto, yanking his hoodie up over his head for good measure. 

“I’d like to confer with a few of my colleagues on this,” Yakushi says seriously. “I have to say… I’ve never seen anything like this before, in all my years working here.”

Kakashi’s hands drop into his lap. 

“Yes, of course,” Minato says shakily. He reaches up and runs his hand through his hair again, mussing up the already messy blond locks. “Do we…”

“Yes, please stay here, I’ll only be a few minutes. If it takes any longer, I’ll send a nurse to let you know.”

“Alright… thank you.”

“I’ll be right back,” Yakushi says, and is closing the door behind him in the next moment with a sharp, metallic click. 

It sounds final, somehow. Something churns chaotically from within Kakashi’s stomach, eating away at the lining of it with sharp, needle-like teeth. 

A hand slots itself against the middle of his back, slightly grounding but not enough to calm the anxious energy currently kicking up a fuss inside Kakashi’s chest. 

“Hey, Kakashi, are you—“

“Gonna—“ Kakashi says, and then whines lowly, shoving himself off the examination table, one arm coiled around his stomach a bit too tightly. 

Orochimaru reaches out with a foot and kicks the wastebasket toward him with all the speed of a lightning shinobi, and Kakashi nearly shoves his entire head into it when he collapses over it if Minato didn’t catch him by the upper arm and gently lower him to the floor. 

It’s mostly just bile that comes up, because for all the ramen Kushina had brought him, Kakashi had not been able to eat more than a few bites before he’d been forced to proclaim himself full—and thank Kami for that. Puking his guts out wasn’t exactly what he’d call a party, but it was worse on an actual full stomach. 

A nice warm hand brushes his bangs back from where they’ve plaster themselves to his forehead. Longer fingers, longer nails—Orochimaru. 

“I’m… I’m going to see if I can find a nurse,” Minato says quietly from across the room, by the door. “Maybe they have something they can give him for that.”

The snake Sannin makes an affirmative noise, gathering Kakashi’s shaking form up and holding him against his side and over the basket just in case there was any more to come. The door clicks shut behind his teacher, quieter this time, but it still sounded like death’s door’s closing in on him. Kakashi makes a low sound in the back of his throat that catches on his breath halfway through, and leans forward until his face bumps into Orochimaru’s shoulder. 

“I’m cold,” he moans wretchedly, feeling like the world was falling out from underneath him. The jounin’s unshakable grip is the only thing keeping him in place. “I wanna take a bath.”

“We’ll draw one up for you when we get back to the apartment,” is the answer, calm and level. Kakashi wishes he felt that way himself. 

He curls up around Orochimaru’s knee. “I don’t want the doctor to come back,” he mumbles. 

The man just continues to run his hand through Kakashi’s hair, not saying another word. 

Chapter Text

The doctor comes back anyway, within fifteen minutes—longer than just the few he’s claimed it would take. It’s a slight annoyance that piles itself on top of everything else Kakashi is currently dealing with. 

Minato had returned ten minutes prior with a male nurse who had administered some anti-congestion medication to him, along with something else that’s suppose to help with the nausea he’s experiencing, but it has yet to kick in. The nurse said about half an hour before it would start working on curbing the symptoms. Meanwhile, he’s curled himself up on Orochimaru’s knee and has both hands pressed over his ears in an attempt to block out the world. It makes his head feel even more stuffed with cotton than it has been, but the quiet helps. Somewhat. At least he can’t hear the nervous tapping of his sensei’s foot. It’s loud and echoes in the otherwise silent room, and it was driving Kakashi crazy. 

He sees the door finally open out of the corner of his eye, and the dread that’s been pooling in his stomach for the last half hour suddenly climbs up his throat, so abruptly that he almost thinks he’s about to hurl again. He jolts, but stays where he is when he realizes it’s not actually bile. Thank kami—he’s so tired of puking his guts out. There’s an ever-present foul taste at the back of his throat these days because of it. 

“Namikaze-san,” the medical practitioner says quietly. It still manages to almost echoe in the small room. “I’ve presented my findings to my colleagues. If you could come with me for a moment, there’s some things I’d like to go over with you, as Hatake-kun’s guardian.”

“Did you find out what’s wrong with him?” Minato asks. 

Dr. Yakushi hesitates, presses his lips into a line and ends up not saying anything in reply, glancing over at Kakashi with a frown. He doesn’t need to, his face says it all, and the dread swirling sickenly around Kakashi throat plunged down again like a cannonball into his gut. 

The furrow in between Minato’s brow nearly over takes his face, and the jounin slowly stands up from the chair he’d plopped himself down into ten minutes prior. He reaches out to gently ruffle Kakashi’s hair on his way past, but then exits the room with the doctor without saying anything to him. 

Kakashi almost wished he had. It may be childish of him, but he wishes Minato had tried to comfort him with words. Even if they would have been baseless or futile. 

A surge of guilt joins the dread. He shouldn’t be longing for that. He’s a goddamn adult. He should be past all this. He doesn’t need it. He shouldn’t want it. 

He opens his eyes to find Orochimaru’s staring down at him with a raised eyebrow. Other than that, the man’s expression is irritatingly unreadable, as it usually tends to be. Orochimaru’s glances pointedly at the wastebasket sitting at his feet, and then back to Kakashi. He raises the other brow, and Kakashi shakes his head quietly. 

They both sit there in silence for a moment, together. The only noise in the room is the ticking of the clock that hangs above the closed door. It’s repetitive and endless and hearing it makes Kakashi’s throat close and he feels like he wants to throw something. Preferably the clock, out the window perhaps. It will be therapeutic. And isn’t that what hospitals are all about? 

Eventually, he hand that’s pressed against his back moves, sliding back and forth and up and down in a slow circle, already warmth, and the sannin bends over him slightly. 

“Konoha has some of the best and brightest mednin in all the elemental nations,” Orochimaru’s says. “If anyone can find out what this is, it will be them.”

Something in Kakashi’s chest relaxes just slightly. 

If, a part of his brain parrots cruelly, but this wasn’t a meaningless platitude of any sort. This was a fact. And despite the otherworldliness of his illness that only Kakashi knows of, which will of course most likely entirely skew whatever hypothesis the doctors might come across, Orochimaru is right. Of all the people in the world, the only ones with the skills to possibly find a cure for his time travel-born disease are the mednin of Konoha. 

Not to say Kakashi thinks they will find anything. But it’s comforting nonetheless. There is, after all, always the possibility. Especially if it’s Konoha. Just look at the future he’d come from. All sorts of crazy, almost-magical, unbelievable shit had happened, and not just to Kakashi. 

Maybe he’ll live, maybe not. 

Isn’t that… isn’t that how it always is? Maybe he’ll survive this mission. Maybe not. It’s all up to chance, really. 

And skill, Kakashi tells himself. Because, honestly, if you send a ninja on a mission too high above their rank, their chances of survival are astronomically low compared to if they’d been matched with a mission closer to their skill level. 

With this…. It doesn’t matter how hard Kakashi’s ever trained, how talented a ninja he is, how amazing his family techniques or mental prowess is. Bottom of the class or pet prodigy, an illness from beyond what life can normally give someone will still kill them if it really wants to. 

He tilts himself forward and buries his face in Orochimaru’s shoulder. The hand keeps rubbing circles into his back, and with his too-big sweaters and winter socks stuffed in rubber boots, Kakashi almost feels warm. 

Fifteen minutes later, Kakashi feels like they’ve been sitting there for hours, when the door slowly creeps open again, and instead of it being ha sensei like Kakashi hopes, a nurse pops her head in to peek at them, and then smiles when she sees them there. It’s a bit too big of a smile. It stretches a little too widely across her face to feel real. 

Well, no one ever lauded mednin for their customer service or shining bedside behavior. 

“Hatake Kakashi? We were just looking over your files and noticed some discrepancies—it seems you haven’t had your annual flu shot yet. I’ve brought it here with me to administer, if you’d just sit there on the bed ...”

Orochimaru’s graces the nurse with a narrow stare, and for a moment doesn’t move. Kakashi blinks blearily at the nurse, and sighs. He slowly draws himself away from the sannin’s comfortable warmth, places his feet onto the linoleum floor with twin quiet thuds, and forces his aching body to make its way over to the unfortunately elevated padded table. Unfortunately, because it was taller than he was. 

He hates being short. 

He hates being sick even more, however, and if he got a flu on top of this entire fucking mess? A flu? That’d be the straw that broke the camel’s back for absolute certainty. He’s already miserable enough. 

The nurse chuckles a little bit, and even that sounds plastic somehow. She leans down and hooks her hands under his armpits to gently lift him up onto the table, and then turns to prepare the flu shot at the nearby work station, not noticing how he’s stiffened.

The nurse helps him roll up the sleeve of the sweatshirt—it takes a few times folded in on itself, because it’s so baggy, and he cringes as cold air brushes across his now bare arm. With swift hands, she ties a tourniquet above his elbow and wipes a pad over the inside of his arm. It’s soaked in a sharp, alcoholic-smelling solution that tickles his nose and makes him want to sneeze. 

He watches with dull eyes as the nurse tests the syringe over the sink a few times, squirting clear liquid through the tip, before turning with a smile. 

“Alright,” she says, approaching him with the quick yet somehow unhurried steps of someone who works in the medical field. “Now, it’ll just be a quick prick, and then you’ll be good to go for another y—“

“What’s going on?”

Kakashi blinks in unison with the nurse, and they both turn toward the door. He hadn’t heard it open, but in its threshold stands Minato-sensei, with a furrowed brow and lips tilted downward, looking mightily confused and somewhat alarmed. 

In the chair by the door, Orochimaru straightens, a strange quality of stiffness leaving his shoulders at the entrance of his fellow jounin. He gets up fluidly from his chair to stand beside the blonde, and crosses his arms.

“I was just—“

“Apparently Kakashi-kun is late for his flu shot,” the sannin drawls, and immediately turns to grace Minato with a raised brow, as if in order to confirm. 

Minato is shaking his head before the man even finishes speaking. He steps fully into the room and pins the nurse with a bewildered look. 

“I don’t know what gave you that idea, but you need to check his records before you do something like this. Kakashi already got his flu shot this year.”

The nurse goes still. For a moment Kakashi thinks she wont move at all, before her eyes widen and a shocked look overcomes her face. “But, we did check his records, they said he hadn’t—“

“Then the records are incorrect,” Minato says severely. “I was there , it was only three months ago.”

An irritated look graces his sensei’s face as the man stalks forward and reaches out to swiftly untie the tourniquet from Kakashi’s arm. Kakashi just stares up at his sensei, surprised. Across the room, Orochimaru hasn’t moved, arms still crossed, but he looks smug, almost. 

The nurse frowns. “I’m sorry,” she says primly, and there it is again. The quality of her words sounds… rehearsed, almost. “His records said nothing about this year. I was just sent down to cover the loose ends.”

Must be a nurse thing. Kakashi knows they deal with all sorts of uncooperative ninja day in and day out, so he doesn’t fault her for feeling tired at this latest confrontation. Kami knows the mednin all need to get some rest. Peacetime or not, the ninja still take all sorts of risks on their missions. 

It’s kind of an ingrained habit that sticks around even outside of a war. 

Wait , Kakashi blinks. This isn’t peace time . He’s back in time, the war hasn’t ended yet. It’s still going on. 

He... forgot. 

He gives himself a slight shake, focusing on the weary look on the nurse’s face. There are dark circles, but they aren’t as pronounced as Kakashi expects them to be. She must be wearing makeup. 

“Sensei,” he reaches out and tugs on the man’s sleeve, interrupting whatever it was he’d been about to say. 

Minato looks down at him, frown still present on his face. “Kakashi?”

“It’s okay,” he says, reaching out to roll down the sleeve of his hoodie again. He sighs at the faint feeling of warmth it provides now that his arm is no longer bared to the air. “I forgot.”

“You forgot?”

What is he, a parrot? “Yes. I didn’t remember getting the shot already.” 

He’s seven. He hasn’t seen his own medical records since Sakura forcefully took over managing his health. A real mother hen, that girl. 

He misses her. If she’d been here something like this would have never happened, and sensei wouldn’t have that upset look on his face. 

His words do nothing to fix it, either—a shadow of concern flits across Minato’s frown, and the man pulls back to nod toward the nurse. 

“Go back and have them correct the records,” he says, and gives her the exact date of Kakashi’s vaccine administration. Off the top of his head. Kakashi blinks. 

Does Minato-sensei have an eidetic memory, and he just never remembered that in the future? No, Minato forgot stuff all the time. Why would he remember something like this, that he could instantly recall it?

Orochimaru twists the handle of the door and pulls it open. He nods toward the open threshold. 

“Out you go,” he says, and the nurse gives him a narrow look before ducking out of the room without another word. He shuts it behind her, and immediately turns to the pensive-looking Minato.

“What did the good doctor have to say?”

Oh, right. Kakashi turns to stare up at his sensei again, wondering the same thing. 

The frown turns into a worried scowl. “They—“

He pauses, and looks down at Kakashi. The skin between his sensei’s eyebrows is seeing a lot of exercise today, Kakashi thinks. 

“They aren’t sure what it is,” Minato continues, quieter, dejectedly. “They’ve got a lot of theories, and they’d like to see him later on for further testing so they can maybe—but they don’t know.” He shakes his head. “They’ve got nothing.”

Kakashi exhales. 

“No hypotheses at all?” Orochimaru frowns. 

“They know it’s got something to do with his chakra—that it’s… flowing weirdly, or something.” Minato looks over at the sannin, a defeated look crossing his face. “I’m sorry, you’d probably have understood it all a lot better than me—I should have brought you with me and let him talk to you —“

Orochimaru shakes his head. “They can’t have theorized anything I myself haven’t considered already—medical and scientific minds tend to think very much alike, when it comes to situations such as this. 

Kakashi balls up the ends of the sweatshirt’s sleeves in his hands, clenching them inside his fists. Little fists. Because he’s a child. 

That’s it then, he realizes. He’s going to die. 

Kakashi was never meant to come here, to this time, to this body, he suddenly knows with a startling clarity. People aren’t meant to traverse the time stream like it's merely a jaunt through the forest. He wasn’t meant to be here. He must be getting— evicted , somehow. 

No wonder he doesn’t feel right. Staticky. Uncomfortable. Not fitting right in his own skin. This isn’t his skin—this is his skin from decades past. He’s not suppose to be here. 

He’s going to die. He’s going to fail. 

“The nurse from before—the guy one—he got the doctor to prescribe some anti-congestion and fever-reducers to help with the symptoms. There’s some other things here too,” Minato is saying, lifting a hand full of pill bottles. The rattle like maracas as he moves them. “But I can’t pronounce them. I would’ve been back sooner but I went down to the pharmacy to pick them up after I met with Yakushi-sensei.”

Orochimaru nods. “Give him some now then—let me look at the dosage instructions. He already took the anti congestion.... This one is for the nausea, he took that one, as well. You’ll have to write down when he takes each if they’ll  have different timeframes.”

“Oh, good idea….”

Kakashi is in a daze for the next fifteen minutes, not really spatially aware of what’s going on. He feels trapped inside his own head, acidic panicked clawing up his throat. The ends of his limbs are all trembling, shaky like he’s got too much energy in them but the rest of him feels bone-tired. He reaches out for the little plastic cup Minato-sensei presses into his hands, but has to be nudged a few times before he sees the handful of capsules and pills being handed to him. 

He blinks up at Minato blearily. 

“Kakashi, you have to take these. They’ll help you feel better.”

“Okay,” he says, but doesn’t move. 

Minato gives a slightly-stressed sigh, and bends down to grab one of Kakashi’s hands. He holds it open, and Kakashi watches the pile of medication tumble down into his palm from his sensei’s like a bunch of tiny pebbles. 

His fuzzy brain jumps a little, and suddenly he can remember with absolute clarity that time when he’d been four years old, when his father had taken him on a camping trip outside the village. They’d sat side by side on the bank of a peacefully trickling stream, watching the fish swim by, not even trying to catch any, because his father had been tired of seeing death. The older Hatake had leaned over, scooped up a handful of the tiny, gravel-like river stones, and poured them out like a waterfall into Kakashi’s eagerly waiting hands. They’d been all sorts of colors, the sunlight glinting off the shinier spots. Kakashi had exclaimed that he liked rocks. It had made his father laugh. 

“I’m tired,” he chokes out, squeezing his eyes shut against the stinging that suddenly plagues them. 

“We’ll go back home in just a second, Kakashi,” Minato says soothingly, voice hushed. He reaches up and presses back his bangs with a gentle hand. “Let’s take the medicine first and—“

“It’s not home ,” Kakashi presses out, thinking about his little, shabby apartment. 

It had never been home, not even the first time around. But every time he’d even thought of the compound, red flashed across his vision, and it’s one of the only things Kakashi can remember clearly from when he’d been little. The flashbacks. Curling up in the closet with one of his dad’s old sweaters and crying. Being too emotionally exhausted to even deal with other people when he did go outside the flat. 

“Let’s take the medicine first,” Minato repeats, but now he just looks sad. “And then we can go. Okay?”

Kakashi shoves the handful of pills into his mouth before Minato can stop him, and downs the cup of water like it’s a shot. Some of the capsules don’t go down with the first swallow—he seven , he can’t quite swallow that many in one go like he could as an adult, shit—and Minato silently takes the cup from him and gets up to go refill it. 

There’s a knock at the door. Orochimaru eyes the two of them closely for a moment, before turning and opening the door just a crack to peek out at their visitor. 

“Orochimaru-sama? Summons for you.”

The man pauses, and then tsks loudly, pulling the door open all the way. 

“May I ask from who, or is that classified .” He says, not quite kindly, but still somehow polite. 

The messenger ninja on the other side of the door visibly cringes in on himself. He holds out a little orange-colored scroll to the irate sannin.

“From the Hokage himself,” he says. “Your eyes only.”

Orochimaru pauses at the scroll. He reaches out to grab it, and pulls it open without hesitation to read. 

Orange, Kakashi thinks dully. He takes the second cup from his teacher and gulps down the rest of the pills—their coatings has started to dissolve on his tongue, tasting rancid and sharply unpleasant. Orange for semi-urgent, come ASAP. 

“I see,” Orochimaru says, and that’s a different voice than Kakashi has become used to since meeting the man back in the graveyard all those—days. It feels like months, somehow—ago. It sounds more lifeless, but firmer. Straight to the chase, steely. Commanding. Ninja on a mission. 

A mission. 

“I’m afraid I won’t be going back with you two,” Orochimaru apologizes in his own way as he looks to Minato without an expression. 

Minato nods. “I understand.” He turns to Kakashi. “I’m going to go make sure that nurse fixes your shot records like I told her, and then we can go. Will you be okay here by yourself?”

Kakashi’s head bobs up and down of its own accord. “Yes, fine,” he hears his voice say. 

Minato hesitates. He places a hand on top of Kakashi’s hair, and gives it a few ruffles. For a second, he looks like he’s about to change his mind, follow up with the nurse later and just bundle Kakashi up and take him back to the apartment right then. Kakashi almost wishes he will. It feels like a self-centred desire.

But then Minato gains this determined set to his jaw, and Kakashi lies to himself about it being—fine. Just fine.  

“I’ll be right back,” he says, decidedly, and turns to exit the room along with Orochimaru. 

Kakashi feels like he’s being left to drown alone. It’s silly. 

The door shuts behind the three ninja, closing him in the room by himself, and Kakashi lets himself slide off of the exam table. His throat feels too full, after trying to down so many pills at once, and he swallows. Brings up a hand to rub at his neck. Swallows again. Wishes he had some gloves on. His hands are cold. 

He pulls himself up onto the window ledge, pushing the glass panel up with a burst of strength that is born from the ever-present panic clawing at his chest. The wind outside ruffles his hair as he steps out into the roof tiles. He leans forward, unconsciously forming a handsign with numb fingertips. 

He’s not in the exam room when Minato-sensei returns. 

Chapter Text

Despite it being sunny, all Obito feels is chilly, even with the jacket he’d rushed home just to throw on before everyone left.

He feels a little slighted, being left out here in the park, and not into the hospital while they find out what the hell is going on with Bakashi—if they fix it, are they even going to tell Obito? Will he and Rin ever even find out what’s wrong with their teammate? Will Minato-sensei tell them, even if being so vulnerable like this is a gaping mar on Kakashi Hatake’s glistening record of perfection?

Okay, maybe that—Yeah, that’s unfair. Obito’s being a jerk for even thinking like this, because, well—had he already forgotten his slip up from earlier? That whole instance of kicking his own teeth in with his foot, and finding out Kakashi Hatake’s backstory wasn’t as fairy tale as Obito has stupidly believed all this time?

Kami . His dad. And then—Obito swallows a foul tasting emotion, shuddering as it slides down his throat like an eel, and growls. He wants to strike out, punch something, break something. He needs to go to the training grounds and let off some steam, but then he might miss on them leaving the hospital, and any update on his teammate’s condition.

Obito grunts, and stomps up and down the treeline, where the park meets a copse of woods, pacing back and forth, back and forth, helplessly attempting to burn off all this anxious energy, but it’s not budging . It sits on his chest like a smug, fat feline, weight pressing down on him, and Obito pauses in his steps to take a long, thin breath in. He crouches down low, and lets himself fall on his backside, the chill of the grass seeping through his canvas pants.

This is so stupid. Everything, all of this—it’s just stupid . 

Obito crosses his arms and glares at the thin, brittle-looking tree, knowing he’s too weak to bring down even that . What’s the point of being a ninja is he’s gonna be this weak? 

Something floats across the edge of his vision. It’s dark, small, and tumbling very ungracefully across the branches. It slips, and catches itself on a main branch of the thin one, pausing. 

Obito shoots to his feet. 

It flashes away from the tree and into the foliage. 

Obits takes a step forward. 

“Where’re you going?”

He freezes. He lifts a hand to tug down his goggles so that they cover his eyes, and then turns to the side with a big grin. 

“Ahaha… I just remembered... that I forgot to do something back home—y’know, chores?”

Anko crosses her arms. Fifteen feet away, Kushina is bartering with an irritated looking dango-cart attendant, loud voice carrying over the breeze. 

Obito scratches at the back of his head, glancing over at the trees without turning his head. The shadow is gone, but he knows which direction it went in. If he’s quick—

“Listen, my uncle will kill me if he gets home and my chores aren’t done. It’ll be quick, I’ll be right back. Let me know how it goes—“

He turns on his heel and bolts for it. He can feel her eyes on his back and he dashed for the treeline, and knows almost immediately that she hadn’t bought his fib. (It’s not quite a lie, he did have chores to do. But his uncle won’t be home until next week anyway, so it’s not like he’ll notice Obito missing a day… for the third time this week... Oh well.)

Thankfully she doesn’t chase after him. Most likely it’s due to the sticks of dango Kushina’s carrying back from the cart. That little girl really lives up to her name. This was, what, the third time getting snacks from that vendor? No wonder the man is annoyed—between Kushina-san and Anko, they’re taking all his stock.

Obito channels a line of chakra through the sole of each foot, waiting the barest second that it takes for the energy to pierce through the bottoms of his shoes and latch onto the surface of the tree he’s launches himself at, and then he’s off, dodging branches and following the trail of broken twigs and fluttering leaves.

It takes a good fifteen minutes for him to actually catch up to the small slip of a blur, and that’s only because he’d messed up his own tracking and followed two false leads. Eventually though, he manages it, and lands with a loud thud in the underbrush of a small clearing a good mile away from the roaring waters of Naka River.

Obito straightens up and peers with squinting eyes around the tiny break in the trees, before landing his sight finally on a tiny dark figure that’s curled up against the gnarled roots of a particularly towering ash.

He saunters forward, feeling a little smug at catching his prey. It was almost like a game of cat and mouse, but with him and Bakashi, and Obito has won —

Except—

“No, no, no, no, no,” Kakashi is crying , again , and Obito feels just as awkward, as startled and frozen, as the first time. “No, no, no , no —”

“Hey—” Obito tries, but his own voice croaks out on him. He clears his throat, takes a step forward, and—

Kakashi jolts forward, a look of distress on his face, where his brows aren't creased in pain and his teeth aren’t bared—like a dog, Obito’s mind teases tactlessly, and he feels horrible even before the thought surfaces, now isn’t the time for dark humor—and a breathless, worldless wheeze escapes him.

Obito jerks, reaches his arms out uselessly to—to catch him? But Kakashi stays just a breath out of reach, curled in on himself and not even looking at Obito.

“What—Kakashi—?”

“ Hurts ,” the smaller ninja gasps out, teeth gleaming in the barest sunlight that filters down through the trees onto them. 

Obito bites his lip, crouching down beside him. “Um. Where?”

Kakashi pauses, as if the question surprised him, which is weird, but after a few agonized-sounding breaths, the chunin gestures vaguely at his chest. “M-My lungs …”

Obito’s eyebrow—just the one—-launches itself upward. “Your lungs? Why?”

Kakashi graces him with a glare, and there are tears beading at the edges of his eyes, and oh, man, he’s really hurting, isn’t he?

“N’don’t— know —” the boy manages to grit out between his clenches teeth, and something small and white hot and sick appears inside Obito’s stomach, like a pit of unease, because here’s Kakashi Hatake, sitting curled up in the undergrowth of the forest in front of him, sobbing uncontrollably because he’s hurting and Obito—

Obito can’t do anything about it, can he?

Can he?

“Okay,” he says, straightening out his spine with newfound determination. He frowns down at his teammate, and then carefully reaches forward to grasp Kakashi’s shoulder in his hand.

Kakashi jerks away from him with a wounded, half-hysterical sound that makes Obito’s jaw spasm. The Uchiha bites his lip and tries again.

“Hey, here, just—sit up a bit, okay?”

“ No ,” Kakashi says plaintively from between his teeth, gaze focused on the ground. “ Hurts ,” he reminds.

“No, I—I know. I know it hurts,” Obito says. “But you can’t curl up like that, if there’s something wrong then—” he turns his mind back to what little he can remember of the academy health classes—He’d never paid much attention to them, just barely enough to pass, and after graduation it had always been Rin’s forte—he’s regretting that now, just a bit. 

“All the important bits are already twisted up in our midsections,” Obito recalls, “So twisting it all up even more, if there’s something wrong, then… probably not the best idea—hey, hey, that’s better. Did, uh, did it help?”

Sweat is dripping down Kakashi’s face in rivulets, Obito realizes, and even his teammate’s clothing has gone damp. He blinks, and reaches out a hand to press to Kakashi’s forehead, but—it’s cold. Clammy. Not another fever, then.

So what…

“ Hhhhnnng ,” Kakashi presses out, and then he’s crying, loud, wracking sobs making his small frame—had he always been so little?—shake under Obito’s hand. 

“It—It hurts ,” He cries, near deliriously, and his breath is coming in harsh pants that are way too fast and—

Oh.

Oh , Obito knows what this is. He recognizes this.

“It does hurt, doesn’t it,” he says, voice soft, and then he’s moving forward, to scoop up his teammate—oh kami, he’s tiny , he’s so light , he’s just—just—and Obito crosses his legs and draws the younger boy into his lap.

Kakashi goes still, absolutely, for point three seconds, before the shakes start up again and Obito can feel each and every ragged, broken inhale as if it’s coming from his own chest. He grimaces, sinks his teeth into his bottom lip, and carefully begins to rub his hands up and down Kakashi’s arms.

“Hey, you gotta try and focus on your breathing, okay? Stop thinking about how much it hurts for a second—I know it hurts, but you gotta. You hear me? Bakashi?”

It takes a few seconds, but eventually Obito receives a small, jerky nod. It makes the soft snowy spikes tickle his chin. Obito swallows.

“ Shit. Okay. Focus on your breathing, don’t think about anything else. Can you feel me behind you? Okay, okay good. Try and breathe like me.”

It takes a few minutes, and they are long, arduous minutes, where Kakashi occasionally backtracks on any progress, flinching back and coming to his senses and letting out a wail—Obito reaches around the boy, directs some chakra to his hand like he’s going to start building up for a fire release during training, but—

He doesn’t let it build up. Instead, he presses his palm against Kakashi’s chest, just under the younger boy’s diaphragm.

Kakashi’s breath stutters. “N-No, it’s too hot—”

“No, it’s not,” Obito disagrees. “I’m barely putting any chakra in this, man. You’re freezing.”

“I’m—?” Kakashi starts, in confusion, but then draws in a ragged gasp, pressing a hand over his own mouth.

Obito frowns. “Hey, stop—here. Here, take this, and—” 

He reaches behind him and unclips a canister from his belt. Drawing it around, he holds it out and presses it into Kakashi’s shaking hands. Using his now free hand, Obito unscrews the cap and then directs it toward Kakashi’s face. 

“Try and drink some, it’s water.”

Kakashi hesitates for a moment, before the too-quick breaths get the better of him, and he sucks one in and ducks his head down to take a draw from the canister without even bothering to pull down his mask first, and honestly Obito can’t even drag up any feeling of exasperation this time. The small body wracked with shakes in his lap is much too cold.

A sip, and then another, and Kakashi’s breathing evens out so suddenly that Obito is momentarily terrified at the idea the boy has stopped entirely. He leans forward, only to relax at the feeling of the careful inhales that slightly inflate Kakashi’s chest in front of him.

The two of them sit like that for a few minutes, kakashi still trembling with the aftershocks of the attack and Obito slowly discovering that not only was his teammate entirely drenched in sweat, but he’d managed to get Obito as well. It’s uncomfortable, the damp feeling of his clothes and the musty, salty smell clogging his nostrils, but he can’t bring himself to care much when Kakashi suddenly goes boneless and, with a careful, intention deep breath, leans back against Obito’s chest and closes his eyes.

Obito’s arm slings itself around the younger boy’s waist before he can stop it, and with an anxious exhale, he asks, “Are you okay, now?”

Kakashi doesn’t move a muscle for the longest time, but just when Obito thinks he’s not going to respond—maybe he’s too tired, Obito knows how much something like this can take out of you—the boy twists around in his lap, grabs two fistfulls of Obito’s jacket, and leans down to press his face into the junction between Obito’s shoulder and neck.

Obito freezes. “Um, Baka—?”

Kakashi mumbles something, weakly, and that simmering spot of unease deep in Obito’s stomach shifts queasily. He ducks his head down in an effort to hear better. Kakashi trembles, sniffling, and Obito realizes with abject horror swelling up his throat that he’s crying again.

“What?”

“I don’t wanna die,” Kakashi says, and Obito’s gut freezes over with chilling ice.

“ What ?”

“I don’t wanna—” Kakashi sucks in a sharp breath, and then continues, “I don’t want to die. I haven’t even done anything yet, I—I haven’t had time , and—” he chokes off with a watery laugh that’s three degrees to the left of quietly hysterical, and Obito rips his hand away from the smaller ninja’s stomach before his chakra can fluctuate too sharply and actually burn the kid—oh, he is a kid, isn’t he—

“What the hell are you talking about? Dying? Bakashi, you’re not dying .” Obito refuses, refuses , to believe that.

Kakashi just shakes his head. It spreads an uncomfortable extra layer of sweat into the crook of Obito’s neck. Obito grimaces. 

“The doctors, they—they said they don’t know what it is.”

Obito’s lungs stagger.

“I’m dying,” Kakashi repeats, frenzied. “I’m dying and I—I haven’t done anything, I—what’s the point? O—Of being here if I—?” He trails off, voice getting weaker with each question that Obito’s isn’t able to come up with and answer for.

“What do you mean—?”

“‘M useless ,” Kakashi gasps out, hands wringing the front of Obito’s jacket underneath white knuckles. “I can’t—I can’t do anything right, I wasted my time and now—now I’m dying and—and—”

He looks up, at Obito, and there are tear tracks down that stupid mask and his eyes are red rimmed and wet, and Obito’s never felt actually helpless in his entire life until now, because this— this —this is visceral, it’s right in his face, he can’t do anything and its never been starker, ever been clearer.

“No, stop—”

“I was suppose to do something,” Kakashi cries, rambling on, “and I don’t even know what, and I can’t—now I won’t , because—because I don’t have time and I’m gonna die , and—”

“Bakash—”

“ Useless . I always mess everything up —always, always, always—Useless and stupid , and I can’t do anything right, why can’t I ever do anything —?!”

“ Kakashi ,” Obito yells, hands snapping out to grab the boy by the shoulders and hauling him upwards, away from him so he can get a look at his face. He glares down at the other boy, “Shut the hell up!”

Kakashi just shakes his head, and he’s never, in all the time that Obito’s known him, looked so unhinged. And not in a crazy way, but in the way that grief makes somebody. Like how Obito’s Oba-san used to get, before she passed. Like how Kushina-san looks on her off days, sometimes, when she thinks nobody’s watching her, and she stares at the spirals on everyone’s uniforms and looks just absolutely—

Kakashi has tears streaming down his face, and he hiccups even as Obito gives him another shake.

“Can’t save anyone,” the younger boy—a little kid, he’s a little kid , what the fuck —murmurs brokenly. “I can’t save anyone if I’m dead!

“You can’t—? Oh .”

Obito lets go of Kakashi’s shoulders, lets the chunin fall forward again to cling to the front of his jacket like he’s trying to disappear into it. Obito moves his arms behind him and leans back on the heels of his hands, ignoring the way small twigs and rocks dig into the skin. He tilts his head back and stares up at the foliage way up above them.

Konoha’s trees are incredibly tall. To Obito, that’s never been anything out of the ordinary, that’s just how trees are, right? Towering over all of civilization like mountainous, looming protectors and just always there , for centuries.

But Konoha’s trees are only seventy years old. They might be giants compared to trees elsewhere in the elemental nations, and studier and stronger, but—but they’re young, still. Like Konoha is young. Young, and prone to mistakes.

Konoha is suppose to take after the trees it’s built out of. Strong, everlasting, tall, always there, a vast, sweeping canopy of protection, a direct heirloom of their first kage and all of the dreams he’d held for them. 

They all learned similar, poetic ideologies back in primary classes before even the Academy. In the Uchiha clan, the words always came with an obvious level of thinly veiled scorn, but Obito’s always been able to see how that scorn was superficial, at best. Like maybe they’d convinced themselves they thought it was all a load of bull, but deep down they held onto it, clung to it. Hoping, just secretly hoping. Obito couldn’t really fault them, much, because so had he.

And then his parents died, and it’s like the entire village had sworn to do it’s very damndest to prove to Obito that the shiny outward ideals of Konoha was all just a shitty cover for a village that was, at its roots, just like the rest of the ninja villages out there. The villages that Konoha vilified and scorned for their inhumane practices, always lifting Konoha up as the paragon among them all—the best village the kindest, the one filled with humans instead of monsters.

Konoha was filled with humans, but so was everywhere else in the world—and humans lied, and cheated, and treated anything outside their norm with scorn. Anything they didn’t understand or approve of with a gross shield of hatred. He’d watched them all do it with one of their own Sannin, their own hero , and then the Uchiha had done it with him , because he wasn’t good enough to be related so closely to the main branch if he couldn’t even activate his own bloodline limit, and then—

Obito looks down at the tiny little slip of a chunin that trembles in his lap, and feels sick with himself, because—because—has he done the same to Kakashi?

Maybe not on purpose. Kakashi was genin already by the time Obito even entered the academy for that first year. Chunin by the time the rest of them graduated. They’d already been on the fast track, what with the war, but Kakashi seemed to take everything with a sense of urgency—he had to get that technique down now , he needed to already be a master at water-walking yesterday —he had to, needed , already was —

Kakashi was good. Obito had already known that before he even officially met the other boy. Kakashi was a prodigy. He was talented, quick on the uptake, smart and resourceful and never had to be taught something twice before he mastered it and moved on—everything Obito wasn’t . Kakashi was the perfect ninja student.

Kakashi sobs something totally incoherent into Obito’s chest, and Obito feels his stomach roll queasily. How much of all that was actual innate talent, and how much was—?

Obito sits up. He wraps one arm around Kakashi’s waist, slides one underneath his legs, and stands up. Kakashi weighs absolutely nothing in his arms, and it makes Obito’s stomach flop over on itself again.

Kakashi gulps and shudders and leans into him, burying his face into the collar of Obito’s jacket. 

“’M scared ,” he whispers, haltingly, so quiet that the words almost get lost in the fabric of Obito’s clothes. So quiet Obito almost doesn’t hear him.

Except, he does.

Obito takes a moment to adjust his grip, making sure he’d got a good hold on his smaller teammate. He pauses for a moment, ducks his head down so that his chin digs momentarily into Kakashi’s hair, and breathes in.

“You’re not gonna die, you dumbass.”

Obito won’t let him .

Anko catches up with them when Obito makes it to the village proper and takes to the roofs. Less people up here—any ninja not on a mission prefers the streets, mostly for the comfort of the civilian populace. It means they don’t run into anyone on their way to the apartment complex to the north of the graveyard.

Obito’s gotten pretty good at channeling a steady chakra flow past the soles of his sandals, if he says so himself, but he still could use some practice at it. It’s harder to focus when he’s also juggling living cargo—despite how horrifically little Kakashi weighs—so it’s secretly a relief to have the small girl appear at his elbow and reach  out a hand to help steady him.

She comes up to Obito’s shoulders, but her personality makes her feel ten times taller than him.

Obito nods at her, and then squats down for a moment, reaches out to push up at one of the rubber boots Kakashi’s wearing. They keep slipping off, and this is the third time he’s had to stop, but Obito’s like three sizes larger than Kakashi, and Kakashi’s feet are tiny , so of course Obito’s old boots wouldn’t fit, even with the thick socks Orochimaru-dono had shoved on him before they’d left. 

It’s just, Kakashi hadn’t seemed to even own anything besides standard issue shinobi sandals.

“Redhead mom’s not far off,” Anko reports, looking over his burden shrewdly. “What happened?”

“Doctor visit didn’t go well, I think,” Obito replies, mouthing the words “redhead mom” to himself with a private burst of bewilderment, but Anko doesn’t explain.

He stands again and hefting his teammate up so he can get a better hold of him. Kakashi stirs sleepily from where he’s slumped, exhausted, against Obito’s chest. One small, too-skinny arm winds around the back of Obito’s neck, while the other is thrown across Kakashi’s eyes, like the sunlight is giving him a migraine or something.

Obito looks back over at Anko, biting his lip. “He said he’s dying,” he tells her quietly, and watches as Anko’s face goes blank. “He, uh, really freaked out about it. Like, actually panicked.”

“Hm,” Anko replies, and doesn’t sound really enthusiastic about it.

There’s a soft thump from behind them, and Obito turns around, shoulders slumping in relief when Kushina hurries over to them. The furious look on her face gives him a moment’s pause, but Obito knows from experience that it’s not really directed at any of them. 

“Thank kami ,” the kunoichi breathes out, hand flying over to smooth back Kakashi’s bangs from his sweat-soaked brow. “You found him. Here, Obito-kun, can I—”

Obito leans, allowing her to take his still teammate from his grateful arms. Weighing nothing or not, holding Kakashi has tired his muscles out, if only because Obito had been so tense in fear of accidentally dropping the boy.

He rubs absently at his biceps, watching in silence with Anko as Kushina peers down at Kakashi, lips pursed in a tin, white line.

“If only you knew the heart attacks you’re giving my lovely boyfriend, Kashi,” the woman mutters lowly. She rolls her shoulders back with a heavy sigh, hoisting the unresponsive chunin up against her shoulder. He curls there, small body just fitting in the nook. “You’ve got to stop this, kiddo.”

They follow the Uzu native back across the endless rooftop tiles, taking turns slipping into the open kitchen window on the third floor, south-facing. Minato-sensei waits anxiously inside—Kushina must have somehow contacted him and told him that Kakashi had been found, because while he looks a hair's breadth away from having an ulcer, he doesn’t look surprised to see them.

Minato rushes forward, eyes intent on the tiny form curled against Kushina’s shoulder. “How is he?”

Kushina gives a very light shrug, with the arm Kakashi isn’t leaning into. “Obito-kun found him,” she says, and Obito swallows thickly as his sensei’s intense stare turns onto him for answers.

“He was having a panic attack in the woods outside the East Naka. I—It took me a while to calm him down, uh, he… He’s pretty convinced that he’s dying?”

Minato’s mouth twists, a flash of teeth appearing to sink into his upper lip, and he glances over at Kushina—at Kakashi with an incredibly sympathetic expression. Obito’s gut clenches.

“Um, Sensei?”

His teacher places a hand on his shoulder. It’s usually grounding, for Obito, but something about it doesn’t quite work this time. “You did really well, Obito. Thank you for being there for him.”

“Sensei, i—is he…” Obito sucks in a breath, terror taking his lungs for just a fraction of a second. “Is he really…?”

Minato blinks down at him, before his face morphs into a startled and concerned look. 

“Oh! Obito, no! Nobody said anything about dying, Kakashi’s just—” He pauses, blue eyes flitting over to where Kushina’s started to take Kakashi down the hall toward the bathroom, Anko following closely at her heels, still wearing that blank expression from earlier. 

Minato-sense’s shoulders drop, just a hair. He walks over to the table and sits carefully down in a chair that’s already been pulled out. He must have been sitting in it waiting for them. Obito hesitates, before walking over and grabbing an empty chair for himself, beside his sensei.

“The doctor’s aren’t really sure what’s going on with Kakashi,” Minato begins haltingly. “Whatever’s going on, they’ve never encountered it before. They’ve got some theories, right now, but it’s gonna take a lot of tests and trial and error before they really get a better idea of what’s happening.”

“But,” Obito says, a little glumly. “So, all they have is theories, and nothing else.”

He glances over at Obito from the corner of his eye, and then sighs, reaching over to muss up his hair. Obito ducks under it with a scowl.

“Don’t worry too much about it, Obito. Kakashi’s a fighter, he’ll pull through this. We just need to give him all our support, and… make sure he knows he has it.”

“He’s kinda dumb,“ Obito agrees, “that he might not realize.”

Minato-sensei looks like he wants to scold Obito for calling his teammate a name—which is unfair, since Obito didn’t say anything but the truth—but instead he just sighs and runs a hand down his face. Suddenly, Obito realizes, looking at his teacher, the man just looks—beat. Tired . And Obito feels a little bad for him, despite having done nothing to cause it.

The sound of someone being violently ill in the bathroom makes both of them wince, trading uncomfortable looks. Obito cringes, and feels just a little bit ill himself, at the reminder of everything else that's happening.

“Um,” he says, jumping up from his chair. “I’m gonna… somebody should go tell Rin what happened. She, um, she worries , you know, and—” he sniffs his shirt, before making a face, “maybe take a shower and change my clothes, first, uh, wow— “

“Go on,” Minato looks faintly amused, looking over at him, but he’s still got that exhausted air about him. “You’re right, it’s not fair to leave her in the dark. Please don’t forget to eat some lunch on the way home, too, alright?”

Obito pauses on his way to the door, nearly tripping over his admittedly hurried steps—he’s not running away, obviously, he’s just—

He turns and narrows his eyes at his teacher. “Uh, I’m not going home, sensei. I’m coming back here, afterwards. Maybe I’ll bring Rin, too.”

Minato blinks at him, startled. “Obito—”

He rolls his eyes—seriously? Is he surrounded by—okay, maybe calling sensei an idiot isn’t quite fair, but— 

He juts his chin out stubbornly, as he makes his way over to the door, grumbling under his breath the whole time.  “What kind of teammate does everyone think I am, anyway? Seriously— seriously —like hell I’m going home when things are like this —kami—“

Behind him, he shuts the door, and Minato grins despite himself.

Chapter Text

Kakashi wakes up without a headache for the first time in, well, he can’t even remember — and nearly cries.

No, he does cry, which makes it all the more embarrassing when the door to the bedroom opens and someone walks in on him. 

“Kakashi?” The person gasps. There’s a clatter on the floor and quick footsteps slapping against the hardwood as they rush over to him to put a careful but steady hand against his shoulder. “Kashi, what’s wrong?”

He holds his hands over his eyes and tilts his head upwards, peeking through his fingers in the hopes that they won’t be able to see the tears that are pouring out of his eyes without his goddamn permission. He doesn’t think he has any luck, because Kushina looks upset nonetheless. 

“I’m fine,” he warbles, and winces as the words scratch against his throat. It’s not so bad as it has been, though, which definitely brightens his day. 

“You’re not —“ Kushina pauses, and takes a deep breath. 

Kakashi peeks up at her again, to find her jaw clenched. She’s glaring over at the wall, and takes another breath before she turns back to him and softens her face just a little bit. 

“You know that it’s okay, for you to not be fine, right?” She asks, voice wavering but steely. “You can tell us if you’re not okay.”

Kakashi blinks at her, damp droplets collecting along his lashes when he does. He wipes the moisture from his face with his fingers and lets his hands drop into his lap. 

“I’m not okay,” he listens to himself say the words out loud, and then holds back the full body flinch that tries to come afterward. It causes some of his limbs to lock up slightly, but they loosen with the seconds that pass by. 

He peeks back up at Kushina to see a fond, amused grin playing at the corner of her mouth. 

“Good job,” she says wryly. 

Kakashi lifts a hand to press over his mask to further cover any evidence that he might possibly be smiling, and gives himself a shake. 

“I’m not okay,” he repeats, “but… I am… better than... I have been?”

The Uzumaki perks up, face brightening. 

“Oh, are the meds helping?” She asks joyously. “I was wondering when they were going to kick in. They’ve got you on some good stuff, y’know?”

“Yeah,” Kakashi smooths his mask out and then uses the same hand to run through his hair. It catches on a knot, and he picks at it with slight despondence. He wonders when the last time he’d brushed his hair had been. “My head doesn’t hurt. It’s… really nice.”

He tries not to, but the pressure in his chest that’s a direct product of the all-consuming relief he feels at the lack of pain makes him tear up again, and he sniffs wetly. It’s humiliating. 

Kushina’s face goes even softer, though, and she reaches out a hand to press to his forehead. It’s nice and warm against his frozen skin. 

“Your fever has gone down a little,” she notes. 

Kakashi sullenly crosses his arms over his chest and presses out a huff. Aren’t fevers suppose to burn out infection? Why the hell is he so damn cold all the time, then? Honestly, fuck chakra coils and everything they stand for. 

“Aah, Kashi ,” Kushina croons, brushing back his bangs. “You’re so cute when you pout, y’know?”

He narrows his eyes and shoves her hand away from him, but not as harshly as he probably could have. He has some strength back — not a lot, but some — and she wasn’t really pressing down really hard. 

“Can I have a bath?” He asks, and it comes out plaintively.  

Kushina’s big grin turns into a smaller, more empathetic smile. She reaches out to run her fingers through his hair one more time, and this time Kakashi allows it with a short but heartfelt sigh. 

He’d missed her. 

He’d missed her so much .

“Sure thing, kiddo,” she says softly, and stands up from where she’s sat on the edge of the bed. “I’ll go get it running for you and come get you when it’s ready, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Are you hungry at all? You can eat while you wait. Rin brought over some more leftovers earlier.”

Kakashi yawns, and rolls his eyes, enjoying how the action doesn’t make them feel like they’re about to bounce out of his skull. “Sure. Leftovers .”

Kushina chuckles at the doorway. “Aw, leave her alone. It’s her way of showing she cares.”

“Yeah,” he says, bringing his knees up to wrap his arms around them. “I know.”

Kushina stops. She stares at him for a moment, smile nowhere to be seen. She breathes out when Kakashi refuses to look at her. 

“It’s okay for people to care about you, you know,” she says quietly. Did she read a therapy book while he’d been out, this time? She sounds like one of the shrinks all ANBU have to see every sixth months in order to be cleared for active field duty. 

Kakashi usually managed to avoid the sessions. 

Maybe… maybe he shouldn’t have. 

Kakashi hunches his shoulders and keeps his eyes on his kneecaps covered by the cartoon dogs that decorate his sheets. He doesn’t reply. 

After a few seconds, Kushina lets out another soft sounding sigh, and turns away from the door. 

“I’ll go get that bath ready, Kashi-kun.”

Kakashi’s shoulders seem to get more and more tense the longer the time stretches, the longer that he’s alone in this tiny bedroom of his. When the muscles start twinging in protest, he lets out a long, drawn out sigh of his own and collapses back against the mattress. 

It takes a few seconds of thought for him to decide to forestall the approaching contemplation of his placement within the universe of time and space until after he gets something in his raging stomach, with the third time that it growls reproachfully at him. He pushes off the bed, plants his feet on the floor, and makes sure he has his balance before he makes his way through the still-open door and down the tiny hallway that leads into the apartment proper. 

He ignores the living room entirely, sights set on the kitchen. His socked feet thud near silently against the floor, and he doesn’t stop until he gets through the doorway and sees someone already sitting at the table. 

Rin glances up from the crochet project she has in front of her and gives him a beaming smile. “Kakashi-kun! You’re awake!”

“I am,” he agrees, and lets his head tilt to the side to display his confusion.

She doesn’t seem to notice, though. His only female teammate stabs the crochet needle through her work and sets it down, scooting back in her chair to stand up. 

“Here, sit down. I’ll grab you something to eat, you must be starving.” Rin beams at him. “I brought homemade miso soup!”

Kakashi sits down, because he is hungry. He watches, nonplussed, as Rin busies herself around his apartment’s tiny kitchen like she’s lived there all her life, pulling utensils out from a drawer and a bowl from a cupboard. The entire place seems to have been either rearranged or reorganized with all the new stuff while he’s been out of it, because Kakashi can’t remember ever keeping any dishes there. Much less dishes given to him by Orochimaru of the Sannin. For whatever reason that had been. 

He’s not sure what to feel, realizing that other people now apparently know his own apartment better than Kakashi does, but maybe it makes sense, because he hasn’t been here since he was ten. He can barely remember that his bathroom isn’t connected to his bedroom anymore, let alone where the silverware is kept.

Still—

“Why… are you here?” He finally manages to ask, staring at her as she ladles out a serving of soup from the covered pot she’d pulled from the (his) refrigerator. 

“Hm?” Rin glances over her shoulder at him, looking puzzled. That’s not fair, because Kakashi is the one who’s confused right now. “What do you mean?”

“You’re,” Kakashi gestures at her and the pot, at the crocheting project on the table across from him, then at the kitchen and the doorway that leads to the living room. “You’re… here. Why?”

Rin stares at him, ladle clutched in one hand. 

A dark head pops into the kitchen from the other room.

“I told you he was dumb,” Obito says flatly. 

“ Obito ,” sensei’s voice calls, exasperated, and a golden-skinned hand catches the Uchiha by the collar and drags him back into the living room. 

“You need to stop calling your teammate names—“

“I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true, and you know it!”

Rin makes a face, tossing the ladle into the sink and standing on her toes to carefully slide the bowl of miso into the microwave.

“Ignore him,” she says. “You’re not dumb.”

“I kind of am,” Kakashi refutes immediately. He must be, because everyone seems to know what’s going on here but him. “A little bit.”

A loud “Ha!” sounds from the other room, and Rin blinks away her surprise at his comment long enough to roll her eyes at both of them. 

“You’re not ,” she says. “You’re one of the smartest people I know.”

“That’s just intelligence,” Kakashi points out, leaning forward to pillow his head on his crossed arms. “People can be dumb in other ways.”

Rin watches him closely. “Well… yes, I guess so. That’s... very astute of you.”

Kakashi stares at her, and then shakes his head slowly, chin digging into the back of his arm. 

“Kushina, you, Obito, sensei… almost everybody is here,” he resolutely doesn’t think about who isn’t . Or why he cares. “How come?”

This time, Rin gives him a look . “Anko-chan’s also here. Nevermind that, I don’t understand what you’re asking. You're sick , of course we’re here.”

“ Why .” Kakashi stresses. 

Rin studies him. The microwave makes an awful noise, like a mix between a dying bird and a doorbell, and she turns to pull it open. It cuts off abruptly. Maybe that’s it’s way of saying it’s done? Kakashi literally cannot recall what sound his microwave from decades ago had made. Rin doesn’t look too alarmed, anyway. She must be used to it. 

How long have they all been here, to be used to the quirks of Kakashi’s appliances?

She fishes out the bowl and slowly walks it over to the table, placing it before Kakashi. He glances down at it, relieved to find that she’d only filled it barely halfway. He’s starving, but he’s not sure he can eat a full meal or anything quite yet. His stomach would hate him worse than it does now. 

Rin stands there and stares at him. 

Kakashi pushes up from the table. “ What ?”

“You’re gonna have to spell it out for him, Rin-chan!” Obito calls cheerfully from the couch. 

Kakashi points in the boy’s direction and nods empathetically. “Right. Because I’m dumb, remember?”

“You’re not — ugh,” Rin turns on her heels and goes to grab the spoon she’s set on the counter. “We’re here because we care about you, Kakashi-kun. You’re sick and you’re having a hard time. We are worried about you, and want to make sure you’re okay.”

“It’s what teammates do, moron!” Obito shouts. 

Rin’s face darkens a bit, and she turns toward the doorway. “Shut up , Obito-kun!”

“A-Ah! Sorry Rin-chan!” 

“Don’t apologize to me , baka!”

“S-Sorry, Kakashi!”

“No, you’re not,” Kakashi refuses, aghast. 

He can hear their sensei chuckle even with the wall between them.

“My point ,” Rin continues, shoulders squared, “is that, well. You’re our teammate . Are we not allowed to care about you? Does that break some mysterious Hatake rule, or something?”

Kakashi blinks at her. “No. But.”

“But what ?”

Kakashi reaches a hand out, slowly, as one would to a tiger in the forest of death that has stolen their final kunai and has it clutched between snarling teeth. 

“Can… can I have the spoon, now?”

Rin stares at him. 

Kakashi’s shoulders hunch. 

She glances down at the utensil clutched in her hand for a long, stretching second, before slowly holding it out to him. 

“Don’t think this is going to get you out of this conversation.” She says to him. 

“I’m hungry,” Kakashi lets her know. “And after this I’m taking a bath. Do we have to have this conversation while I’m in the bath? That’ll be very awkward, Rin. I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with that.”

Rin stares at him with wide, horrified eyes, face turning beet red. Oh fuck, Kakashi forgot about the little crush she’d had on baby him. Who in their right mind would crush on baby him, anyway? Kid Kakashi was about as personable as a singular brick. Clearly, there’s something wrong with Rin. 

From the living room, there’s the sound of wheezing. 

Kakashi has maybe miscalculated. His team, he quickly theorizes, is perhaps not ready for his special brand of teasing just yet. 

What a shame. 

“ No ,” Rin says, through gritted teeth. Her fists are clenched at her sides, and Kakashi has a vivid, visceral flashback to a certain pink-haired medic. He shudders. “Kakashi, I — no .”

“Oh,” Kakashi says, a little apologetically. “Good.”

“Here, just,” Rin points to the bowl of miso before him and gives a calm but strained smile. “Eat it before it gets cold.”

Kakashi picks up the spoon and obeys, ignoring the continued snickering that echoes in from the other room. The miso is delicious, Kakashi doesn’t feel as absolutely life-threateningly terrible as he has been, and soon he will be entombed within the steaming hot waters of a bath that might do something to thaw his frozen extremities. 

Maybe, he thinks, today will be a good day. 

Today unfortunately still sucks, Kakashi bemoans silently as he curls up as much of himself beneath the water level of the tub as he can, shoulders trembling. 

Given that he’s an absolute midget right now, a real and entire child , he manages to nearly completely submerge himself. Which is nice, really. The water is warm. The bathroom smells like the lavender-scented cleaner that Kushina is obsessed with, and there’s some sort of herbal oil mixture that’s been tossed into his bath with a good heaping of Epsom salts that’s gone a hell of a long way to make Kakashi’s previously stiff and knotted muscles feel like butter. It’s heavenly, and Kakashi resolves to pray at the barest shrine after this, to thank every single kami he can think of for Kushina’s very existence. 

So yeah. The bath is absolutely terrific . Kakashi feels physically better than he has since he first woke up in the past. It’s amazing. 

He’s just unlucky enough, however, that his mental health has always been rather negligible at best, and Kakashi is spending most of his time soaking in this goddamn recreated spa treatment doing his level best to beat down another rising panic attack. 

He sinks down in the tub until the water reaches his chin, and doesn’t even have to fold his legs. He’s laid flat out and straight in a standard-sized bathtub and he doesn’t even reach both ends. He takes up half the tub. Barely. Kakashi would suck in a deep breath and fucking float in this thing and not even make contact with the edge of the tub. 

Holy fucking shit he’s tiny . 

Tilting his head back, Kakashi squeezes his eyes shut and turns his focus toward doing as many breathing exercises as he’d ever learned in all his years of life. The number isn’t anything to scoff at, and by the time the water finally begins to turn lukewarm, the very present pile of boulders that sits on top of Kakashi’s chest has lightened somewhat. 

Alright, he thinks to himself. So. He’s in the past. 

Kakashi sits up in the tub and reaches out for the towel. He yanks the drain plug up by the chain with his other hand and listens as the water begins to rush down the pipes below him. 

Yeah, no. Still not going there. He’ll continue to do what he does best, and live avoiding any thoughts about what’s currently causing him the most amount of grief. 

Is it healthy? No. Does he regret the side effects this course of action has brought in the p—future? He thinks about Naruto, and feels guilt start to bubble up his throat. 

Of course he regrets not being there for the blonde. 

But does Kakashi actually know how to operate in any other way?

Well… no. No, he doesn’t. 

This is… this is how Kakashi has always lived, ever since that night in his father’s study. Or maybe even before that, when he’d first noticed the slumped posture Sakumo had taken to, like the world rested its weight onto the man’s shoulders. When Kakashi had first noticed the whispers that followed him — both of them — around the village. 

No one has ever taught Kakashi any other way to deal with things. Maybe his way hadn’t always really worked , but it’s the only way he knows how to manage . 

Kakashi bundles himself in the towel the moment he steps out onto the new fluffy bath mat that sits on the floor, of which he has no clue as to its origins. Going by the teal color…. yeah, no. He still has no idea. Orochimaru, maybe he liked teal? There were a lot of teal mugs in the cabinets, and Orochimaru had brought those too. 

Why was Orochimaru buying bath mats for Kakashi? And dishes? And food? And towels?

Kakashi curls up, trying to trap all the warmth he’d received from the hot water inside the fluffy softness of the towel around him. He is grateful, if still confused, because he knows he hadn’t owned much more than threadbare old rags to begin with, and if he was using one of those right now, he’d be freezing his ass off. 

So he is grateful. Still confused, though. But grateful. 

Kakashi finally forced himself to move, taking a careful step forward toward the clothes that have been folded and laid on top of the toilet seat for him. He’s very mindful of the towel that trails around his feet, because he’s so small that it reaches the floor, and tripping right now would mean Kakashi would be lying on the bathroom floor. And as clean as it is now, with new rugs and towels and little things like soap bottles, Kakashi really wants to avoid recreating the scene of his first day back, which had been absolutely miserable and humiliating. 

He pulls on a fresh pair of sweatpants, thick and purple and very unfamiliar and new. There’s a pair of thick socks, he feels a little warmer just looking at them. A simple training shirt that he recognizes from his own closet goes over his head next, along with its attached mask, and Kakashi finally lets the towel fall to the floor after burying himself inside an oversized navy sweatshirt that feels and smells clean but also a lot like his sensei. 

Kakashi pulls the hood of the sweatshirt around from behind his head and presses his face into it, breathing in deeply. It smells nice. 

It smells warm. And safe. And nice. 

Kakashi’s eyes sting, and he swallows thickly. The lump in his throat doesn’t go down, and so he sits himself on the toilet seat and holds the hood over the bottom half of his face like a makeshift secondary mask, and just breaths. 

He gets through half the breathing exercises again when there’s a knock on the door. 

“You done in there, Kashi? I heard the water drain.”

“Mmf,” he says as loudly as he can, and curses when it comes out a little choked. 

The door opens just an inch. He can see red hair through the crack. 

“Can I come in?” Kushina asks worriedly. 

“I’m fine,” Kakashi says, voice quiet. She must have taken that as an agreement, because the next thing he knows, she’s crowding into the not very large at all bathroom, crouching in front of him and peering into his face with a frown. 

“How are you feeling?” She asks, lifting a hand to press to his forehead. “Did the bath help?”

“It was warm,” he says noncommittally. “And nice. …Thank you.” 

He reaches down the front of the sweatshirt and fishes around for the mask attached to his shirt. His finger eventually snags on it, and he pulls it up over his face with a sigh and finally lets the hood drop away and back to where it belongs. 

Kushina’s staring at him, though, and the area between her brows is pinched in a way Kakashi doesn’t really care for. Withholding another sigh, he reaches out with both arms and winds them around her neck, tilting himself forward until he can lay his head against her shoulder. 

“Oh!” Her arms come forward automatically to hold him, before Kakashi can slide completely off and fall to the floor. After a moment’s contemplation, Kushina lifts him up and holds him against her chest, exactly like Kakashi has been wanting, and he curls against her with a content little huff. 

This is more for Kushina’s benefit than Kakashi. He’s not a cuddler. He’s never been a cuddler. Kakashi is more the type to stay aloof and hold people at a distance. He doesn’t do hugs. 

He’s also the type to live in denial, so. 

Kakashi turns and presses his face into Kushina’s neck. A long strand of red gets tangled in one of his hands. It reminds him of a certain snake sannin, somehow. 

Kushina’s arms tighten around him, and she stands up. 

“... You’re welcome, y’know,” she mumbles to him. She turns her face and tucks her chin into Kakashi’s hair. 

For a moment, they stay like that, Kushina holding Kakashi against her chest in the quiet stillness of the bathroom. Kakashi’s small body fights easily right into the crook of her elbow, resting against her shoulder and chest. He leans into her and she holds him with a firm grip that makes her muscles twitch in some places, like she’s just barely holding back from crushing him in her arms. Despite this, Kakashi feels nothing but absolutely safe. He nuzzles his head against her, and presses his nose into his sleeve. The scents of both Kushina and his sensei mix together, complimenting each other in a way that they always have, in a way that Kakashi has had decades to forget, and his eyes sting again. 

Finally, Kushina sucks in a deep breath. It sounds a little watery, but Kakashi steadfastly ignores that. He’s not exactly dry eyed here, himself. Kushina hefts him up one more time, before turning and making her way out into the hallway. 

She makes for the kitchen. “Let’s get you something to drink. Baths dehydrate you, after all, you know!”

“Okay,” Kakashi says, curling his arms around her neck. His fingers snag in her hair. He slowly tugs the strands free and watches silently as they flutter down her back again. 

They get to the kitchen, and Rin’s still at the table. She’s halfway done now with the project she’d been working on, and Kakashi can tell now that it's a scarf. It’s light blue, and familiar in a way that makes his throat close up. He turns his head away from her, and the soft smile she’s sending his and Kushina’s way, and notices that Obito and Anko are also seated at the table.

“Anyway,” Kakashi can hear Anko saying as they draw into the room. “That’s the chemical makeup of your basic poisons.”

“But that one’s exactly the same as this one,” Obito scratches at the back of his head, eyes squinting down at the scroll that’s laid out over the table between them. “Why are they listed as different?”

“That’s cuz they’re not the same,” Anko says flatly. “I already told you. Look closer!”

“I am!” Obito complains, nose nearly touching the scroll as he glares down at the kanji. Kakashi isn’t sure, but he doesn’t think that’s what Anko means by ‘closer.’ “I don’t see the difference!”

Kushina shifts Kakashi onto her hip, supporting him up with one arm while she pulls open the fridge with the other. Kakashi holds onto her neck, staring wordlessly at the plastic pitcher with a filter in it, that sits innocently on the middle shelf. He doesn’t recognize that either. Maybe it would be best to just let everyone else lead him around his apartment and show him all the new things that are here? This is getting kind of ridiculous. 

“It’s right here!” 

Kakashi swivels his head around to peer back at the table. 

Anko stabs at the scroll with her finger, and Obito jerks back with a cry, very narrowly avoiding having his eye poked out.

“In the instructions. These two batches have the same ingredients, but with the way they’re each prepared, their effects are different!”

“How was I suppose to know that?!”

“It’s written right there in front of you, how can you not see it?!”

“Okay!” Minato-sensei breezes into the room, reaching out and tugging the scroll out from under their elbows. It rolls closed with a snap, and both children stare up at him sullenly.

He beams down at them. “I think that it’s time for a break from all this studying, don’t you?”

“You’re a teacher, are you even allowed to say that?” Obito squints up at him. “Like, legally?”

Rin flips the scarf down onto the table, moving on to a new row. “Sensei’s right,” she says. “You guys have been at it for two hours. You need to give your brains a break, or they won’t be able to retain any of the information you’ve been going over.”

“That’s why we always have a medic in the house,” Kushina says cheerfully. She’s balancing Kakashi in one arm, and pouring water from the pitcher into the cup with the other. “They know exactly when to get the knuckleheads to quit!”

Rin blushes, bowing her head and stabbing her crochet hook through the next stitch. 

“B-But we’re not even past the third recipe!” Anko says, glancing at the scroll held in Minato’s hand with her bottom lip jutted out petulantly. She looks a little frustrated. “It takes him forever to memorize them!”

Obito glares across the table at her. He crosses his arms and looks just as frustrated, perhaps even more so. Kakashi narrows his eyes and notes that both of them are on the brink of tears. The realization makes something uncomfortable unfurl in his chest. 

“Some people learn at different rates than others,” Minato soothes before Obito can open his mouth and spout off something that’ll cause Anko to explode. 

Kakashi can see it’s not going to cut it, though. Sometimes, his sensei is too gentle.

He accepts the cup of water that Kushina hands to him. It’s green and cut from a thick plastic. Something that kids drink out of. 

Kakashi is a kid. 

“Obito’s better with taijutsu and muscle memory,” he says out loud, looking at Anko.

She straightens up in her chair and turns to stare at him with wide eyes, like she hadn’t realized he was in the room. 

“He’s not book smart like Rin is,” Kakashi continues, glancing down into the water of his cup. “She learns the mental aspects faster than the physical ones. Obito’s the opposite. It just takes him more time with learning the paper stuff.” 

Kakashi brings the cup up to his mouth and takes a long drink from it. He realizes how dry his mouth has been the second the water hits his tongue, and he drinks greedily from it until it’s empty. He lowers it and glances over at Kushina, who’s staring at him with an unreadable look on her face. 

He holds out the cup. “Can I have some more?”

Wordlessly, she takes it from his hands and sets it on the counter, reaching for the pitcher. Kakashi blinks at her, and realizes that the kitchen has gone silent. 

He turns back to find all his teammates staring at him with wide eyes and raises brows. Obito’s jaw is hanging open, and he’s blinking a bit dumbly. Rin and sensei just look pleasantly surprised. 

Kakashi narrows his eyes again, and glances back to Anko, who’s frowning pensively down at the table. He looks back at his team and frowns.

“What?” He asks, crossing his arms. 

Kushina chuckles. He can feel it vibrate in her chest, pressed against his side. She’s warm. 

“You don’t usually give advice,” she tells him, holding out the cup again. It’s been refilled. He takes it from her. “Especially when it concerns Obito. They’re just surprised, you know?”

Kakashi brings the cup up to his mouth and gulps the water down, using the edge of the plastic to draw the top of his mask down to below his lips so that it doesn’t get too damp. When he’s done, he brings one hand in to wipe the water from his mouth and pulls it back over his face again before lowering the empty cup. 

“Hmph,” he says, and leans forward as far as he can without letting go of Kushina’s shoulder to toss the cup into the nearby sink. It lands with a clatter. 

“So he’ll just take longer,” Anko finally says.

They look over to find her gazing, annoyed, at Obito.

“Like when I have to practice my penmanship, and it takes a long time because it doesn’t seem to get any better even when I try,” she pouts. “Sensei says it is, but I don’t believe him.”

Kushina gives a laugh and hefts Kakashi up higher on her hip. Her hand rests on his knees, the other set against his back. They're warm. 

“It’s just training the muscles in your hand, you know?” She tells the sulking five — six? — year old. “Like when you’re learning a new kata! Eventually they'll start to remember how you’re holding the brush, and writing neatly will be easier.”

“It’s the same with Obito and memorizing things,” Minato says, twirling the scroll in one hands like a baton. There’s a pleased smile encompassing his face. “The brain  is a muscle too! For some people, it just takes it longer to learn the exercises than others.”

“Hmph,” Anko says. 

“So we’ll take a break,” Obito says, relieved. He glances over at Rin, who raises an eyebrow at him, and he lowers his gaze to the table sheepishly. 

“You’re the one who asked me to show you them,” Anko comments, still pouting. She’s adorable. 

“I know, and thank you,” Obito says, bowing his head toward her as much as he can from where he’s sitting. “It’s really interesting and I’m glad you did. Sorry it’s taking me so long.”

Anko blinks at him. Her arms drop down to her sides and she looks a little stunned, like she doesn’t get thanked for her efforts very often. 

“Oh,” she says, and then shakes her head, face smoothing out into her usual smug expression. “Well, your welcome.”

“I think we could use some fresh air!” Minato says, clapping his hands together. He’s got the scroll of poison recipes tucked under one arm. “How about we all go out?”

“To a training ground?” Obito asks eagerly, and Anko perks up.

“Uh,” Minato glances uncertainly toward Kakashi, and Kushina’s arms tighten minutely around him. 

“Kakashi’s feeling better, but he’s still sick,” she says firmly. “I don’t think he’s well enough to train yet.”

“I can watch,” Kakashi offers when the two children slump down dejectedly in their seats.

He sure as hell doesn’t want to be the reason they don’t train. He’d like for all of his friends to be as strong as they can be, and Kakashi will be damned if he’s the thing that holds them back just because he’s sick. 

The adults and Rin gaze at him, surprised.

“Are you sure you’re okay with not being able to join in?” Minato asks.

Kakashi narrows his eyes at the man suspiciously. “Hold on,” he starts. “Are we actually going outside to go outside or is this another trick to get me to the doctor?”

He watches as his sensei’s boulders slump. The entire man droops where he stands, like a wilting flower. 

“I’m sorry,” Minato says pleadingly. Kakashi shrinks back as he steps forward and bows over himself, one hand on Kushina’s shoulder and pressing his forehead woefully into Kakashi’s arm.

“We were just so worried, and now that you have the medicine, don’t you feel better? I’m sorry, Kakashi, please forgive me! I didn’t want to go behind your back like that!” The man wails. 

Kakashi, startled, blinks down at him dumbly, unable to move. 

Kushina snorts. She draws back from her partner and reaches out a hand to shove him away, shifting Kakashi to her other arm as she does. 

“There you go,” she tells Kakashi wryly, lips quirked. “You set him off. Now he’ll never stop apologizing to you until you punch him in the face.”

Kakashi jolts, giving her a wide-eyed look. “I can’t punch him,” he refuses adamantly.

“One day,” she pats him on the leg. “One day, but until then you’ll have to deal with that ,” she says, pointing a finger to where Minato-sensei has bowed at the waist in their direction, still spouting off I’m sorry’s and Please forgive me’s in rapid succession.

Kakashi blanches. 

Anko is watching the ridiculous man’s dramatics from her chair, a gleeful gleam shining in her eyes. Kakashi is absolutely certain her own teacher will be hearing about this in vivid detail. 

He straightens up, turning to look at Kushina. He reaches out and curls one arm around his neck. 

“When is Orochimaru going to be done with his mission?” He asks quietly. 

The lighthearted atmosphere of the kitchen drops down just a notch, but enough for anyone with a lick of sense to notice. Anko scowls, Obito hunches one on himself, Rin looks oddly guilty, Minato rubs at the back of his neck awkwardly in stark reminiscence of his future-son, and Kushina lets out a gusty sigh.

“We don’t know the details of it,” she says, walking him out of the kitchen and into the front room. There’s a scramble of chairs screeching against the floor and footsteps as everyone else rushes to follow as she makes her way to the front door. 

“The Hokage Tower is being really hush about it, but I didn’t hear anything about him having to leave the village. It’s probably just something they want his opinion on.”

“Couldn’t he come back after the workday, if it was just that?” Kakashi crosses his arms, but leans into her.

If she’s leaving the apartment and hasn’t made a single move to put him down on his own two feet, he’s not about to egg her into it by silently implying something silly like wanting to be set down. 

“It sounded important,” Anko complains, trailing at Kushina’s heel like a puppy.

Kakashi curls into Kushina’s shoulder and looks over it and down her back at the girl, who stares up at him with an oddly unreadable expression, coupled with a frown.

“If it’s important like that, he’ll be working a lot, and not come back until it’s done or they don’t need him anymore.”

“What do you do, during that?” He asks curiously. 

She scowls. “Usually I get a babysitter. A D-tank for some chunin. They suck.”

“Is that because they’re horrible, or because they won’t let you do whatever you want like Orochimaru does?”

“He doesn’t let me do whatever I want!” Anko denies. At Kakashi’s raised eyebrow, she rolls her eyes. “Maybe a little. But the babysitters still suck, really bad. I decided I’d stay at your place this time. Since we’re siblings, and all, I don’t need a babysitter.”

“Since we’re siblings,” Kakashi echoes dully, and slumps against Kushina when Anko nods approvingly up at him with a flinty smile stretched across her young face. 

Beneath him, Kushina’s shoulder trembles with her muted laughter. At least she has the decency to silence it. 

“Okay, so,” Minato claps his hands together when they finally step out into the sunlight. It seems to absorb into his golden skin and hair, like he’s a metallic statue come to life, warm colors and glaze. His smile beams like the sun’s rays. He’s an absolutely ridiculous human being. 

“I’m thinking we start out with some light warm ups, taijutsu training, and move into some spars,” the jounin schedules cheerfully, looking down at Kakashi’s two teammates that walk on either side of him. “How’s that sound?”

“Anything but more brainwork,” Obito approves, clutching at his head with both hands. 

Rin rolls her eyes at his dramatics. Kakashi doesn’t remember her ever being this… snide with anyone, especially Obito. Did he miss something that changed that?

“That sounds good, sensei,” the young girl says, returning Minato’s beaming smile. Her’s was like starlight, twinkling and at times just as bright. 

Kakashi is surrounded by sunshine people. It’s nauseating, and he’s so glad he’s drugged up to combat that symptom right now. 

“Just a straight walk to the training grounds,” he hears Kushina mutter determinedly under her breath, barely, and Kakashi strains himself in very carefully not reacting to the comment. 

He lays his head against her shoulder, arms encircling her neck, and blinks lazily as he runs his gaze over their surroundings, and — oh. Makes a silent note of all the people pretending not to stare, as they blink in befuddlement and then ardently look away from their group as she carries Kakashi along. 

Kakashi licks his lips underneath his mask, and just closes his eyes. Maybe if he can’t see them, he’ll forget they’re there. 

It doesn’t really work. 

Chapter Text

Kakashi watches with a calm sense of detachment as his sensei flies at his teammates with reckless abandon, flashing in and out of sight in a yellow blur before Rin or Obito can land a hit on him. 

Being the students of Konoha’s Yellow Flash meant that Kakashi and his teammates had a level of speed that far outmatched most of their peers, simply because Minato-sensei wasn’t one to hold back and go easy on them in training. If they wanted to make a mark on him, they had to work for it, earn it. In the beginning, the only one who had come close had been Kakashi. Obito and Rin, fresh out of the Academy as they had been, had quietly despaired once it sunk in how distant the promotion of even chunin seemed in the face of a jounin.

Perhaps that had lent a little credit to the jealousy Obito of the past had treated Kakashi with, and the awe Rin held for him, having achieved the rank of chunin before either of them had even graduated. 

Watching them now, set on the smooth planks of the wooden bench on the sidelines of the training ground, swinging his feet in the air because they’re nowhere near reaching the ground, Kakashi realizes that the two of them had come a long way from the fresh-faced genin recruits they’d started out as. The rank of their squad leader had been a boon that he’s sure all three of them have taken for granted at one point or another, and it helped tremendously that Minato-sensei was just plain talented in the art of teaching. He had the patience for it that a lot of ninja lacked, even those who worked in the Academy.

Under his tutelage, the three of them had made leaps and bounds in skill and experience. They were one of the fastest four man squads in Konoha, despite their ages and differences in ranks. Well, they had been, in Kakashi’s past, especially by the time they were twelve.

Even then, however, they hadn’t been fast enough .

This time, Kakashi swears silently as he watches the sparring match between the rest of his team with a single-minded focus, this time they will be fast enough. Hell make certain of it. 

“ Katon — !” Obito cries, hands wrapped around each other in the serpent seal, and Kakashi withholds a great big sigh.

He watches as their sensei deftly avoids the flames, ducking under them and surging forth to sweep the Uchiha off his feet. Obito flies through the air and hits the trunk of a nearby tree with a loud oomph . Kakashi’s eyes flicker up to watch the branches and leaves tremble as his teammate’s impact causes the tree to wobble dangerously.

Obito leaps to his feet, and the Hatake rolls his eyes — lightly, he does still have a headache — when the boy immediately tries again with yet another fire release technique. Doesn’t he know by now that, though Wind is weak against Fire, their sensei has the experience and skill to turn that weakness around into a strength instead?

Seems like Obito still prioritizes the flashy jutsu over the practical. Perhaps he needs some schooling on the art of battle tactics. 

Rin leaps down from the branches of another tree a few hundred feet away. With a put-upon sigh, the girl uses her affinity with water jutsu to put out the flaming tree that Obito’s jutsu has set alight.

“Obito, stop setting everything on fire,” she calls, voice stressed to the point of slightly annoyed, and the boy glances over at her with a sheepish laugh.

“Oh, sorry Rin-chan! I didn’t mean to!”

“Obito,” their teacher says, landing lightly on his feet in the midst of their paused spar. “I want you to try to go the rest of this spar using only your second affinity.”

“What?! But sensei, I’m pants at earth techniques —!”

“Then this is the perfect time to get some practice in, isn’t it?” Minato says, cheerfully, and with a groan of defeat from the Uchiha, the three of them fling themselves back into action.

Kakashi leans forward, palms set flat against the seat of the bench. He tilts his head down to gaze a little disheartedly at his socked toes.

He doesn’t have any shoes on.

It hadn’t really been something he’d realized until Kushina had set him down on the bench when they’d arrived, only to be dragged off by Anko in search of a specific dango-vendor, which — ? There’s plenty of dango vendors in the market a street over, Kakashi doesn’t understand why the two of them needed a specific one. Was that vendor’s dango especially good, or something? The gleeful light in the two’s eyes when they’d left had said something entirely different, though Kakashi wasn’t sure what, exactly. Just that it didn’t bode entirely well for this mysterious vendor.

In any case, Kakashi had realized the second Kushina had been dragged out of his sight that he wasn’t wearing shoes, and thus was stuck on the bench.

Sure, he could walk anyway, but his socks were thick and new and Kakashi wasn’t really interested in getting them filthy with the packed dirt and dust of the training ground or the streets of the village. And he couldn’t very well take them off, since then his feet would be absolutely freezing, and the body loses heat faster through bare feet than any other part of the body.

Ergo, he’s stuck.

He’d tried to busy himself with analyzing the skills of his teammates, since it had been decades since he’d last seen them fight, but, well… They were clearly barely out of the Academy, for all that it had been months since then. They had bulked up in their repertoire, but they still had a long way to go before they were even close to the skill of his team by the time of the fateful bridge mission.

They had a few years until then, Kakashi knows. Kanabi Bridge hadn’t happened until he was twelve, so that gives him five years to push his teammates to be stronger than they had been the first time around.

Five years is plenty of room to work with. 

At the same time, there’s a sick, slimy little feeling in the pit of his stomach, because it doesn’t feel like enough time at all.

He doesn’t think any amount of time would be enough time.

Kakashi stares down at his socked feet, and sighs.

Looming tragedies or not, he’s bored .

“You alright, kid?”

Kakashi blinks, head snapping up to find two almond brown eyes staring down at him from an inquisitive face. It takes him point five seconds to recognize who it is, because between now and the future, this person has probably changed the least out of all of Kakashi’s peers.

Genma blinks down at him slowly, and raises an eyebrow. “Hatake?”

Hearing such a formal address from someone Kakashi has long considered a close friend and trusted comrade hurts viciously and so abruptly that it almost gives him whiplash. He struggles to take in a calming breath, saturate his lungs with it, and slowly exhales it with extreme care so that it doesn’t shake on the way out. He isn’t able to stop the flinch, and hunches his shoulders.

“Please,” he tries, and has to clear his throat with a cough, because — humiliatingly , even if it is Genma and Kakashi knows the other boy would never judge him for something like this — his voice breaks. “Don’t call me that.”

Kakashi ducks his head down and keeps his eyes aimed down at his socks, deliberately avoiding the calculating and searching stare he knows he’s currently being subjected to. Genma may be laid back and easy-going, but he’s one of the smartest shinobi Kakashi knows, and despite not knowing him at this age, intelligence like that has to be built upon something that’s already long since been there.

“Hm,” Genma says, the senbon in his mouth swaying as he purses his lips. “... Kakashi, then.”

Kakashi gives a firm nod, eyes still trained on his feet. A handful of long, stretching seconds pass them by before he hears Genma sigh — theatrically, because it seems the other is dramatic even at this point in time — and the older boy takes a seat on the bench beside him. 

“You’re not going to train?”

Kakashi peers at him through the corner of his eyes, not bothering to lift his head up. Genma jerks his chin forward in a pointed gesture to indicate his battling teammates, who have migrated a little further into the wooded area of the training grounds. Rin’s tendency to flee into the branches when a fight gets too much must have led her male teammates to take their spar to the treetops. He can hear their shouts and clashing ringing through the air, distant and muffled by leaves.

“Can’t,” he says dejectedly. He swings his legs through the air, slow and morose. “I’m sick.”

Genma blinks. “Why aren’t you at home resting, then?”

“I’ve been resting,” Kakashi complains, because this is what he needs — someone to complain to. “I’m doing better today so everyone thought I should get some fresh air, but — “ he directs a narrow stare toward the trees, and glances off to the street Kushina and Anko had vanished down an hour before.

“You were abandoned,” Genma says, lips quirking upward in amusement around his characteristic senbon. Apparently the oral fixation predates his ANBU days. “Poor thing.”

“I’m not,” Kakashi mumbles, crossing his arms over his chest. He glares down at his socked feet mullishy, as if to blame them for his boredom. Which, actually, now that he thinks about it, is true. He would have wandered off ages ago if only he had his feet covered.

Genma follows his gaze, and Kakashi watches a startled expression make its way across the boy’s face to replace the humor. “Where are your shoes?”

“Don’t have any.”

“You don’t have shoes ?”

“I don’t have any with me,” Kakashi corrects. “I didn’t put any on before we left.”

“Why?” Genma asks, aghast.

Kakashi’s ears burn. “‘Cause Kushina carried me,” he mumbles under his breath, and cringes when the genin only leans in with a confused frown.

“What’d you say?”

“It’s not like I walked here,” Kakashi huffs, and then inwardly groans when the eternal tickle in his chest is aggravated by the action. It sends him into a coughing fit that lasts for about two minutes — he counts.

By the end of it, Genma’s staring at him with an unreadable expression, senbon still flat between his teeth. Kakashi swallows down a mouthful of saliva, thickly, and resists the urge to sigh. At this rate he’s going to lose his ‘hip and cool’ reputation before it even has the chance to develop.

And if his trail of thoughts is any indication, clearly he’d spent far too much time around Maito Gai in the p — future. The future.

Kakashi actually does groan this time, sinking back against the bench and throwing an arm over his eyes to block out the beating sun. It’s rays glare down on him, but he’s still freezing. Useless ball of fire.

There’s a rustle of clothing, and he feels Genma stand up from the bench. A few moments tick by in silence. Just when he thinks the other boy has left him to his sulking, there’s a light tap on his shoulder, and Kakashi peeks out from under his arm to see Genma crouched in front of the bench.

He blinks as the child-version of his old friend holds his arms out behind him and tosses Kakashi a lazy grin.

“Well?” Genma drawls, wiggling the fingers of his hands. “Hop on. Let’s go to the market.”

“What?”

“I’m starving,” Genma says, and raises an eyebrow. “I figured I’d get a snack for you, too. You look like you could use it.”

Kakashi wants to refuse him. He wants to stay on this bench and watch this preteen vision of his comrade from a future that never was walk away from him, to never interact with kakashi again so that Kakashi can’t curse this Genma with the same bad luck he curses all his friends with. At the same time, he’s bored , and Genma’s words have made him realize he’s also hungry. If Genma left, Kakashi would be alone on this bench, and…

He misses him. Genma.

Ignoring his common sense, Kakashi inches forward to the edge of the bench, disheartened when even then his feet are a good six inches above the ground, and carefully maneuvers himself onto Genma’s back. The older boy’s arms hook under Kakashi’s leg, and there’s half a second of disorientation when Genma stands up, hefting Kakashi along with him. 

“Awesome,” the boy beams over his shoulder, senbon aimed away from Kakashi’s face. “Let’s go!”

Genma Shiranui is a genin who had entered the academy three years before Kakashi, though they’d been in the same class, and who’s ultimate life goal is to serve the minimum four years in the ANBU Corps, then retire and spend the rest of his days doing run of the mill, low-ranked missions while living off the severance pay. 

He’s six years older than Kakashi, a year above Obito and Rin. As adults, this was hardly a point of any interest and rarely came up in conversation, but the age difference is stark and obvious when they’re both children, and Genma is head and shoulders over Kakashi’s diminutive height.

He kicks his feet grumpily at the reminder of how small he is, after years and years of being one of the taller people in a room — when he wasn’t slouching, that is. But now, no matter how straight he stands, Kakashi can barely reach the countertops of his own damn kitchen.

It really tears at a guy’s self esteem.

“You’ve been sick a while, then?” Genma asks over his shoulder at him. 

Kakashi’s got his arms wrapped around the genin’s neck, much like how he’d held onto Kushina earlier. Except he’s half perched on Genma’s back, so his cheek ends up smooshed against the side of Genma’s head. It makes Genma’s voice sound like it’s partially coming from inside Kakashi’s own head. It’s weird.

“Huh?” He readjusts his grip on the other boy so that his ear isn’t pressed against Genma’s skull. Sounds come a little clearer now.

Genma peers at him from the corner of his eye as he piggy-backs him through the market street. They’ve so far passed three dango shops, none of which were attended by Kushina or Anko, and two teriyaki places. Kakashi has to wonder what exactly it is that Genma’s hungry for.

There’s a few people that he’s noticed who have stopped and stared at the two of them, but otherwise they’re carefully ignored. Maybe the villagers of this time still have some manners, little that they are.

Kakashi thinks about Orochimaru, and his own childhood, and withholds a scowl. Yeah, right.

“Haven’t really seen you around in weeks,” Genma comes to a stop and hefts him up a bit, keeping him from slipping off. Kakashi wraps his legs around his waist for better security. “Have you been sick that whole time?”

“It hasn’t been that long,” Kakashi denies, unsure, but then sighs and sets his chin against Genma’s shoulder. “Yeah. Today’s the first day I haven’t been puking my guts out.”

He’s treated to a wide eyed stare. Genma twists his head around and Kakashi blinks rapidly as brown eyes inspect him for some sort of invisible injury. One hand is thrust back to press against his face.

“It’s been that bad?” Genma asks, voice a little harried. “And you’re out and about? You don't really have that bad of a fever, I guess, but…”

Kakashi leans away from his hand, gripping his shoulders so he doesn’t fall off. “I’m okay. I have medicine.”

“Yeah, but rest is really important for recovering from illness —”

“It hasn’t really helped so far,” Kakashi grumbles. “It’s not… It’s not a sickness that’s just gonna go away on it’s own.”

Genma slows to a stop, having started walking again after checking Kakashi’s temperature.

“So it is bad,” he says.

Kakashi shrugs. He slowly leans back in and wraps his arms around Genma’s neck, before laying his head down into the crook of his arm with a tired sigh.

He jostled a little as Genma once again hefts him up from where he’s slipped a bit, then they’re moving, this time in silence. A few minutes pass before they stop, and Kakashi spends the entire time with his eyes closed.

“Well, we’re here.”

He brings his face out of his little haven and glances blearily up at the storefront Genma’s taken them to. He blinks.

“This isn’t a food stall,” he points out slowly, but Genma laughs a little and pushes past the door of the small convenience shop.

“We’re not here for food,” he says, which does absolutely nothing to alleviate Kakashi’s confusion.

“But —”

Genma hefts him up again, less gently, jostling Kakashi a little and making his head spin, and Kakashi glares down at the senbon sticking out of the other boy’s mouth, contemplating snatching it away in retaliation, because it was obvious that he’d only done it to make Kakashi shut up. He hadn’t been in danger of falling off this time. 

Genma makes a beeline for the small clothing section of the shop. He maneuvers Kakashi off his back and sets him on top of a stool, walking over to grab a pair of boots.

“What are you doing,” Kakashi demands.

Genma lifts the boots up and waves them in his face. “You need shoes, don’t you?”

“I have shoes at home!”

“Well, now you can have another pair! Here,” the boots are shoved into Kakashi’s hands and Genma steps away so quickly it has to be chakra enhanced, but he’s out of range before Kakashi can think to shove the shoes back at him.

He’s left holding onto the damn things instead, as Genma busies himself with examining the selection of jackets on the nearby rack. Pointedly ignoring Kakashi.

He wants to just drop the boots on the floor, but his hands are kind of tied. Genma cleary isn’t about to let them leave until Kakashi’s feet have shoes on them, and Kakashi can’t leave on his own since he’s only wearing socks. And he’s known Genma long enough to know that he’s more stubborn than a mule in cases like these. Kakashi grumbles under his breath about pushy, motherhenning brats and pulls the boots on.

Insultingly, aggravatingly, they’re a perfect fit.

“Well?” Genma appears at his side with a cheeky smile stretched across his face, eyes squinting merrily with the width of it.

“They fit,” Kakashi presses out between clenched teeth.

“Perfect!” The older boy beams, and a bundle of fabric is shoved into his arms. “Try this on.”

“No! No, no,” Kakashi throws the article of clothing at Genma’s face, realizing in horror what it is that Genma wants. “No, no shopping trip, no .”

“Aw,” Genma pouts as he pulls the dark navy jacket off his head. His bandana has been knocked askew, and his eyes are wide and beguiling. “C’mon —”

Kakashi can’t believe he’d forgotten Genma’s favorite pastime, and how he’d drag anyone into it the second that they showed weakness and gave him an opening. He has to nip this in the bud before it truly gets out of hand, and Genma ends up forcing an entire wardrobe on him. 

“Please?” Genma sticks out his bottom lip, making the senbon wobble. His eyes are round and big and why the fuck is it adorable? “Just for a few minutes —”

“I thought we were going for food,” Kakashi, panicking, says quickly. He hunches his shoulders and makes himself look smaller than he actually is — which, annoyingly, is tiny, fuck you universe — and kicks his newly booted feet through the air aimlessly, wrapping his arms loosely around his stomach. He darts his gaze off to the side, avoiding Genma’s eyes. 

“... I’m hungry,” He mumbles quietly.

There’s a pause. Kakashi swallows and prays to all the kami he knows that Genma has a heart and has decided not to force him into an exhausting shopping trip that could possibly last hours. It’s happened before and Kakashi swore then he’d never let it happen again. He can’t believe he’s allowed it to get this far without him realizing. He’s better than this, isn’t he?

Hands pop into Kakashi’s vision, and he watches them slip the boots off his feet. Arms — thinner and smaller than Kakashi remembers them being, the muscle bulk of a genin — wrap around his waist and haul him off the stool. Genma leaves the jacket behind and carries both Kakashi and the boots over to the register with a cheerful smile.

“We should get some onigiri,” Genma comments brightly, setting the boots on the counter and pulling a wallet out of his pocket with his free hand. “I’m kind of craving it. Do you like onigiri, Kakashi?”

“It’s fine,” Kakashi says quietly, arms once again loops around Genma’s shoulders, reeling from the sheer and utter relief his nervous system has been flooded with. Had he actually just dodged that kunai? Thank kami. Thank kami so much .

“Awesome,” Genma says, beaming at the cashier when the man hands him back his cash. “Onigiri it is!”

Kakashi blinks as he’s hauled up to sit on the counter right then and there. Both he and the cashier watch, befuddled, as Genma immediately tears the tags off the boots and shoves them onto Kakashi’s feet without so much as a by-your-leave.

“There!” Genma cheers. “Shoes!”

“Um,” Kakashi says. He carefully doesn’t meet the stare of the bewildered cashier. “Thanks.”

“No problem, little kouhai,” the thirteen-year-old waves the words away, and reaches up to lift Kakashi off the counter by the armpits. 

He is set down with surprising gentleness, and Kakashi blinks when his feet finally meet the floor for the first time since — well, all day, really. He hadn’t walked since the bath. It’s a little strange to think about.

“Let’s go and catch us some chow,” Genma says. 

Kakashi is grabbed by the hand and dragged out of the shop in much the same manner Anko had manhandled a humouring Kushina into her search for dango. Genma waves a farewell over his shoulder at the still greatly confused shopkeeper, and Kakashi barely has time to blink before they’re down the street.

Genma is a whirlwind of activity that bustles them both along, sweeps them through an onigiri vendor on the streetside, and presses one with a pickled plum center into Kakashi’s hands. The next thing he knows, they’re sitting on a curb ledge with sticky rice clinging to their fingers, and Kakashi is doing his level best to keep Genma from grabbing his hands to clean them off for him. He forgot how utterly embarrassing Genma was.

“Just let me —”

“I’ve got it,” Kakashi refuses, stretching out his arms in the opposite direction of his friend and leaning away from Genma’s twitching hands.

“You’re getting rice all over your sweatshirt!”

Kakashi glances down and finds that he’s right. The grains are clinging to the fabric of his sleeves with the same persistence as burrs from a meadow in Tea Country. 

He pouts, giving one of them a shake that doesn’t dislodge the rice in the least. It’s not his fault that sensei is so much bigger than him, with freakishly long arms compared to Kakashi’s tiny, short little twigs. The sleeves kept falling down into his food and he’d given up on pushing them up, as they’d just fall down again.

Genma takes advantage of his distraction with gusto. He snatches one of the sweatshirt’s sleeves into his hands and gets to work picking the rice off and tossing them to the ground at their feet. 

Kakashi slouches where he’s sitting, grumpily allowing the older boy to help him. Every day in this new time makes him feel more and more like a helpless child. He hates it as much as he doesn’t entirely mind it all that much. It’s confusing. 

“There,” Genma finishes, tossing the final grain over his shoulder as he hops up from the curb. 

Kakashi is pulled up alongside him, by the sleeve. He tears it out of the other’s grasp with a scowl, adjusting the fabric so that his hand once again pokes — barely — out of the cuff. 

“We should get you back to your team before they start to worry.”

“They’re already worried,” Kakashi huffs, recalling the words Rin had told him just that morning. He could sort of get it, now that he’s had the time to think about it, but still. Why did they all crowd into his apartment like that? Isn’t one babysitter enough?

He grumpily kicks the toe of his new boot at the ground, sending up a small dust cloud. 

Genma grimaces. He opens his mouth to reply, but doesn’t get the chance to.

“HATAKE-SAN!!!”

Kakashi freezes on the spot, ice forming inside his stomach. 

“Wh —” Genma jerks, pivoting on his foot with tense shoulders to survey the street behind them. Kakashi doesn’t dare look. Whatever the older boy sees makes him relax, and that just causes the dread in Kakashi’s gut to worsen. Genma snorts with a level of humor that Kakashi doesn’t agree with, right now. “Oh.”

“Hatake-san!!!” Gai greets at his normal volume once he’s closer, which is honestly still much too loud for most other people. 

“ Don’t call me that,” Kakashi manages to grit out, perhaps a bit too harshly. 

Can he be blamed, though? He can’t even recall a single memory in which Gai called him by anything other than his given name, a habit that his friend had passed on to his pupil, Lee. Having this kid, here and now, so reminiscent of Gai’s own future student, calling him by his surname — it leaves Kakashi’s mouth tasting like ash. 

Gai comes to a screeching halt barely five feet away from them, hand still held aloft where he’d been waving it fervently in greeting. He stares at him with an unreadable expression that is, if you ask Kakashi, frankly terrifying, for a long moment. They’re both silent. Kakashi isn’t sure he can even move, and if he could he thinks he might be running away right now. 

“Ah!” Gai finally crows, blinding grin in place. There’s something strangely soft about his eyes, though, and it’s freaking Kakashi out. “You have finally come to the realization that we are friends, my esteemed rival! Glorious day, indeed!”

Kakashi makes a decision based solely on the needs of his mental health, for once. He turns on his heel and walks away. 

Genma lets out a greatly amused chuckle — asshole — and follows after him immediately. The boy stretches both arms behind his head in a lazy fashion, eyeing the green monster that barrels after them like some type of overly-enthusiastic dog.

“Hey, Gai.”

“Genma!” The other boy gasps, as if he’s just noticing his fellow genin. “How fortuitous to find you here, as well! Are you enjoying our day off?”

“I’d say it’s going well,” Genma says cheerfully, as if Gai’s exuberance doesn’t throw him off in the least. The senbon in his mouth dips as he casts a grin down at Kakashi. “I found a cute puppy on my way to the market.”

A small sound of complaint escapes Kakashi’s mouth when Genma’s hand lands in his silver hair, ruffling it this way and that. He ducks under the hand and nearly trips over his feet. The hand darts out to catch him, and he’s dragged bodily under Genma’s arm.

“I think,” the boy smugly says, “that I’m gonna keep him.”

Kakashi glowers up at him from beneath his bangs, and almost doesn’t catch the horrified look that crosses Gai’s face.

“No, Genma!” The child version of Kakashi’s “rival” cries, hands forming into fists. “Ha — Kakashi-san is my rival!”

“Yeah, I know that —”

“Good teammates don’t steal their teammate’s rivals!”

“I’m not stealing him, Gai —”

Kakashi huffs quietly as the two genin argue loudly with each other — well, loudly in Gai’s case, Genma just sounds exasperated — and he’s left swinging precariously from Genma’s elbow, the other’s forearm hooked under Kakashi’s stomach. Exactly like how he used to carry Bisuke. He feels like he’s being treated like an actual puppy. Kakashi crosses his arms and pouts. 

Thanks to Genma, he hadn’t even been able to escape Gai. 

“Hey!” Another, younger voice joins in on Gai’s shouting. “What are you doing?”

Kakashi lifts his head up and watches in bemusement as little baby Anko stomps her way across the street toward their motley trio. There’s a heated glare blazing on her face.

“Ah!” Gai puffs out his chest. “Young Mitarashi-san! Good aftern —!”

Anko marches over and stomps directly onto Genma’s foot. The boy yelps, hopping from one foot to the other, and Kakashi blinks as he bounces along with him. Genma stubbornly doesn’t drop him, and he isn’t sure if he should be grateful, since his headache is suddenly returned with a vengeance.

“Let him go!” Anko demands, tiny baby hands clenched into fists. 

There’s a kunai in one of them, and Kakashi vividly remembers that blade held against his throat in his own bedroom. He wonders if he should warn Genma.

Gai blanches, hurrying forward and hovering at Genma’s side. “M — Mitarashi-san! Why?”

Anko seethes, and the kunai twitches forward barely an inch. Kakashi senses danger. “Let my brother go,” the girl orders lowly, “right now!”

Kakashi sighs in defeat. This again.

“Your… ?” Genma and Gai both look between Anko and Kakashi with bewildered expressions on their faces. Clearly, they’re having trouble spotting the family resemblance.

“I said drop him!”

“Anko-chan!”

Kakashi breathes another sigh, this time of relief, because that’s Kushina. She’s here to save him, thank kami. 

“Redhead mom, they won’t let Kakashi-nii go!” Anko complains, pointing her kunai at the two nonplussed genin.

Kushina takes one look at them and her eyebrow shoots up. The edges of her lips twitch downward, and Kakashi thinks she looks rather displeased.

“Boys,” the kunoichi begins, and something about her voice sounds dangerous. “What’s going on here?”

Genma gulps and quickly sets Kakashi back down onto his feet, albeit very gently for all that he’s manhandled Kakashi all afternoon. He carefully pats Kakashi on the head one last time before snatching his head away when Kushina’s frown sharpens.

“We were just hanging out with Kakashi,” Genma explains, his customary cheerful smile plastered on his face like a paper mask.

“Oh?” Kushina’s other brow shoots up. Her arms cross over her chest in mirror of Anko. The two of them are scarily similar, Kakashi’s finding. 

Genma’s mouth takes on a stubborn line, while Gai is watching the conversation like it’s a spar, head revolving back and forth to each person with great confusion. Kakashi feels a little bad for him, since clearly the boy has no idea what’s going on.

“Kakashi was supposed to stay in the training grounds with his team. Why’s he with you?”

Kakashi blinks. He casts Kushina a small frown and takes a step to the left, leaning into Genma’s side. The boy’s arm automatically comes to drape across his shoulders, but he can still hear the note of surprise Genma makes at his actions.

“You left me alone,” he says, unable to keep the note of upset out of his voice. 

He bites his lip under his mask and feels a little pathetic. Of course they’d left him alone. He’s feeling better, and they were training or going out to enjoy their day. Kakashi should be happy that he’s no longer stealing away their important time by making them feel obligated to watch after him. He should be relieved.

He’s not. He feels the opposite, and that’s just proof of how selfish he is inside, isn’t it? He doesn’t need anyone to look after him, he’s a grown ass adult. 

A hand, larger than Genma’s, spreads it’s fingers through the locks of his hair. He jerks his head up and finds Kushina crouched in front of him with a strange look on her face, like a mix between fondness and… something else. Worry? Sadness? He hates himself for putting it there.

“Oh, Kashi,” she says quietly, and then scoops him up into her arms without giving him a chance to avoid her. She stands up and hugs him to her chest. “We didn't mean to leave you all by yourself, you know? I’m sorry. I thought — I mean, they were training, so it makes sense that they’d be too focused to — Aw, but I’m sorry, Kashi! I’m gonna kill that idiot blond! And your teammates!”

“I’d rather you kept them alive, really,” Kakashi squirms in her grip, before giving up when her arms barely move, and laying into her shoulder with a quiet breath that isn’t a sigh of defeat. It isn’t.

“Were you boys keeping Kashi here company?” Kushina asks, brightly, no sign of her earlier threatening tone. Anko stows the kunai away with a quiet grumble, looking disappointed.

Genma straightens up from his slouch, reaching a hand up to pat Kakashi on the leg. “He looked lonely,” the boy agrees, smile sharp and eyes even sharper. “Plus, he didn’t have any shoes on, so it’s not like he could go anywhere, so he must’ve been bored, too.”

Kushina goes still beneath him. Kakashi twists around and watches as she glances down at his feet and takes in the new boots that cover them. An embarrassed flush comes forth in the woman’s face.

“I — I totally forgot!” Kushina yelps, and Kakashi is crushed against her chest once again. He wriggles uncomfortably, but she doesn't let up an inch. “That must’ve sucked having to just sit there and do nothing! I’m sorry! Are you okay, you’re not cold right?” She demands, finally holding him at arm's length and looking him up and down like she’ll be able to find some sort of visual sign of his temperature.

“I’m fine,” Kakashi states, kicking his legs through the air. The boots stay where they are, not slipping off like the rubber ones had the day before. It’s a strangely gratifying feeling.

“Well,” Genma speaks up again, “I guess we’ll see you around, huh? Get some rest and feel better soon, Kakashi!”

He grabs Gai by the upper arm and begins dragging the other boy away down the street, waving in farewell while utterly ignoring Gai’s rambling demands to know what he meant by his words.

“My rival is ill? That’s terrible! We must go and make him some get-well soup immediately! Is he very ill? How sick — Genma! Genma, we must go to my father and request his recipe at once!”

“He’s already eaten, Gai.”

“But Genma — !”

Kakashi stares after them for a moment, purposefully avoiding Gai’s eyes as the boy keeps twisting and turning to get a look back at him, but Genma’s grip must be as steely as the one he’s held Kakashi with earlier, because eventually the green-clad monstrosity is dragged around the corner and out of sight — though certainly not hearing. He’s practically bellowing, as he does.

Genma and Gai had been on the same genin team, hadn’t they?

Kakashi had… he’d forgotten about Gai’s father.

It makes him feel like scum, because he certainly can remember how absolutely shattered his friend had been at the man’s loss. He put on a good song and dance for everyone else, but even by then Kakashi had plenty of time to compare Gai’s usual exuberance with that shallow mask and find it severely lacking. He’s found himself wishing too many times to count that he could do something to alleviate his friend’s grief, but comfort has never exactly been Kakashi’s strong suit. He couldn’t even handle his own grief — so he’d settled himself for indulging in Gai’s challenges and competitions whenever the other had asked, rather than ignore them. It seemed to have helped some.

This time, though… Dai-san is still alive.

Another one to add to the list of people Kakashi has to save. Because he will. He has to. If not for himself, then for Gai, who’s always been so much more important than Kakashi ever allowed himself to admit.

“Here, let’s get back before your team has a collective heart attack when they realize you’ve vanished on them.” Kushina bounces in place, lifting Kakashi a little bit higher to sit on her hip. 

He’s got boots, now. He can walk.

“I was kidnapped,” Kakashi reminds her firmly, looping his arms around her neck and leaning into her shoulder. 

There’s a finger poking his ankle, and he glances down and casts a sullen looking Anko a short little wave. She blinks, and waves back up at him.

Kushina lets out a laugh. Kakashi hangs on as the woman bends over and scoops the five — six? — year old girl up into her other arm. Anko steadies herself with a hand on Kushina’s shoulder and the other gripping one of Kakashi’s arms, and the two children blink over at each other in surprise.

A grin overtakes Anko’s face. “You’re welcome,” she says, smugly, and Kakashi tilts his head in confusion.

“What?”

“For rescuing you!”

“Since you were apparently kidnapped,” Kushina reminds him, mirth dancing in her eyes as she moseys on down through the market toward the training grounds. “Thank Kami Anko-chan here was brave enough to stand up to your dastardly captors!”

“Gai doesn’t have a dastardly bone in his body,” Kakashi snorts, and rests the side of his head on Anko’s forearm.

He could walk. But, really, both of them seem happier to have him not.

Chapter Text

“You were supposed to stay in the training ground,” Minato-sensei tells him, looking a little bit frazzled. Kakashi crosses his arms.

“Nobody told me that,” he refutes. He’s getting a little sick and tired of being told what to do, which is kind of a wonder in and of itself, seeing as he’s done nothing but be sick and tired since landing in this time to begin with.

“Next time,” Kushina hedges, looking like she’s trying not to laugh even as she has her arms full of both him and Anko, “maybe just tell us where you’re going. We get worried, you know?”

“I had no idea where Genma was going,” he says, “I was just along for the ride, since I didn’t have any shoes.”

His entire team, as one, turns their stares on to his feet, which are obviously covered in new boots and therefore not shoeless at all. Now . The redhead winces, the arm that’s holding Kakashi twitching absently as if she was going to rub sheepishly at her neck before remembering she’s already using her limbs for something else. 

“Where’d you get those?” Obito asks, eyeing the boots almost suspiciously.

“Genma bought them for me. Against my will,” Kakashi replies, unable to keep himself from pouting at the reminder.

“Against your will?” Minato asks, raising an eyebrow and daring to look amused.

“I don’t need more shoes, and I told him that, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“You just wanted to stay barefoot,” Anko accuses with a narrowed eyes grin full of evilness. “That way he’d have to carry you.”

Kakashi stares at her. “No, I didn’t. What are you saying, why would I want to be carried.”

“You like being carried,” the five year old girl that grows up to be a big whig in the Torture and Interrigation Division — Kakashi needs to stop forgetting that fact — tells him, malevolently. 

Kakashi blinks at her, wide eyed, and feels the tips of his ears turn red. No.

“I don’t,” he says quietly, bringing up both hands and placing them over his face, despite the fact that there’s a mask already covering it from view. His shoulders suddenly feel like they’re made of brick. 

Kushina coughs, delicately, and Kakashi knows that sound, knows that it’s her trying desperately not to laugh, and he feels his ears grow even hotter. He turns his face and hides it in her shoulder. Hopefully the pigmented red of her hair will make what’s visible of his face look less flushed. Not that he’s flushing, no. He’s not.

“That’s slander,” he adds, a little louder, because he has a fucking reputation here, even if nobody knows it. “Leave me alone.” 

“Aw, Kashi, it’s fine ,” Kushina says, her arm tightening around his waist. He feels her head dip down as she rubs her cheek into his hair. “I like carrying you.”

“I haven’t gotten to carry you yet.” Minato points out.

Kakashi lifts his head up to narrow his eyes at the man.

“You usually only let Orochimaru do that. But now Kushina’s carrying you, and even Obito’s gotten to carry you,” the jounin complains, like it’s some sort of contest and someone needs to keep score, and then he has the audacity to turn his head and pout at Kakashi. “When’s it gonna be my turn, Kakashi?”

“It’s not a competition, sensei,” he says. “Stop pouting at me, I’m seven and you’re — ” he pauses. 

He eyes his teacher with a dubious eye, and realizes that he isn’t entirely certain what age his sensei is at this time. He could do the math, but…

Everyone’s looking at him, waiting for him to finish, and since Kakashi already knows he’s going to be wrong, his best bet is to just throw out a completely random number and not even make an attempt.

“... Thirty.” Kakashi decides, and watches Minato’s face crumple with a faint sense of victory.

Kushina bursts into laughter.

“ Kakashi ,” Minato-sensei whines. “Why would you even joke about that? I’m not even twenty yet!”

Holy fucking shit.

No, wait, seriously, what.

“You’re,” Kakashi stares at him. “You’re a teenager.”

Maybe he should be a little concerned with how far over Kushina’s bent, Anko and him weighing her down as she gasps for breath, or how red her face has gotten. It nearly matches her hair, and she’s still cackling.

But he’s too busy trying to correlate his sensei right now with the three absolute fucking terrors that he was forced to raise, and he’s having some trouble processing it.

“I’m not a teenager, Kakashi,” Namikaze Minato, nineteen, disagrees. “I’m a jounin .”

“You’re a teenager ,” Kakashi repeats, and buries his face into Kushina’s hair, wrapping his arms around her neck again just in case she accidently drops them in her laughter. Anko gives up the fight and wriggles her way free, hopping to the ground. Kakashi blinks at her, and the smirk that’s on her face.

Then, he sits back up, shaking his head like one of his ninken to dislodge the red hair that’s caught in his, and finds himself staring at Kushina instead.

“ You ,” he says faintly, in dawning horror, “are a teenager, too!”

Kushina straightens up with a deep shuddering breath, the biggest grin ever on her reddened face, and tweaks his nose.

“And you’re the adorablest little chunin who I’m not gonna put down for the rest of the day, you know!”

“No I’m not. And that’s not a word  —” Kakashi starts, before abruptly cutting himself off. 

Rin and Obito are both giggling at him, like the current existential crisis he’s found himself in is in fact amusing to them, and even Minato’s pout has transformed into a grin. Kakashi covers his entire face, eyes and all with both hands and slumps down into Kushina’s collar until he’s unable to see anything but fabric and hair.

He is surrounded by children .

Kushina makes good on her word, and Kakashi’s feet don’t meet the floor until late into the evening. She’s the one who sits him into the chair for dinner, and once he’d finished eating she swept him back into her arms so instantaneously he wondered if Minato had taught her the Hiraishin. 

The boots find their place in the entryway where everyone else's shoes sit, neatly in rows, and Kakashi grumpily wonders if he’s ever going to even need to wear them again, if he’s never going to be allowed to walk .

It’s almost a little strange being awake and more aware in his apartment, because now he really gets to see how things have changed from what he once knew.

There’s a new rug in the living room, plush and soft-looking and the color of autumn. There’s a leafy plant sitting against the wall in a big blue and orange glazed pot that Kakashi knows he never owned in his life. The end table that sits beside the couch has been replaced, light mahogany and still smelling of the furniture store. The team photo for Team seven sits on top of it in a simple black frame, and on the floor underneath it is a basket of different skeins of yarn and a fabric roll of senbon and crochet hooks. 

The biggest change (aside from the entire kitchen that Orochimaru and, to a lesser extent, Kushina, have pretty much taken over and claimed for themselves) is the couch, which is not the tattered and worn leather one with the unidentifiable stains that had come with the apartment. Instead, it’s a soft cream color of synthetic microfiber, sprayed with a treatment that had destroyed any outside odors and is gentle on Kakashi’s oversensitive nose. There’s a feather-soft, dark blue throw blanket folded over the back, and two deep red, square pillows that are big enough for Kakashi to hide behind.

The red feels like it had been a compromise, Kakashi thinks as he hugs one of them to his chest, squirrelled away into one side of the couch. He isn’t entirely sure who picked what to decorate his apartment while he’d been ill, aside from the yarn basket that clearly belongs to Rin, but something in his gut tells him that if Minato hadn’t been there to dissuade her, Kushina would have chosen bright orange pillows instead. The other half of his brain is trying to figure out when the hell they’d hauled in an entirely new couch without him noticing. Probably during one of his many bouts of unconsciousness. 

On the other end of the couch sits Rin, crochet hook moving like a textile machine. He’s been watching her for the past fifteen minutes, and she’s been going at the same exact pace the entire time. It’s almost intimidating, how sharp-as-a-kuani focused she is.

“How do you feel?”

He blinks, looking up to find Rin staring at him from the corner of her eye. The crochet hook doesn’t even pause. It’s only a little bit scary.

“I’m fine,” he says, and when Rin doesn’t look very convinced — he doesn’t exactly blame her, considering how many times he’s said that when he was very obviously not fine — and adds, “I feel a lot better, today. The medicine helps.”

The line of her shoulders relaxes, so subtly Kakashi almost doesn’t notice. “Good,” the girl sighs, a smile curls her lips upwards. “I’m glad. We’ve been really worried.”

“So you all keep saying,” he replies, just faintly annoyed, and brings a hand up from the pillow to rub at the side of his cheek that’s covered by the mask. 

“Because it’s true,” Rin tells him, earnestly. “You haven’t had to watch yourself this past month, Kakashi-kun. If you had been able to see it like us, you’d agree that it was bad. It was scary .”

And she does sound afraid. It’s a note underneath the rest of her voice. It’s a little glint in her eye that speaks for itself. It reflects something in Kakashi because, despite feeling better now , he’s scared too. At times, it almost feels like he never stopped having that panic attack in the woods where Obito found him. 

Because, what if he dies?

“I know it is,” he says quietly, crushing the pillow to his chest and laying his head down on top of it. 

There’s a short moment’s hesitation, before she says, “But, the medicine is helping.”

“Yeah,” Kakashi agrees. The pillow smells like nothing but the fabric it’s made of, and the faintest traces of the individual scents of Orochimaru and Kushina, and Anko and Minato and his teammates, and it’s — nice. It’s nice.

Rin’s still staring at him, he can feel it, but she doesn’t reply. After a while, she turns back to her crocheting, hook moving even faster than before, which he would have said was impossible. They sit there in a silence that feels like it should be comfortable if it wasn’t so uneasy, before Rin blows out a heavy breath of air and drops the project to rest in her lap.

“It’s not the only thing that can help, you know.” She says, and when he turns to blink over at her, clarifies, “The medicine.”

“I can’t really think of anything else besides medicine that will help with being sick,” Kakashi states dubiously, “other than what I’ve already been doing.” Which is sleeping and resting and eating just enough to stay relatively healthy. In fact, sometimes he feels like he’s been getting too much of it all. 

“I’m not talking about the sickness,” Rin says, and Kakashi can only tilt his head at her in bewilderment.

“Then what are we talking about?”

She works her teeth into her bottom lip, like she’s being indecisive. The light blue yarn twisted around her left hand tightens until the tips of her fingers go white.

“I just,” she tries, and then her shoulders slump. “Have you ever — have you ever even t-talked about it?”

“About what ?” Kakashi wants to know.

“Your — “ Rin grits her teeth, like getting the words out is like chewing on nails. She looks hesitant and frustrated and worried all at once, and it pulls at her brow. “Your…”

“Rin?”

“Your father , Kakashi-kun.” She finally manages, eyes wide. “Have you ever talked about him? At all , since…?”

Oh.

Kakashi lifts his head up and stares at her. He’s not entirely sure whether he should have expected to have this conversation before. He doesn’t even know if Rin had ever actually known what had happened to his father, the first time around. Obviously, she knows now, and Obito had known too, which means Minato must have taken them aside and explained it to them. Probably during that first day when Obito had burst into his apartment and made Kakashi cry (and kamisama, he’s never been more embarrassed in his life, and that includes the time at the inn over in Snow Country with Raidou and Izumo).

Having expected this or not, Kakashi already knows his answer.

“No,” he admits, because it’s the truth. 

He’d never even mentioned his father out loud for years and years, until the aftermath of Pein’s attack on the village had all been cleared up, the bodies buried and the buildings were in the beginning stages of rebuilding. Until he found himself sitting next to Iruka on the Hokage Monument, and the subjects of fathers had been brought up. Iruka had shared the story of his parents’ demise, and Kakashi had reciprocated with a tale of a man sitting beside a campfire in a place between death and what comes after.

Kakashi looks back down at the pillow, and takes in a careful breath. Iruka had been a good friend. He was five years younger than Kakashi. He’d be two years old, right now, just a bright and bubbly baby held in the loving arms of his very alive parents. Nothing even close to the man Kakashi had once come to greatly respect. 

He wants to change so many things. Would he change so much that the Iruka he knew and respected would never come to be?

On that note, is his father still sitting beside a fire, unable to move on because of regret? Does a leap backward in time even affect things outside the world of the living?

“Even though it’s been a year?” Rin asks, quietly, and with some difficulty, Kakashi turns his attention back to the conversation at hand. 

He thinks back to what life had been like in the years following his dad’s suicide. Most of it was a haze, but things had been going on in the background of all that even so, and Kakashi had been incredibly perceptive even then.

“I can’t.” He says, and he knows what Rin’s is trying to do, but he also knows it’s never going to happen. He can’t help but give her a sad smile from beneath his mask for trying.

“I know it’s — hard.” She tells him, haltingly, and she’s so earnest that it’s almost painful. “But, even ANBU operatives are put through mandatory mental evaluations after particularly rough missions, so maybe if you just think of it like that — ?”

He’d never even been to those, when he’d been ANBU himself, and it wasn’t entirely because he didn’t want to. Still, the very mention of it makes Kakashi blink owlishly at Rin. She’s really been putting a lot of thought toward this, hasn’t she?

“Rin,” he interrupts. Tries again. “Rin, I can’t .”

She stops. She looks at him, the yarn around her fingers beginning to turn them blue, and there’s a stubborn set to her jaw. “It’s — Kakashi-kun, it’s not as difficult a process as you think. You can get help. It’s there for you if you need it and, I think… I think you do .”

She’s only twelve. She’s a genin. She’s lived in Konoha for her entire life with a loving merchant civilian for a father, and for all her subtle intellect and calculating stares and the sharp, analytical mind that Kakashi never realized she’d had, she’s still never born witness to the permeating rot that hides in the darkness within the village walls.

“I know that there’s help for those who need it, Rin,” he sighs quietly. He squishes the pillow down into his lap and folds his hands on top of it, watching how his fingers lace together. He takes another breath, “And... I know that I do. But that help isn’t there for —”

“It is , Kakashi-kun —” Rin insists, adamantly, stubbornly, and kami . Kami, she’s just trying to help, but she doesn’t understand .

“Not for me,” he says as firmly as he can. His words still hitch at the end despite himself. “Rin, not for me.”

She blinks at him. She sits back into the couch and stares at him with big, round, uncomprehending eyes, begging for her to understand him, but he knows she hasn’t quite grasped it yet. It just doesn’t make sense to her, and why would it? She’s a medic nin, she’d chosen that path straight out of the academy already knowing how she wanted to help people. She literally can’t wrap her mind around the idea that sometimes people could just… not want to help someone.

“... Why?”

Kakashi sighs, hunching his shoulders until he’s bent in half over the pillow, because that’s the question, isn’t it? He’d asked it countless times at this age, himself, the first time around. Why? Why him? Why is he different from everyone else? Why did other people get help for their hurts, and their pain, and their soul-crushing, all-consuming grief, and he doesn’t? Why would someone out there want him to suffer, like he has been, like this, and never reach out to him, never help him learn how to manage it?

It took him awhile to figure out the answer, and it wasn’t because he didn’t know it. Oh, he knew why. He’d just wished so much that it wasn’t true that he lived in denial of it for so long. Like if he wished hard enough then it would all stop.

But it didn’t.

“It’s because I’m me ,” Kakashi tells her quietly, pained. He doesn’t want to ever see that little spark of faith in her eyes go out. Faith in the good of humanity, faith for a better future for everyone, faith that one day there’d be peace .

He doesn’t want to be the one to put it out. He doesn’t want to douse that spark before it could grow into a flame, and then a bonfire. She’d never had a chance to fan the flames before, her life snuffed out far too early for her to make the difference she’d really wanted to in the world. 

Rin’s eyes look a little damp. Kakashi averts his gaze, turning it back to the pillow.

“What’s that got to do with — with anything ?”

“It’s the hatred,” he finally says, defeated. “They need somebody to blame. It’s the only thing they can do to have some sort of control over their world, when bad things happen. The one they blamed before, they drove to —” he stops. He shakes his head, drawing in a slow, steadying breath as she watches him with big eyes. “The one they blamed before is dead, so they moved their hatred on to the next best thing. That type of thing can be contagious, you know. It can infect even the people who should know better. It’s not really their fault, but… it does make things hard, sometimes.” he shrugs. “For me, I mean.”

It is their fault, he thinks. There’s a deep, bubbling feeling of bitterness that sits on the surface of all of Kakashi’s bones. He wants to blame them, and he will, because they should know to be better. They should know better, but they made the choice to stew in their own ignorance and self-delusions instead. The very thought of those people having a say in Kakashi’s life whatsoever makes his eyes sting and his throat close up.

But he can’t say that to Rin. She still has that hope for humanity inside of her that Kakashi lost a long time ago and didn’t get back until his students showed him how it was a necessary part of living. Kakashi won’t let Rin go through that long, grueling season of doubt and hopelessness. But it’s difficult, when the truth is so telling already.

“I want that help,” he says, words like molasses, hushed and barely escaping. “Rin, I do want that help,” he always has, all the way up until the point where he gave up, “but I can’t have it because they don’t want me to .”

He fists his hands on the piped edging of the pillow, staring down at how the veins in his wrists go taught and stark purple against the pale translucency of his skin. He twists the fabric between his knuckles, and works his teeth into his bottom lip. 

There’s a choked sound from next to him, and suddenly Rin scoots across the middle cushion that had sat empty between them this whole time. She leans into his shoulder and loops something around his neck. 

He blinks rapidly, eyes dry , and pokes his head out of the sky blue wrapping around him. He turns to face her, and she’s watching him with unshed tears in her eyes, hands still holding one end of the scarf. His heart is beating something weird and manic in his chest. 

“I finished it.” Rin whispers, voice thick and wobbling. It’s a statement without much inflection, lacking any triumph of a project completed. “It’s, um... It’s for you.”

“O-Oh. It is?” Kakashi returns, like he doesn’t already know, eyes just as wide and — as hard as he tries not to — just as watery. “... Thank you.”

“I just, I wanted to make something, to help me focus, you know… A-And, then I thought, well, I also wanted to make something for you , because I haven’t yet, and I’ve already made things for sensei and Obito and Kushina and my dad also, of course, and —”

“Rin…”

She swallows, fidgeting with the end she still hasn’t let go of yet. “And when we first started coming to your apartment, and it was so empty, but we’ve been — um, we’ve been working on filling it up and, well, making it livable , you know?” She laughs wetly. “Because, I guess you’re bad at that. But I… I wanted to give you something, that was, um… for you . Because.”

“Thanks.” Kakashi says again, and hates himself for the whine that rises helplessly in his voice.

He smooths his hands over the scarf, taking the end that Rin’s not holding and flattening it against his chest. He lets his fingers run over the simple weave stitches that make up it’s form, ghosting his nails across the soft bumps along neat little rows, and feels something sit heavy in his throat.

“I like it,” he says, bringing up the other end to press to his face. 

Closing his eyes and feeling the softness of the yarn, he can almost imagine that he’s back home, in the Konoha that one day could be, standing by his door and leaning heavily into the coat rack that this scarf never left the arm of. Maybe if he breathes in really deeply on his next breath, he’ll smell the trace scent of tomato pesto that Sasuke sneaks into his apartment sometimes to make because he doesn’t want his teammates to make fun of him for it — because they will , they’re assholes like that, and Sasuke’s always been oddly sensitive about his hobbies that don’t have anything to do with violence — but Kakashi’s never said anything about it before, and he won’t start now, and Sasuke knows that, and that’s probably why.

But then he opens his eyes, and Rin’s sitting beside him, holding the other end of the scarf, and the only scent coming from the kitchen is cinnamon.

Kakashi looks at Rin, swallows, chokes on it, and then leans down until their sides meet. He’s small enough that his head fits against the bend of her shoulder, and Rin sniffles a little bit before reaching up and wrapping the other end of the scarf around herself. 

It’s kind of a long scarf, compared to this small body he’s trapped in, and Rin’s still only twelve, so it fits around both their shoulders and then some. It must have been an adult scarf pattern. Much too long for just Kakashi himself. 

But he was telling the truth when he’d said he liked it. 

“ They might not want to help you,” Rin says suddenly, reaching out to boldly take Kakashi’s hand in her own. “But I do.”

Kakashi sits up and blinks at her. 

“Because you’re my teammate and you deserve it.” She continues, like he hasn’t said a word, and she’s looking determinedly at the wall, expression fierce and brittle all at the same time, “So, if they won’t help you, then — then I will .”

“Rin —”

“I might not be specifically trained for this sort of stuff, but I...  I care about you, Kakashi. If you need to talk, then, well… I’ll listen.”

Something hot like magma wells up from behind Kakashi’s eyes, and he reaches down to pull the scarf up until it sits over them. He presses down until the hot feeling migrates away from his eyes to sit in the hollow of his throat instead. It’s not much better. 

“Thank you for the scarf, Rin,” he says, instead of anything else, because he had never gotten the chance to say it the first time around. 

Rin wraps an arm around him, pulling him into her side. She tugs the scarf snug around their necks and holds him close.

Kakashi walks out of the bedroom and into the kitchen the next morning, bundled up in sensei’s sweatshirt, the purple pants that he’s beginning to think are borrowed from Anko, and his new scarf, to find Rin sitting at the table with a new project in hand and a pot of steaming miso on the stove.

“You didn’t even go home last night,” he accuses her, and she directs a beaming smile at him. 

It’s bright like the sun that had woken him up unwillingly, and he resents her maybe a little bit for it. 

“I did ,” she says. “I went back to grab a bag and to tell my dad I was staying the night at a friend’s house.”

“Does he know that I’m the friend?” He shoots back a little sarcastically, pulling the fridge door open to search for the milk jug. It takes more strength to tug open than he thought it rightly should, and when he glances to the shelf, he’s disappointed. 

“We’re out of milk,” he says, pushing it closed, and realizing Rin’s staring at him with narrow eyes. “What?”

“I used the last of it for the miso,” she says. Then, folding her arms over the tabletop, she tilts her head. “Of course he knows it’s you.”

Oh boy. Kakashi shifts awkwardly where he’s standing, before giving it up as a bad job and going over to grab a bowl from the bottom cupboard to serve himself some breakfast. “Okay, that’s great.”

“I also told him I was going to my teammate’s house, and my only other teammate is Obito, and Obito lives in the Uchiha district, and since I’m not Uchiha and therefore not allowed in there, well… There’s only one place I could be going.”

“Right,” Kakashi says distractedly. He coughs into his sleeve to get the itch out of his throat, and ladles out some soup. “My place.”

“Right,” Rin agrees. “So yes, he did know.”

“Okay.”

“My dad is smart.”

“That’s great.”

Rin’s eyes follow him as he walks across the kitchen and nudges the chair across from her away from the table with his foot. When he sits down, she leans across the table.

“He’s not one of those people, Kakashi,” she tells him solemnly, and Kakashi momentarily wonders at the absence of the honorific that she usually tacks onto his name, before focusing on her expression.

“What?”

Rin shifts. “The people that we talked about last night. My dad isn’t like that.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“He knows you never had anything to do with — you know, because you’re only seven , and —”

“Rin,” Kakashi smiles. It’s hidden behind his mask, but it makes his eyes crinkle, and the sight of it makes Rin stop talking. “I believe you.”

“Oh,” she says, and stops. 

Kakashi quietly claps his hands together and gives thanks for his food, reaching for his spoon without a word. He lifts it to his mouth and pauses, blinking across the table to where Rin’s still watching him. 

Then, she bustles herself up from the table and turns toward the stove. Maybe it’s a little hurried, but neither of them mention it. “Do you want some tea?”

“That would be great, thank you.” While her back is turned, Kakashi pulls down his mask and takes a few bites, savoring the creaminess of the broth. At least the milk had been put to good use. 

Kakashi nearly drops his teacup as the front door of the apartment bangs open.

“KUSHINA!” A woman shouts, barging in and kicking the door shut behind her. 

She’s obviously a kunoichi, with probably too many kunai to be entirely safe strapped to both legs and thighs, and she’s even more obviously just returned from a mission, since there’s spots of blood still decorating her sleeves. A particularly bright splatter sits dried on one cheek, and nearly distracts Kakashi from her dark onyx eyes and darker hair, swinging down to tie off just below her waist. 

An Uchiha. There’s an Uchiha that isn’t Obito in Kakashi’s apartment. 

“KUSHINA,” the woman bellows again, forehead protector knocked askew. Kakashi stares at her with wide eyes. “I know you’re in here! You won’t believe what that asshole said to me this time!”

Kakashi is about to open his mouth and tell her that she’s wrong, she’d come to the wrong apartment, that the person she was looking for isn’t here, when the bathroom door bursts open and Kushina does in fact come barrelling out and down the hallway, clad in cartoon print pajama pants and a tank top. She charges at the Uchiha with a delighted grin.

“Mikoto!” The redhead squeals, wrapping her arms around the kunoichi and lifting her from the ground. “You’re back from your mission! Finally, ugh! ”

“Ugh,” the Uchiha — Uchiha Mikoto — Sasuke’s mother — agrees immediately. “It was a fun one, but I’ll tell you about it later, okay, because kamisama , Kushina. Kami .”

“Tell me what the asshole said,” Kushina says commiseratingly, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and leading her toward the couch. “And then gimme all the embarrassing details of what you did to him in retaliation, because like hell he put his foot in his mouth again and you didn’t show him what was good, you know!”

“I know! ” Mikoto crows. “Oh, oh! Kushina-chan! It was great! I gave Fugaku a black eye!”

What ?

Kushina crows right back at her in similar delight, swerving them away from the couch in an almost violent manner and leading them instead into the kitchen. “Honey, no way! Okay, no, you know what? This is a story to be told over food, for sure!”

“Where did you come from,” Kakashi finally manages to voice, clutching his tea with white knuckles. Beside him, Rin snorts into her yarn, and he levels her with a look.

“Ugh, Iwa border,” Mikoto replies, very nonchalantly, inspecting her nails. Kakashi turns to stare at her.

“Not you,” he says, before pointing a finger at Kushina. “Where did you come from?”

“Kashi, sweetie, I’ve been here all morning.” Kushina says from where she’s grabbing two mugs down from the higher cupboards that Kakashi, infuriatingly, is too short to reach. 

“No you haven’t,” he denies, immediately turning a desperate glance toward Rin, who’s unfortunately shaking her head.

“She has,” the girl tells him sympathetically. “She slept on the couch.”

“ Why .”

Kushina whirls around from pouring tea and takes the last chair across from Mikoto, who for some reason planted herself right beside Kakashi. 

“Kakashi-watch rule number one!” The redhead says grandly, holding up her mug. “There must always be an adult present at all times. Just in case, you know!”

“Does that mean Genma counts as an adult,” he asks, and takes a simple sort of enjoyment at watching her face fall.

“That was an accident,” Kushina insists.

“Sure.”

“I’m going to ask about all of that in a minute,” Mikoto comments, watching in bemusement as Kushina’s face flushes. She sets her tea down on the table with all the grace of a noble lady. “But first, who wants to hear about how I punched Uchiha Fugaku in the face?”

“I do!” Kushina raises her hand like a kid in the academy.

Rin ducks her head down dubiously. “Isn’t he your fiancé?” She asks, and both women’s faces scrunch up in mutual displeasure.

“ Ugh ,” they grunt out in unison.

“So he is,” the girl notes, eyes flicking from one kunoichi to the other, “but you don’t like him?”

“He’s a stuck up snob,” Mikoto complains, discarding the front of a prim and proper Uchiha woman and flopping back against the chair. She looks up at the ceiling with narrowed eyes. “And he’s one of those types that think women can’t be as good as men .”

“So he’s a jackass,” Rin realizes, and Kakashi very carefully doesn’t choke on the sip of tea he just attempted.

“I think I’m going to go lie down,” he says once he’s sure his airway is clear. He carefully pushes the half-eaten bowl of miso to the center of the table and edges his way off his chair.

He’s not fast enough to escape being scooped up into Kushina’s arms, though. He wonders if this is going to become a habit of hers. Furthermore, he wonders if he should expend the energy to stop it. It sounds like it would be a lot of work…. Kakashi lays his head against her shoulder wordlessly. 

“Are you feeling alright? Have you taken your meds today yet? Those are important if you don’t wanna feel like crap, you know!”

“He just woke up a little while ago,” Rin tattles, and she sounds the barest side of concerned. “I didn’t see him take them yet.”

“I forgot,” Kakashi mumbles into Kushina’s hair, stretching his arms over her shoulder and sighing as his back pops. He smothers a yawn.

“Kakashi!”

“Sorry.”

“Here,” Rin says, standing to her feet and wandering over to one of the kitchen drawers. “I’ll grab the dose.”

“Something happened to our baby chunin?” Mikoto asks from where she’s now alone at the table. Her dark eyes rove inquisitively over her friend and Kakashi, raising an eyebrow at Rin as she grabs a cup to fill with water from the fridge. 

“He’s been super sick this whole entire month,” Kushina reports, voice leveled in sadness that makes Kakashi wrap his arms around her neck. She presses her cheek to the crown of his head. “The mednin at the hospital don’t know what it is.”

“Oof,” Mikoto vocalizes, both brows meeting her hairline. “That sucks, sorry baby chunin.”

“Don’t call me that,” Kakashi says, filled with disappointment when he realizes that being seven again means he has to deal with his other embarrassing village epithet. 

“I’ll stop when you’re not a baby anymore.”

“I’m not —“ Kakashi pulls back from Kushina’s shoulder long enough to pout down at her. It’s difficult to see beneath the mask, but he’s had decades to perfect the expression. For whatever reason, it makes Mikoto’s eyes shine with glee. 

“He’s adorable,” she tells Kushina delightedly.

“I know, right?!”

“Here, Kakashi,” Rin places a hand on his leg, rousing him from where he’s returned to hiding against Kushina’s shoulder and holding the cup of water up to him. She holds a handful of pills in her other hand. “Drink up.”

He should have just stayed in bed. 

“Hey, wake up.”

Nah, he doesn’t think he will. The sheets of his bed are softer than usual, he’s almost sort of warm for once, and the pillow feels like a cloud under his head. Whoever this is, they’re going to have to drag his cold dead body out of his covers. 

“Kakashi-nii, wake up.”

“Anko?” He shoves himself away from the pillow. Best to do it himself than leave it up to whatever Anko deems an acceptable method of waking him up. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m staying here, duh,” the girl says, looking down her nose at him like she thinks he’s stupid. “Sensei is still on that mission.”

“Oh,” Kakashi says, sitting up all the way and ignoring the strangely empty feeling that bubbles up inside his chest at her words. “Right. But you weren’t here this morning? I mean, what times is it?”

“You slept all the way till dinner time again,” Anko tells him. She’s sitting cross-legged on the mattress next to him, eyeing the blankets like she’s debating whether or not to crawl underneath them herself. He’s filled with both horror and fondness at the idea, which only serves to fill him with more horror. 

She looks tired, though.

“Where have you been all day?” 

“Aw, did you miss me?” She grins down at him, eyes shining with a mix of mirth and — well, something about her looks pleased, almost. He’s not sure. “I was out training with the dumbass.”

“The who?”

She flaps at hand at him, rolling her eyes like it should be obvious. “Uh, Obito .”

Kakashi blinks at her, shoving at the covers until they, regrettably, no longer pin down his legs with their weight. 

“First of all,” he says, dryly, “you should make sure Kushina doesn’t hear you talking like that. Last time she heard someone cursing…. Nevermind. Use your imagination.” Unfortunately, saying that only makes Anko perk up like a hound that just caught a scent. Oh boy. “Second of all… why Obito?”

“He wants to learn how to incorporate poisons into his fighting style,” Anko shrugs, kicking her legs out to hang over the side of the bed. “He’s still got a lot to learn, but I figured I could get him started on the basics, get him into the new habits even if he won’t be actually using any poisons for a while yet.”

“Obito wants to use poisons,” Kakashi says slowly, turning the words around in his mouth as they are spoken. “Obito… using poisons.”

It’s unprecedented. Or maybe it isn’t , and Kakashi can’t decide whether that makes it worse or better. Obito never showed any inclination towards poisons the first time around, even as an adult with all that time apart to learn all sorts of things Kakashi wouldn’t know. 

But now, a month into being seven again, having barely done anything whatsoever with this second chance given to him, and Obito’s already toting a different mindset towards his own fighting style, which… well, it isn’t something that shinobi just change up when they’re bored. A fighting style is to a shinobi like a religion is to a priest. It’s something that is wholly theirs , something they spend hours and hours each day of their lives perfecting, something so completely personal . 

Even this early into his shinobi career, Obito is already so heavily set in the Uchiha clan style that the fact he’s even interested in changing it up the slightest bit is extremely surprising.

“Yup,” Anko says, popping the ‘p’ loud enough to make Kakashi’s ears twitch in irritation. “I think he’ll be good at it, too! At least once we get past the studying phase — he sucks at that.”

“Like you suck at penmanship?” He asks, and ducks away as she makes a vicious swipe for his head. He ends up rolling off the bed entirely and crashing to the floor. 

“Ouch,” he moans, nose squished into the floorboards. 

“Anyway, get up already!” Anko cheers, hopping off the bed and making her way toward the door without so much as a backward glance. “You have visitors.”

“I do?” 

“Yeah, some of your work buddies came over.”

Work buddies? Kakashi — seven year old Kakashi, at least — didn't have work buddies. He didn’t even have buddies .

Kakashi pushes himself up off the floor with a great, heaving sigh, and wanders out of the room after her, pausing long enough to grab sensei’s sweatshirt off the doorknob. 

He pulls it over his head as he halfway stumbles his way down the hallway and into the living room. When his head comes free of the hood, he’s treated to the sight of his apartment more crowded than he thinks he’s ever seen it in either lifetime. 

“Genma,” he asks, blinking. “ Gai ?”

“Kakashi-san!” Gai shouts, eyes shining and teeth shining even brighter. He executes some sort of fistpump that nearly takes out the lighting fixture, but Genma reaches out to grab him by the shirt before his feet can leave the ground. “Seeing you up and about brings such glad tidings!”

“That’s sweet,” Kakashi replies flatly, tugging on the drawstrings of the sweatshirt so that the hood bunches up around his neck like a scarf. “But, what are you doing here?” And what are others still doing here? 

Because that’s definitely Uchiha Mikoto lounging on the couch, holding one of the red pillows aloft like she’s about to club it over the redhead sitting next to her. Kushina has her own pillow held up like a shield, looking excited as can be, and Kakashi decides he is going to do his utmost to ignore the two grown-ass kunoichi having a pillow fight in his living room. It’s probably for the best, for his sanity, that he pretends it’s not happening. And there’s Minato-sensei, sitting on the other side of Kushina, all but squished against the arm of the couch. He looks faintly miserable. Best to just ignore that for the moment, too. 

Anko hops up to perch on the back of the sofa, sending a sharp smile that makes her teeth like needles toward the two boys standing in the middle of the carpet. If Kakashi didn’t know better, he’d say they both looked a little pale in the face of it. 

“We dropped by to check up on you,” Genma says cheerily, crossing his arms over is chest after giving Gai a stern look. “You know, to make sure you haven’t died yet.”

“That would be terrible!” Gai adds, horrified. He’s a bit more over the top right now than he is as an adult. Kakashi isn’t sure whether he misses the restraint or not . “Rival, how are you feeling today?”

“Stuffy,” Kakashi goes for honesty. He knows from experience that it would be easier in the long run. 

“Well,” Genma looks pleased, for some reason. He nudges his elbows into the side of a nearly vibrating Gai. “It’s good that we’ve got just the remedy for that on hand, isn’t it, Gai?”

“Um, it’s fine, I told you I’ve got medicine —“

“YOSH!” Gai bellows, and Kakashi winces as his ears ring. He definitely didn’t miss the shouting. Gai hasn’t learned the subtle art of the Inside Voice yet, it appears. “Father helped me make his famous soup before he left for his mission this morning!”

The eleven-year old whips out a serving container from, well, absolutely nowhere, and then holds it out like a prize, grin threatening to split his face in half. 

“Rival,” he begins, seriously. That, more than anything, makes the hairs on the back of Kakashi’s neck stand on end. “This soup is the tried and true recipe that can cure the symptoms of any illness! Father is a genius! We are so lucky he agreed to help!”

“Definitely lucky,” Genma says, smiling oddly around his senbon. “When Gai tries to make it by himself, the results can be… um, almost dangerous.”

Gai looks almost embarrassed. He gives himself a shake and holds the container up once again. “Have you eaten yet tonight, my eternal Rival?”

From the couch, Mikoto gives a strange cough, that definitely sounds more like an aborted snort. She buries her face into the pillow she’d been using to trade blows with Kushina, and the other woman wraps an arm around her shoulders with a conspiratorial grin. 

“He’s been sleeping all day,” Minato-sensei sighs as he stands up from the couch. It takes an assortment of wiggles that don’t really do much for the reputation of a jounin, but when he’s free, he gives the two members of Team Choza a tired smile. “It was nice of you to bring some food over for him. He missed dinner.”

Ugh. Gai spins around to pin Kakashi with a shocked look. “Kakashi-san! Meals are incredibly important for the growing chunin! Come, let us reheat this soup so that you may enjoy it immediately!”

“By definition of enjoyment ,” Genma mutters amusedly under his breath. Kakashi is already being corralled into the kitchen like a wayward sheep, though, and he doesn’t get a chance to ask him what he means. 

Five minutes later, Kakashi is sitting at the kitchen table with a steaming bowl of Dai-san’s infamous soup sitting before him. Genma, Anko and Rin sit on the other chairs, and the three adults are standing around, apparently with nothing better to do. Mikoto leans against the counter by the sink, arms crossed and looking thoroughly entertained. She still dressed in her mission clothes, blood and all, though the splatter has been wiped clean from her cheek. Apparently she spent the entire day in Kakashi’s apartment catching up with Kushina instead of going home to clean up. He’s not sure how he feels about that. 

Gai stands eagerly at his shoulder. He claps his hands together, making Kakashi wince as the air beside his ear is displaced — perhaps this past version of Gai is actually secretly evil, and wants Kakashi to go deaf before he hits his preteens?. 

“I hope you like it!” Gai preens. “I made most of it myself!”

“Don’t worry,” Genma says lazily from his seat, watching the steaming bowl with an expression that seems a little too avid. “Dai-san helped him the entire time, so you can be sure it’s not toxic.”

“Genma,” Gai sounds almost wounded. Genma just smirks at him. 

Kakashi sighs. “Why am I even doing this, again?” He picks the spoon up from the table and dips it into the vividly orange broth. It’s peppered with spots of red oil and seasonings amongst the vegetables and meat. The odor that wafts up with  the steam is enough to make Kakashi’s eyes water.  He wonders, for a second, if he should even risk trying it, before he ducks his head, pulls the mask away from his mouth, and shoves the spoonful in. 

There’s a brief moment of silence. The adults lean in to look down at him with raised eyebrows. Behind him, Gai is once again vibrating. Kakashi can feel it in his chair, which the boy has one hand on the back of. Across the table, Genma’s mouth stretches into a slow, wide, knowing smile. 

Kakahi whines, high in his throat, and he claps a hand over his mouth. There’s tears gathering at the corners of his eyes without his permission. Minato jerks forward in alarm. 

“Kakashi — ?”

“ Th… Thpith-ee…. ” Kakashi rips his mask away completely and holds both hands over his mouth to cover in its stead. He sticks his tongue out and whines again. “Too... hot….”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to finish it…” his sensei begins, but they all fall silent when Kakashi hunches over the bowl, arms wrapping around it protectively, face bowing directly into its steam. From across the kitchen, Mikoto makes a strange, squeaking sound that is reminiscent of laughter. 

He clutches the spoon in one hand and sniffs loudly as the spiciness of the soup begins to attack his sinuses. The pure heat of the bite sears a pathway down into his stomach, and Kakashi feels like he’s about to break out into a sweat any second now. It’s blisteringly hot.

“Imma eath ih’ all ,” he announces, and bows his face even closer the broth, utensil held aloft for another dive in.

“Kakashi, no,” Kushina tries to pull the soup out of his arms, but he swats her hands away. Behind her, Mikoto is nearly red in the face trying not to snicker. “If it’s too spicy, then —”

“ All ,” Kakashi swears, spooning another bite into his mouth. 

It makes him whimper again, and the tears that have blurred his vision are starting to spill over. But his tongue will grow numb to it eventually, and after that? It’ll be like there’s a bonfire in his insides. He’ll be so warm. Thank kamisama for Maito Dai.

The door to the apartment bangs open, loudly, near exactly like how Mikoto had welcomed herself and in that morning. This time, though, it’s not Kakashi’s oldest and best friend charging in with an amused Genma trailing in his wake, but Kakashi’s errant teammate. 

“Hey everyone!” Obito crows as he steps through the door, traipsing straight across the main room without a care and into the kitchen where everyone has congregated. “How’s it goi — ?”

He skids to a stop, taking in the scene with a startled blink. Of the three genin and Anko perched in the chairs around the table, the adults standing uselessly around. His older cousin and clan member of higher standing leaning against the counter looking vastly amused. The steaming bowl that sits on the table. 

And finally, there’s Kakashi, huddled over it, slowly lifting spoonful after spoonful from said bowl to his mouth, hand held up to conceal his lower face since his mask is down. 

The silver-haired young chunin is silent, tears streaming down his face, but he doesn’t stop, regardless of the awkward crowd of people gathered equally silently around the table watching him. 

“Haha, wow,” Obito says, loudly, lifting his arm to present his bare wrist. He doesn’t even glance down at it. “What time is it now? Looks like I forgot to do my chores again! Silly me! I’ll just be going now, bye!”

He turns on his heels and speedwalks directly out of the apartment, and the door slams shut behind him with as much noise as it had made upon his entrance.

Kushina sighs wearily, leaning back against the kitchen counter and crossing her arms. “How many times this week has he done his chores, now?”

“Actually?” Anko says, snidely. “Zero. I checked.”

“I’m not going to ask about that at all,” Minato decides, and Anko turns to grace the jounin with a cheeky, perhaps slightly insidious, grin.

Kakashi shovels another spoonful of soup into his mouth, suffering silently. 

Chapter Text

Kakashi wakes up feeling terrible but better than usual. He lies on his back for a while and stares at the ceiling blankly, ignoring the way that his sinuses slowly but surely press down on his airways until he’s barely wheezing by in way of breathing. 

Once his nose quits entirely on him, he groans out a wordless complaint and lethargically kicks his legs free of the blankets and sheets. At this point, his bed is a veritable fortress of layers. Underneath it all are soft, cream colored sheets covered in a repeating print of cartoon cacti, and he hasn’t yet put forth the mental energy in trying to figure out which of the people currently randomly buying things and sneaking them into his apartment is responsible for this choice. On top of that is the comforter, plain white and thick and enveloped inside an impossibly soft duvet cover the color of coffee. Or mostly creamer, with a dash of coffee. It looks like what Minato-sensei drinks in the mornings. The man can’t stand the bitterness, it’s like an insult to his sweet tooth. 

Thrown over this are three different patchwork quilts and, finally, a thick, fuzzy layer of dense fabric the light color of spring green that smells like it came straight from Anko’s bedroom. The scent is strangely, oddly, concerningly soothing, in a way that it really shouldn’t be, and Kakashi has devoted a lot of time toward purposefully not thinking about it. 

Still, it sends an ominous chill up his spine. Like, just possibly, Anko had been serious when she’d joked about moving in. 

He rolls out of the cactus-patterned grip of his sheets and just barely gets his legs underneath him in time to save himself from falling face first onto the floor. 

He considers the door, six feet across the room and then glances down at himself. He’s only wearing a pair of athletic shorts and a sleeveless mask top. He’s cold. Struggling onto his feet, Kakashi grabs his sensei’s sweatshirt off the dresser and fights the article of clothing for a solid two minutes and nineteen seconds in trying to get his arms and head through the appropriate holes. 

Once that’s fine, he stumbles over and tugs Rin’s scarf down off the hook on the back of the door and wraps it around his neck. He’s made a promise, even if only inside his head, that the scarf will actually see use this time around, instead of hanging off a coat rack and slowly but surely losing its creator’s scent over the course of a few decades. 

This time, he tells himself, this time he will spend so much time around his teammates that the scarf will never stop smelling like them. 

He pushes open the doorway and makes his way down the hallway toward the living room, victory churning in his gut (along with the nausea) at the fact he doesn’t fall over even once. 

His teacher is sitting cross-legged at the end of the sofa, pouring over an open scroll that has a pastel yellow tassel hanging off the end of one of it’s handles — only semi-urgent, not time-sensitive, just data. 

“Sensei,” Kakashi asks, “can you please buy me some alcohol.”

“What?!” Minato’s eyes go wide, and the man looks up at Kakashi with an expression that’s half shock and half outrage, which isn’t necessarily fair, in Kakashi’s opinion. “No! Why?!”

Kakashi juts his chin out, just a bit. “I want to drown my sorrows.”

“No.”

From across the room, Kushina lets out a loud snort that quickly dissolves into laughter when the blond jounin shoots her a wide-eyed glance. She’s sitting in a dark brown, padded armchair that Kakashi is absolutely, one-hundred percent certain was not there yesterday. It has a afghan in earthy tones thrown over the left arm of it, half of it covering Kushina’s folded legs. 

“I think,” says Anko as she reveals herself in the doorway to the kitchen, “that spicy soup did something to his brain.”

“No,” Kakashi tells her with a suffering sigh. “I’ve always been like this.”

“That’s absolutely a lie,” Minato disagrees, setting the scroll on the side table. It rolls off and lands with a soft thud in Rin’s yarn basket. “You were never like this before. Kakashi, you’re seven.”

“I’m pretty sure I was seven before, too, sensei,” Kakashi says dubiously, and walks over to sit on the cushion next to him. 

Minato’s weight has already made the sofa dip just slightly under him where he’s sitting, so Kakashi ends up tilting sideways and colliding with his teacher’s arm with a quietly voiced oof.

Minato looks down at him, and gives him a look, raised eyebrow and flat mouth and dry humor shining behind his bright eyes. They both pointedly ignore the two girls snickering across the room. Anko has joined Kushina in the armchair, burrowing her way underneath the afghan.

Sensei huffs, shifting a little bit until Kakashi is tucked underneath his arm. His warmth seeps into Kakashi at every point of contact, so the jounin-now-chunin sighs and leans into him, savoring it. 

“No need to be cheeky,” Minato complains. And then, “You’re up earlier than usual! It’s still morning!”

“Isn’t that typically when people wake up.”

“Well, yes,” Minato waves his free hand. “And no, I guess, but! You’ve been sleeping the majority of the day for a while now, so it’s good to see you up and about before lunch at least.”

“It’s well-needed rest, Kashi, don’t mind that stupid lug.” Kushina calls from the armchair. Anko has disappeared under the afghan, only a tuft of purple hair sticking out to be seen. “But anyway, we probably need to get your meds, ya know? You just got up, so you haven’t taken them yet today.”

Anko wiggles furiously underneath the blanket, popping back out the other end by Kushina’s feet. She crawls onto the floor and stands up, blowing strands of hair out of her face from where they’ve fallen loose from her little pony tail. Aside from his students, it’s the cutest thing Kakashi’s ever seen in either of his lives. He looks at Minato’s sensei’s knee instead. 

“I’ve got it!” Anko announces, and scurries her way back toward the kitchen. Barely a second later, she peeks her head back into the room. “The tea’s almost done, too!”

“Oh!” Kushina claps, and begins the motions of folding up the afghan. “Just in time, too, I’ll bet.”

Kakashi tilts his head so that the crown of it digs gently into Minato-sensei’s side. The man takes the hand that was resting on Kakashi’s shoulder and draws it up and down his arm instead, rubbing warmth into it. Kakashi scoots further over and half-burrows into Minato-sensei’s side. 

“In time for what?” He asks, jaw cracking in a yawn. 

“Obito and Rin are coming over in a bit,” Minato says. His voice is low and fond, and Kakashi tilts his head back to find the man staring down at him with a soft look. When he meets his eyes, a smile overtakes Minato’s face. “They’ll stay for lunch, and then head out for today’s mission.”

Kakashi blinks. He sits up, and twists around until he’s staring up at his teacher, uncertain of what expression he’s wearing, but it makes Minato frown down at him in concern, his smile fading. 

“Kakashi?”

“A mission?” Kakashi feels the corners of his lips turn downwards against his mask. There’s a strangely upset feeling swimming in his chest. He crosses his arms. “You’re going on a mission?”

“No,” Minato-sensei blinks, bemused. “Obito and Rin are going on a mission.”

Kakashi pauses, and then examines his teacher’s face in earnest, as if that will get him answers quicker. “Obito and Rin are genin.” He says. 

“They’re going with—“

“Me!” Kushina cries, right between their ears, and Minato and Kakashi jerk away with startled expressions. 

They turn to look at the woman, whose red hair spills over onto the sofa from where she’s leaning over the back of it and directly into Minato’s and Kakashi’s faces. A large grin decorated her face, her eyes shining with glee.

“They’re going on a mission with me!” She says, giddy, arms wrapped around herself in excitement as she practically vibrates in place. “I got permission to lead a three-man cell on a simple courier job to one of the outreaches closest to Konoha, and since you’re sick, Kashi, Minato is gonna stay here with you and I’m taking the other two out to stretch their legs! It’ll be good for them, they were getting kinda antsy, ya’know!”

Kakashi stares up at her, brain blanking out on him for a minute as he struggles to parse through the information she just piled onto him in that flash-fire way of talking she had. 

Minato nudges his arm gently with his elbow. He’s giving him a gentle smile. “I know you’re probably just as antsy, and I’m sorry that you can’t go too, but you’re gonna have to be stuck here with me until they get back.”

“It shouldn’t take more than a day or two,” Kushina coos, leaning down to smack a loud kiss directly to Kakashi’s forehead. She pulls back with an even bigger grin. “Imma go help Anko-chan with the tea. Be right back with your meds!”

Kakashi jolts, hands flying up to cover his forehead. His face feels hot, which is weird since he’s gotten so used to the chill. Minato is gazing down at him with a mixture of that earlier soft fondness and amusement, and Kakashi hunches in on himself and turns to hide his face in the man’s shirt. 

“I don’t mind,” he says quietly. It makes an uncomfortable feeling open up in his stomach, but he knows it needs to be said. 

“Huh?”

“Staying here with you,” Kakashi affirms, pressing his face firmly into his teacher’s shoulder. “I’m not ‘stuck’. I don’t mind.”

There’s a brief moment of quiet, in which Kakashi resolutely doesn’t look up, and then his teacher lets out a soft chuckle and Kakashi feels a hand gently parse through the strands of hair on his head. 

“I’m glad to hear it,” Minato-sensei says.

Kakashi ignores the warmth that rises in his chest.

Obito and Rin come trooping through the door five minutes later, both dressed in genin grays, the blank dark rank vests of war pulled over the uniforms. Kakashi watches them in silence as they head toward the kitchen to accept the tea from Kushina and Anko, feeling a little disoriented at the sight of them. He hasn’t seen genin war grays since he’d worn them himself. They hadn’t used them in the fourth war. For a strange moment, where Kakashi loses his grasp on time, he finds himself feeling disconnected from him body, lost in abstract snatches of memory from the third shinobi war, battles and tragedies that hadn’t even happened yet. 

Despite Kushina’s assurances at the low-risk level of the mission she’s chosen for his teammates, Kakashi can’t help the uncertain anxiety that crawls up inside of him to rest directly over his lungs. 

“Hey,” he’s gently nudged in the shoulder. He glances up to find Minato-sensei staring down at him with a faint look of concern. “I know you probably want to go with them, we all know how much you hate being cooped up like this, but it’ll be okay.”

“No,” Kakashi shakes his head, both to deny the man’s words and also in an attempt to shake away the image of a bloodied and dying Minato that has superimposed itself over the face of his sensei that sits beside him now. 

“I don’t want to go with them,” he admits, feeling tired down to his bones. “I don’t want… them to go.”

Minato blinks at him, and then his face softens. He reaches out a hand to brush Kakashi’s bangs back from his face. 

“You’ve bonded well with your teammates since — all this has started. I’m glad to hear you’ll miss them when they’re gone, but you know they’ll be back, right?”

Kakashi huffs, pulling away from the hand, even if the hair petting does feel good. He really has adopted far too many mannerisms from his ninken. That’s what you get for having dogs as your only friends while growing up, he supposes. 

“I won’t miss them,” he says, and then, “I mean, I will, but. They shouldn’t have to go in the first place. It’s stupid.”

“... I’m not sure that I follow,” Minato admits sheepishly, shrugging his shoulders. He reaches out his hand in insistence, and Kakashi grumpily allows him to rest it back on his head. 

“The war,” he explains quietly. “It’s stupid.”

“Oh.” Minato’s hand pauses its ministrations, and the man sighs. “Yeah. It is, isn’t it?”

“I wish—“ Kakashi starts, but then shakes his head. Wishing is a dumb, romantic sentiment that he’s never prescribed to in his life — either of them. He won’t start now. 

“Kakashi?”

“Nevermind,” he mumbles, crossing his arms. “Wishing for things is stupid, too.”

Minato has a frown on his face, when Kakashi looks back up at him, but the man doesn’t say anything. 

Kushina and his teammates leave about half an hour later. Rin comes over to the couch to sandwich Kakashi between herself and their teacher for a good five minutes before Kakashi is forced to grouch at her and get her to actually leave. Obito awkwardly ruffles his hair like Kakashi is a two year old and Obito is a grandfather who hasn’t connected with his grandson in years and now they’re strangers to each other. Or something. It’s awkward, anyway, and Kakashi glares suspiciously as the Uchiha edges away from him with a sheepish smile and then flees out the apartment door. 

Rin rolls her eyes at them, gives him another hug and a little wave goodbye, and marches after their idiot teammate. 

“I’ll bring them back safe and sound,” Kushina promises, smile bright and wave excessively cheery. “Don’t you worry your adorable little head, Kashi!”

“Who’s worried?” Kakashi snarks, irritable at the surplus of positive affection he’s been smothered with in too short an amount of time. He feels like he wants to punch something. Maybe the wall. Maybe his sensei’s face, and that stupid fond smile that’s currently gracing it. 

Kushina snickers, dives down to plant a big slobbery smooch on Minato’s face, and flounces out the door. Minato’s smile turns into a fond but exasperated grimace of disgust, and Kakashi mentally gives Kushina points for that alone. 

“When I grow up,” Anko speaks up once the front door closes, kicking her little legs from where she sits perched on the new armchair, and Kakashi eyes her warily, “I’m gonna have long, long hair, just like sensei and redhead mom.”

“Her name is Kushina.” Kakashi reminds her tiredly. He’s not sure why he tries. 

She ignores him. “Maybe I’ll even dye my hair to be like hers, too. It’s really pretty, like blood.”

And isn’t that just a comment everyone wants to hear from a tiny little girl. A noise of refusal escapes his throat before he can stop it, and she opens one eye to glare belligerently up at him. 

“You look better in blue and purple,” he defends himself, and her expression smooths out into something more thoughtful. Kakashi hopes he hasn’t sparked any idea for some diabolical plan. Who knows, with this hellion. 

The three of them laze around in the living room for the next three hours. Minato-sensei browses through the data of his paperwork mission, and Kakashi spends the time burrowing into the man’s side and slipping in and out of a light doze. Once, he wakes up to discover Anko has decided to join them on the couch, and that Kakashi would make a better pillow than, say, the actual pillows. 

He wants to be annoyed about it, but she’s warm, and so is sensei, so he falls asleep again before he can muster up enough energy to actually be irritated. 

By the time the clock strikes six, Kakashi is up and his stomach is grumbling loud enough to be heard by his fellow couch mates. Anko pokes it with a snicker, and Kakashi bats her hand away while drowsily rubbing at one of his eyes. 

“Kushina cooked something for dinner ahead of time, before she left.” Minato rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. He tosses the scroll to the side, it lands back in Rin’s yarn basket instead of the table, again. Maybe Kakashi will have to start nagging his teacher about his aim? 

The man stands himself up from the couch. “It’s in the fridge. I’ll just go heat it up.”

“Um,” Kakashi says in alarm, blinking the bleary was out of his eyes and shoving himself off the couch. “Maybe Anko should go heat it up? Maybe? She knows where everything is.”

Minato stares down at him. His shoulder slump. “Kakashi, I’m not that much of a disaster that I can’t use a microwave.”

“It’s old, it can be finicky,” Kakashi rattles off what he can remember of his childhood kitchen appliance, which is oddly enough a lot more than he expects. The thing had been an absolute menace. 

“We got a new one. Installed it last week.”

Kakashi hadn’t noticed. “Actually, I’ll go with Anko. You,” he points at Minato, and then at the couch, grabbing a greatly amused Anko’s hand in his other one. “You stay there.”

Minato makes a face, but plops back down onto the sofa cushions. “I’m not that bad!”

“You burnt Kushina’s kitchen down.” Kakashi calls over his shoulder, already on the move. Anko lets him drag her behind him, too busy snickering into her tiny little fist. “She had to use a water jutsu!”

“That was one time!”

“One time too many,” Kakashi says firmly, and pulls his giggling new pseudo-sister (apparently, he guesses, and it’s not like anyone’s ever been able to change Anko’s mind once she decides something, so it’s best if he just gets used to it) into the kitchen. Minato lets out a squawk. 

Through exemplary teamwork, Kakashi and Anko manage to find the food containers in the middle shelf of the fridge, which is very pointedly eye level with them and not Minato-sensei, parse the servings out on the plates, and heat the contents up for consumption. Meaning, Anko does most of this herself, and Kakashi stands there and leans sleepily into the counter. He goes over and helps her drag one of the kitchen chairs over so she can reach the microwave, but otherwise he’s kind of useless. 

“Thanks,” he says, and she sends him a smirk. 

“What would you do without me?” She asks.

Kakashi heaves a defeated little sigh. “Starve, probably.”

Anko bursts into giggles. 

Once the plates are on the table, Minato is called in. The man troops into the kitchen with hunched shoulders and an embarrassed grin on his face, taking Anko’s teasing remarks with grace and aplomb. He settles himself down into the chair across from Kakashi, Anko claiming the one beside him before anyone can move, and the three of them get to eating the dinner of miso and fried tofu, which has touches of Rin’s influence even if it’s all mostly Kushina’s cooking. Kakashi eats wordlessly, listening to the barbs Anko trades in exchange for fond amusement and gentle admonishments from Minato, and he’s — warm.  

It’s nice. 

When Kakashi wakes up the next morning, he stumbles out of bed and into the kitchen to find breakfast already made, and Orochimaru sitting at the table like he’d never left with a half empty plate and a pile of scrolls that the jounin is going through with an agitated frown. Neither Anko nor Minato are anywhere to be seen. 

Kakashi blinks at the exhausted-looking sannin, and then makes his way over the cold tile floor to crawl up into the chair beside him. He leverages his upper chest against the table’s edge and attempts to peer over at the scroll currently in Orochimaru’s hands. He glimpses what looks like inventory reports before it’s lifted out from his view. He averts his gaze to find Orochimaru raising an eyebrow at him. 

“You weren’t here for—days?” Kakashi starts to say, before realizing halfway through that he sounds like a child who doesn’t understand why the adult wasn’t home. This isn’t Orochimaru’s house, of course he wouldn’t be here all the time. It’s not like the man lives here. The end of his sentence lilts up into a sort of question that showcases his abrupt uncertainty, and Kakashi almost closes his eyes against the burning embarrassment that wants to crawl up his chest.

Orochimaru catches it, because nothing ever slips past the man, and he presses out a quiet breath through his nose—that half-chuckle, half-scoff sort of noise that he makes when he’s been amused by something and is surprised at himself for it. It’s joined by that closed-mouth smile that Kakashi used to think was too gentle for him. 

“Have you eaten since then?” He asks, sounding only mildly curious and not at all worried at the hypothetical prospect that Kakashi had starved this whole time he’d been gone. Kakashi feels a little offended. 

He opens his mouth to reply, and then doesn’t, because he has to actually think about it for a moment before he’s sure of his answer. “Um. Yes?”

Orochimaru stares at him.

“Yes,” Kakashi says, more firmly this time. “Rin and Kushina keep bringing me food. Minato’s tried to cook a few times, and—“ He trails off abruptly. 

“... And?” 

Kakashi makes a face. “Kushina doesn’t let Minato in the kitchen for a reason,” he mumbles.

“Ah,” Orochimaru says after a moment, “I see.” 

He sounds like he wants to laugh at Kakashi. The once-again chunin narrows his eyes at the man. Orochimaru’s lips twitch upward in that smile again, and he reaches out to gently poke Kakashi in the forehead. 

“You seem alive to me. You want more than that?”

Kakashi stares at him with wide eyes for a second, hand flying to his forehead where the pinprick of leftover warmth slowly dissipates, but shakes the shock away within the next breath and changes the subject. 

“What are you reading?”

The snake sannin casts an eye over him, and then back at the scroll in his hand. He goes over it for a minute, and then sets it down with a sigh. 

“My labs were broken into the other night,” he says, voice carrying a faint note of an almost whimsical darkness. It makes a shiver trail up Kakashi’s spine. “I’ve been going through to see if anything was taken, but whoever it was was very thorough. Not a single thing is out of place.”

“Oh,” Kakashi sits back in his chair, the chills that are every present along his spine tingling ferociously now, like they’re trying to warn him of something. “So you don’t know what they were after?”

“It’s entirely possible nothing that was there initially even left the premises—but there is a great number of important samples and research kept within that particular lab.”

“They could have,” Kakashi begins, words choppy and quick because he feels uneasy and it’s throwing his senses in every other direction, “they could have just copied something, maybe? Not actually taken it, but still… took it?”

“That remains a very real probability,” Orochimaru agrees, leaning back in his own seat to regard the stack of scrolls that is still sitting at his elbow with a narrow eye. He looks... tired. 

Kakashi turns his head to stare up at the man. “Why are you telling me this? Kushina said it was classified.”

“Two minds are often better than one,” Orochimaru replies evenly, flipping the scroll over to peer at the seal. He doesn’t look up. “Plus, you’re a fellow Konohan prodigy, a younger one at that. For all that my intelligence can seem all-knowledgeable, there’s always a change that I’ve missed something that you, who thinks from a completely different angle, might catch.”

“So,” Kakashi ventures after turning the words over thoughtfully in his head for a moment, “you think I can help?”

“I’m hoping there’s some minute detail I may have overlooked, that your more focused mind might not.”

“Taking advantage of my indecisive brain,” Kakashi mutters under his breath, and is rewarded by a sharp toothed smile and a finger tapping briefly at his forehead. 

“Precisely,” the man congratulates. Kakashi wonders if Itachi ever met Orochimaru when he’d been younger, and that’s why they remind him of each other in such a randomly obscure way. 

Kakashi sits at the table with Orochimaru, pouring over inventory counts and clinical reports of the breakin from several different intelligence specialists from T&I. It’s certainly a strange case. Just as Orochimaru had said, nothing seems to have been missing or even misplaced, like someone had handled it and put it back incorrectly or just slightly off, not at all. Kakashi has been staring at the same two inventory comparison counts, one from before the break in and the other from after, for the better part of an hour, only to find that they do not contrast each in the least. 

One half of his mind is busy rebuilding the scene, going through it as if he were the burglar himself, and wondering at each and every turn what exactly his mission is here. Was it really only for information? Even that, in the labs of Orochimaru, could spell disaster when fallen into the wrong hands. And depending on whose hands those were, the level of disaster may vary astronomically.

The other half of his mind is stuck worrying. Because Kakashi isn’t sure. Had this happened last time? Baby-him has been far too distracted with his miserable lot in life to pay attention to any news, much less something classified like this is. Had it ever come out later? Had they ever caught the culprit?

Had there ever actually been a break in, the last time around?

Kakashi doesn’t know, and it’s making him nervous. 

He jumps, startled, out of his reverie when Orochimaru abruptly stands up from his chair. Kakashi looks up to find the man already starting for the sink.

“I’ll make some tea,” he says simply, in the face of Kakashi’s stare, and soon something fresh and minty is targeting Kakashi’s sense of smell. 

Kakashi releases a quiet breath, and turns back to the reports laid out on the table. There’s a lot of them yet to go through. 

Maybe, he thinks, there hasn’t been a reason for a break in, last time. 

Food for thought, he thinks, and flips on to the next comparative analysis. 

Chapter Text

Chapter 20

“In all honesty, man, I’m getting real tired of playing I-Spy with you.”

Rinko heaves a sigh and leans back against the wall of the station, crossing his arms over his chest. He gives his partner a sour look. “It’s only been fifteen minutes since we started shift. We still got seven hours to go. You wanna tell me the exciting itinerary you’ve got planned?”

Shu brightens. “Well—!”

“I don’t want any part in it,” Rinko deadpans, watching mercilessly as the other nin immediately wilts. “Because I’m just fine, sitting here and staring at unchanging scenery as much as the next guy is. Because it’s my job. Our job?”

Shu casts him a pitiful expression from where he sits on the only stool in the station. “I’m no good for gatekeeping duty, Ko-chan, you know that!”

“I can only play kiddy games with you for so long before I want to kill you for making me guess “the grass” or “the sky” for the hundredth time,” Rinko presses out. “Yamanaka-taicho is gonna be mighty disappointed in both of us if the next shift comes in to find a dead body and a missing nin.”

Shu scrunches his face up, sliding off the stool sullenly. He gestures to it with a wave of his hand and goes to lean his elbows on the front counter instead. 

“Why couldn’t they have put me on patrols?” He whines.

Satisfied, Rinko marches over and plops himself onto the stool, leaning one shoulder into the wall.

“It’s an exercise in patience, clearly,” he says. “Settle in for seven hours of blissful silence.”

The grumbling ninja ducks his head down and lays his chin against his folded arms, clearly already bored out of his mind. Rinko withholds a sigh, inwardly giving himself about three minutes until the other breaks the quiet, when somebody clears their throat. 

“Is it war time or not?” A woman’s voice, loud and unyielding, and clearly unimpressed, demands. “Sensei has really let the local guard slip, if this is who is keeping the gates.”

Rinko startles so badly he nearly tips off the stool. He scrambles to his feet and lunges for the counter, where Shu is standing with a gaping jaw, eyes wide and astonished — not a very god combination, given the current political climate as of late. Rinko sticks his head out of the station and squints. 

The previously empty landscape of dirt path and a heavily forested backdrop is now a scene for two women, one who stands before them with her arms crossed and a scowl upon her face. 

A very familiar face, and suspicion and worry stir inside Rinko’s gut as he reaches out for the chakra signature records scroll and sets it down on the counter with a sharp clack. 

“My apologies,” he says, eyes wide. “We weren’t expecting you—“

“Isn’t that the point?” The woman smiles sharply, raising one sardonic brow, and Rinko’s stomach sours. “You gonna sign us in, or what?”

“O—Of course!” Shu yelps, throwing himself back into the station stall and grappling for the ledger scroll. “Of course, please give me a moment, Ts—“

“You two give me your names, as well!” She interrupts, clearly out of patience. “I’ll pass them on to my teacher when I see him.”

Beside him, Shu goes a pale and faint color, and Rinko purses his lips, exchanging unhappy glances with his partner. Shu slams the scroll onto the counter with far too much force, winces at the noise, and rolls it open. Rinko is tense, and it’s taking all his self control just to keep the scowl off his face. 

The woman suddenly lets out a cackle. “Aw, shit. Relax, boys. It’s not like I’ll be seeing him for a while yet. Just keep your eyes on the prize more, and we’ll call it even.”

“Yes ma’am,” the two gatekeepers agree simultaneously. 

Rinko moves forward with a pen. He glances up with a practiced apologetic expression that he desperately hopes hides the roiling emotions he feels within. “Name, nin-corps number, reason for entry?”

The woman casts him a grim smile. “Tsunade Senju, with niece Shizune Kato. ID number 432207. Personal reasons. Shizune?”

“ID number 623464,” the girl beside one of the sannin immediately states, demurely and in a much quieter voice. “Assisting.”

“Understood,” Rinko says, by route of habit, quickly scribbling the information out. He then flips the scroll around to face them. “Check it over for yourself, then sign at the bottom your signature. Know that by signing this document, you also consent to a chakra scan to verify your identities.” He reaches out and pointedly pats the chakra signature records scroll that he’d pulled out beforehand. 

Tsunade glances up from the scroll and pins him with a steely gaze. He gives her a thin-lipped smile in return. 

“You know, because we are at war,” he says, rather unnecessarily, and Shu casts him an abhorred look from beside him. “Security has been tightened, and all that.”

“Of course,” Tsunade Senju replies coolly.

Two signatures and chakra scans later, Rinko is ferrying the Sannin and her niece in through the small door set into the back of the station, down the long corridor that bypasses the walls, leaving Shu behind to guard in his absence. 

He feels a little wary about having the obviously easily-distracted nin be on his own for such a long period, but he felt even worse over the idea of just letting Tsunade-sama  wander in on her own. Not because Rinko didn’t trust her, of course, as her identity has definitely been confirmed, but—

Well. He doesn’t. Trust her. 

Not after she just left the village without a backwards glance, leaving them down one of their top nin in a war that’s still ongoing even as she skips back into their gates without so much as a by-your-leave. 

Rinko almost feels sick. He knows he should respect her — she’s a powerful nin, a famous medic, and a member of one of Konoha’s founding families herself, she deserves his respect. It’s just that —

He can’t bring himself to do so. In his heart she may as well be a missing nin.

He knows he’s not the only one in Konoha who feels like this, but there’s enough villagers like Shu who revere her and what she symbolizes that he knows there’s nothing in it for him to speak his thoughts out loud. 

She’s back now, isn’t she? Maybe this signifies a change. Maybe Rinko can actually rediscover the respect he once had for her. Or maybe not. Time will tell, won’t it?

He can’t help the tiny frisson of hope that is opening inside his chest, that maybe she’s home for good this time, even as he ruthlessly squashes it down with a hammer of jaded, cynical scorn. It might be too much to hope for. 

So he checks the two women in quickly with the guard shift on the inner side of the gates and hurries back, not quite taking the time to recognize Tsunade’s welcome committee, or the reunion it symbolizes. 

“Tsunade,” her welcome committee greets, noncommittally and with an expression so cool she thinks ice could be formed on those cheekbones of his. 

She suppressed a sigh. “Orochimaru,” she replies evenly, and finally chances a small smile.

To her relief, it’s returned immediately. Her shoulders sag and she lets out a breath, glad to find that, however things between them had been upon their last parting, Orochimaru doesn’t seem to hold it against her too much. 

Then again, her teammate can be incredibly tight lipped about anything that affects him, so it could be just as likely that Orochimaru does indeed hold it — all of it — against her, and is just appearing amiable for politeness’ sake. She wouldn’t blame him, of course, because he’d have every right to do so. 

Then again, considering why she is here in the first place, maybe she’s just overthinking it all. 

She can’t help it. She doesn’t regret leaving, of course not, but…

She regrets how she’d left her friend. Alone, to fend for himself in a village that they both love dearly, but which also loves to hold contempt for him.

It’s not fair, she thinks, and that’s one of the reasons why, until now, she couldn’t stand to even think about coming back. 

“I’m back,” she says out loud, and grimaces.

At her expression, the tiny smile that Orochimaru had returned her probably out of societal obligation — but then again, since when did he care about such things anyway? — stretches into something much warmer, much more real, and — oh. 

She’s missed him.

“That you are,” he agrees, and crosses his arms over his chest, one resting on top of the other casually. He holds himself lax, but there’s a tenseness to the line of his shoulders that Tsunade would be able to spot from a mile away. 

“To be quite honest, I was fairly certain you wouldn’t come,” he tells her, and well. 

She can’t let that stand, can she?

She reaches into the front of her robes and tugs out a sheaf of papers, waving it in his faintly surprised face — yes, surprised, she can see it now that she’s looking for it. He is surprised to see her, for all that he came to greet her at the gates. Her heart aches. 

“Who sent me this letter, huh?” She asks, chiding. “You did! You send me this, and signed off on it like how you did, and you expect me to just ignore it? Who do you think I am?”

“Sign it? It’s a letter, of course I’d sign it. That’s what you do when you write someone a letter. I’ve sent you plenty of letters.” Orochimaru retorts, confused but having as hard a time as showing it as he always has. 

It soothes something in her, to see the little ways in which he hasn’t changed. It almost makes it feel like she hasn’t missed that much. 

But, then she remembers the contents of the letter, and knows that’s a lie. That, in fact, she’s missed altogether too much to perhaps still call herself his friend like she does. 

Tsunade huffs out a sigh. “Sure you have. All on sensei’s behalf. That’s why I ignored them.”

“I signed those letters as well.”

He’s not getting it. Why did she think he would? 

Especially after everything she’s done to show him the opposite?

Tsunade shoves the paper into her face, pointing at the script at the very bottom. “Signed ‘ your friend, Orochimaru .’ All the letters sensei asked you to send, you wrote ‘ your comrade, Orochimaru .”

He still looks confused, so Tsunade rolls her eyes and hands the papers over her shoulder, trusting Shizune to grab them from her and put them away, which she does. Such a dutiful girl. 

“I wouldn’t have come for the village, Orochimaru,” she tells him softly, and watches with a pain blossoming in her heart as his eyes widen. “But, it’s for you, so here I am. And, if it’s for you, here I always will be.”

She reaches forward and grabs him by the upper arm, taking off and dragging the stunned shinobi behind her. He barely struggled against her hold, which tells her how much her words have shocked him. 

They shouldn’t have. He shouldn’t even be surprised over this. 

Looks like she’s got a lot to make up for during her visit home. 

“Come on, Oro,” she tosses over her shoulder with a sharp grin to cover the grimace she can feel wanting to press forth. “Tell me all about your new kids. Im their auntie, after all, so I need all the details.”

That gets him awake again. He slips his arm out of her grasp and rubs at it with a vaguely annoyed expression that does nothing to mask the way the corner of his lips twitch slightly upward to show his fondness. Tsunade doesn’t deserve it at all, but it still makes her heart squirm happily just to see it. 

“They’re not my kids,” he says, and then rolls his eyes even before she can give him a look. “They are… children, yes. That I have… taken under my wing, so to speak, yes. However, they are not mine .”

“La la,” Tsunade grumps, pressing a palm over one ear and giving him a cheeky grin. “All I hear is that you adopted two cute little orphans, and they’ve already burrowed their way into your chilly marble heart, haven’t they?”

Orochimaru scowls, but doesn’t retort, and that’s really all the answer Tsunade needs. 

She beams, excited. “Shizune, come on. We’re going to have lunch at the Akamichi teriyaki place, and Orochimaru is gonna tell us about your new cousins!”

From the corner of her eye, she can still see the corner of the letter that brought them here peeking out of her niece’s pocket, and can’t help the slight frown that crosses her face. 

From what it sounds like… Hopefully, Oro will still have his two kids by the year’s end. 

Chapter Text

“You can definitely count on me!” Uchiha Mikoto beams at them, one hand holding the apartment door open so they can all say their farewells. “Nothing will happen to our sweet Kachan so long as I am in the building!”

Still within the apartment proper, partially concealed behind the kunoichi’s legs, Kakashi stares at them with a dull, unamused expression. 

“Don’t call me that,” he says, and Mikoto’s smile widens with glee. 

“Are you sure it’s fine?” Minato asks from beside him, wringing his hands in a certain sign of nerves. “I mean, you have that thing back at the compound tonight, don’t you?”

Mikoto makes a face, and Orochimaru watches it with quiet fascination. He’d never quite been able to learn the art of emoting in the manner than everyone else seems to so instinctively know, and even simply deciphering it’s many nuances is often a struggle for him. To add to that, he hadn’t had many opportunities to sit back and observe people in a casual societal setting — within his vicinity, even his comrades don’t tend to let down their guards. Only his teammates have ever revealed themselves to him, trusted him enough to see them when they were comfortable and let down the many masks of an operative to reveal the real people beneath them. 

It’s been a long time, though, since his team had left, and Orochimaru has since forgotten the ability to parse out the meanings behind certain universal expressions. Until now, being so regularly in the presence of others who let him in, who let him see them. Kakashi and the many ways in which his eyes crinkle to show his amusement or fondness or exasperation or even his caution. Obito, whose face is like an open scroll once one figures out the language of his rather expressive eyebrows. Rin, who’s smiles are sweet and eyes piercing in a way that Orochimaru can be wary and envious of in equal measure. Kushina, whose real feelings he’s come to discover are actually hidden beneath her seemingly eternal exuberance. Minato, always so eager to please the handful of people who matter to him that it’s mirrored in every smile and frown. 

Orochimaru found himself stunned speechless, the moment he had realized that he himself was included in the number.

Mikoto, on the other hand, was a rather new edition to the eclectic band of people that gathered in a sick child chunin’s apartment, and therefore she is still mostly unknown to Orochimaru. Even then, he finds himself knowing her at least through Kushina, which is an absolutely fascinating experience. 

Orochimaru knows more people right now, in this moment, than he ever had in his life before. 

He isn’t sure whether that’s sad or not. 

Looking at Mikoto’s grinning face, Minato’s uncertain shuffling, and Kakashi’s half-hidden exasperation and mock-annoyance, Orochimaru is beginning to think that, maybe — just maybe — it might not be. 

Even so, Orochimaru isn’t one to beat around the bush. 

“If Tsunade wasn’t held up with settling into her hotel and making nice with sensei, I’d have her here instead,” he says, a little bit bluntly, and Minato winces beside him.

But Mikoto just laughs, almost as loud as Kushina might, and looks half a second away from slapping Orochimaru on the back in an overly-friendly manner. He takes a steady, obvious step back, just in case. 

She doesn’t, but she looks amused anyway. 

“It’s fine, it’s fine! Listen, leave already  so we can get a move on with the party.”

“What party?” Kakashi draws up closer behind her and leans into her leg, visibly exhausted — not that that is anything new, unfortunately. He peers up at the Uchiha clanswoman — who looks absolutely thrilled that she receiving the titular ‘Kashi-cuddles’ (as dubbed by Kushina), even if the boy didn’t seem aware he’s giving them — and then turns a woeful gaze toward the two nin standing just outside the doorway. 

“Don’t leave me with her.” He says. 

“I think we’re moreso leaving her with you.” Orochimaru says thoughtfully, just to see the miserable way Kakashi’s shoulders drop. 

“I’m terminally ill,” the boy complains pointedly. “Plagued by migraines and muscle soreness and episodes of excruciating pain. She’s too loud, and…” Kakashi shudders, eying the smiling Uchiha woman beside him with something akin to contempt. “She wants me to play board games with her.”

Mikoto huffs. “Everyone loves board games!”

“It’s such a civilian pastime.”

“Excuse me. Monopoly is absolutely a shinobi game.”

“If I wanted to play with stock exchange and investment bundles, I’d infiltrate the village treasurer offices.”

Orochimaru exchanges a look with Minato. He’s not entirely certain what the look is suppose to entail, exactly, for the blond man — Orochimaru himself is a mixture of entertained and put-off by Kakashi’s blasé attitude regarding his deteriorating health — but Minato looks tired. 

“Just be good,” Minato begs. Whether the plea is directed at Kakashi or the Uchiha or both of them isn’t clear. 

“Stay away from the blue container in the fridge,” Orochimaru decides to say. He watches as a curious light sparks in both their eyes. 

Minato lets out a pained sigh. 

“Anyway,” Kakashi says, suddenly oddly energized. Orochimaru estimates it to last the boy about five minutes before he crashes and needs to sleep again. “Bye.”

“Yeah, see you later!” Mikoto calls cheerfully, shutting the door in their faces. 

The two men stare at the door. Minato turns to him, pouting in a way that absolutely should not befit a grown man but somehow manages to do so.

“Why would you say that?” He complains.

Orochimaru glances at him from the corner of his eye. He shrugs, and turns away to begin walking down the hallway. If it’s to hide the small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth — well, it’s not like there’s anyone else here to see. 

“It will keep them distracted.” He tells the man. “If Kakashi suspects that I’m running an experiment inside his own fridge, he’s certain to investigate, if only for the off-chance of gathering blackmail on me to present to Kushina when she gets back from her mission.”

Minato squints at him, speeding up in order to match his stride as they exit the building. “Why would you care about Kushina finding out about something like that?”

Orochimaru casts him a look. “Something potentially hazardous, in a place in which one normally keeps their food. Food that the children all eat. Potential for cross-contamination, and you think that your girlfriend won’t scold me for that?”

Not that Orochimaru cares if Kushina scolds him. Or, if she tries to. The last time she’d attempted, she had trailed off into a stuttering, red-faced mess. Orochimaru still isn’t quite sure what that’s all about, and he suspects that neither does the girl’s boyfriend, given the strange look Minato had given her. 

Minato blinks, and then nods his head in agreement. He, at least, has reason to be wary of Kushina’s scoldings. She won’t hold back on him. 

They walk side by side down the street, toward a point where they can take to the roofs and make it faster to the Hokage offices. The blond doesn’t seem to notice the stares they’re garnering, but that’s only on the surface. 

Orochimaru knows by now how observant, how subtly shrewd Namikaze Minato actually is. 

Surely then, the man must have noticed by now, the attention directed at them whenever they go about in the village in each other's company. It’s the same with Kushina. It seems that people are just surprised that Orochimaru is capable of seeking another’s company, capable of holding that company in a comfortable fashion, capable of… making connections. 

Before, when Orochimaru had been alone, adrift in a sea of uncertainty after being left behind by the only two people he actually knew, who allowed someone as inept as himself to know them — back then, Orochimaru was incapable of everything they accused him of. Incapable of going into society and doing what everyone else seems able to do just upon instinct alone. 

Something else had been disproven since then; apparently, a veteran nin really can be taught new techniques. Orochimaru has had the time in the past two months to watch, observe and — even more surprising — to integrate himself into the interactions of the people he’s now come to surround himself with. And he’s learned more than he ever thought he would, more than he had even while sandwiched between Tsunade and Jiraiya. Even with a sensei who, Orochimaru has recently begun to suspect, doesn’t actually know as much as he had previously thought the man did. 

Falling into a shunshin and jumping onto a roof with Minato directly beside him, Orochimaru leaves the impersonal stares of the bystanding villagers behind and, for the first time, feels like he really and truly is leaving them behind him. 

It’s a freeing experience. 

“Thank you for coming,” Sarutobi says, and Minato once again asks himself what the purpose of all this really is. 

Yes, they’re here to discuss the break in of Orochimaru’s labs. That’s the general topic, but Minato isn’t a shinobi for nothing — he isn’t a runner up for the Hokage hat for nothing. What’s happening on the surface is never really all that’s going on.

And maybe that’s it, he thinks as he sits down in the chair opposite the village leader’s desk, Orochimaru settling into the other beside him. Minato is a candidate for the hat, but so is Orochimaru.

And they both know — everyone knows, to be honest — that the successor is as well as already chosen. That the continuation of this gray, uncertain period isn’t so much as Sarutobi not having decided who will take his position after he retires, but a media circus to sow public interest and opinion. If foreign spies in their midst take the (false) news back home that Konoha’s leadership is in up in the air, unstable, and luls their enemies into a false sense of security, allowing them to reap their mistakes out in the field, then —

Minato purses his lips, glancing at his fellow nin who sits beside him. 

Generally speaking, from a tactical standpoint, it’s a rather sound play. 

He just couldn’t ever imagine himself doing so to one of his own students. 

The very idea of putting Kakashi, Rin or Obito into that position makes Minato feel sick. 

On one hand, maybe that’s a sign he isn’t as cut out to be the leader of a shinobi village as he and everyone else seems to think. 

On the other hand, Konoha is suppose to be the — not good, they’re ninja, but the most humane shinobi village to exist. 

As he gets older, though, and as he gets an inside peek at the burdens he seeks to heap upon his own shoulders, Minato wonders if shinobi village can be humane.

If they can’t, and if their leaders are their paramount, Minato isn’t quite so certain he even wants to be Hokage. 

Which is a dangerous line of thought, for a Hokage candidate — for the Hokage candidate. 

Can he risk allowing himself to look down on his own mentor when Sarutobi is what Minato will become, later in his career?

He doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want that. 

But does he even have a choice?

“— dusting for prints, which is a rather redundant step to take when half our own force’s prints aren't on record anyway.” Orochimaru is saying, doing that spectacular thing where he manages to somehow sneer without sneering at all. “Running the ones lifted off the lab that night won’t bring us any more information than we began with.”

“It’s not like this is a civilian crime scene.” Minato agrees, stepping seamlessly into the conversation as if he’s been paying full attention from the start. “We need to approach from the angle that a sleeper agent might.”

“A sleeper agent….” Sarutobi echoes thoughtfully, smoothing a hand down his beard. He turns to pin Minato with a questioning gaze. “What makes you say that?” 

Orochimaru is watching him now, too, head tilted to the side and straight hair spilling over his shoulder like a waterfall of ink. 

Minato sits back and crosses his arms. 

“Well, there aren’t any of the tell-tale signs of this being an outside job. No reports of suspicious persons on the streets in the days before or after the break in, no missing persons cases have been submitted on the past week — quite the record, hopefully it sticks around — and we haven’t even clocked any foreign missions within our borders since last Tuesday.”

Orochimaru’s eyes are dark as he stares at him, expression neutral.

“Whoever was there that night hasn’t left the village.” The man concludes, and Minato nods. 

“And if I’m right, then they’re not from outside the village either.”

“You think this was an inside job,” Sarutobi says, and there’s an odd note to it, almost like he’s accusing Minato of something. 

Minato pauses. He turns to give his future-predecessor a flat expression, mindfully uncrossing his arms for a more open appearance. 

“Hokage-sama, it doesn’t have to be one of our own,” he treads lightly. The best idea is to not reveal his true thoughts on the matter, because he already knows Sarutobi’s stance on that. “It would be a mistake on our part, though, to believe that our fellow villages are stupid.”

There’s a brief spot of silence. Orochimaru slowly leans back, eyes going from Sarutobi to Minato and back like he’s watching blows being exchanged in a spar, but he doesn’t move to speak. 

Sarutobi closes his eyes, pressing a hand over his mouth in silent contemplation. After a moment, the man breathes out a sigh and looks up. The hat and the beard and the wrinkles make him look old and tired, but Minato isn’t an idiot to think that’s really what he is. 

“If the robber is still within our walls, then perhaps our avenue of investigation must change. Minato, I’d like for you to partner with Orochimaru for the lead.”

Minato’s lips thin. He glances at his — friend, who doesn’t look away from the Hokage, expression not giving away a single thought. 

Maybe he should have expected this from the minute they were both called into the office. He should have, really, but Minato supposed he’d been a little optimistic that Sarutobi wouldn’t be so predictable and disappointing. 

“Understood.” He says.

Orochimaru tilts his head, staring into the Hokage’s eyes. Neither of them move for a long moment, but then the sannin dips his head in acquisance. 

“Understood.”

“Wonderful,” Sarutobi sighs, and it’s a little wry. It makes Minato feel like leaving without the pleasantries. “Then, unless either of you boys have another matter that requires my attention, I suppose we’d all better get back to work.”

Without missing a beat, Minato and Orochimaru both stand in near unison. They sketch the necessary bows and turn for the door without another word. 

If Sarutobi is surprised with how curt Minato is finding himself to be today, the man doesn’t remark on it. He’s already bent over another stack of paperwork by the time the door closes behind them. 

They walk together in silence. They make it out of the tower and down the street, about to turn the first corner when Minato loses the fight against his strange, sudden urge to apologize. 

“That was….” He pauses, and then shakes his head when all Orochimaru does is glance at him with a patient gaze. “Would it be rude if I called it presumptuous?”

Orochimaru blinks. “Not to my knowledge, but then I’d have to ask why you think so.”

“It’s just… I can’t believe he’s let it drag on this long. And that’s not me trying to be smug and in your face or anything, I’m sorry! But I feel like he’s singling you out, and he’s using me to do it.” Minato makes a face. “I don’t know, it makes me feel a little dirty.”

Orochimaru doesn’t say anything for a few more steps. Minato’s been around the guy long enough by now to know that it’s not because he’s offended him, just that Orochimaru is taking his time in organizing his thoughts. They pass by the Akimichi Teriyaki house before the older nin gives a quiet huff that almost sounds like amusement. 

“It’s nothing new, so I’m not sure why you’re acting so surprised.”

Minato narrows his eyes. He glances at his friend — yeah, he can definitely call Orochimaru that now, right? Thanks Kakashi — but Orochimaru’s expression, as usual, doesn’t reveal much of what he’s thinking. 

“I guess it isn’t. I’m sorry.”

Now Orochimaru sounds almost exasperated. “What are you apologizing for?”

He looks away, feeling a little embarrassed, and shrugs. “I… I guess I don’t know? I suppose I’d long since noticed how things are, but the fact that I never did anything about it at all…. You deserved someone, at least.” 

“Not even my own sensei, you mean.” Orochimaru says dryly, and Minato’s eyes widen. He turns to argue, to say the not what he’d meant, but the sannin is smiling something small and amused.  

So all he ends up saying, pathetically, is, “Um.”

There’s another huff, soft and mirthful, and Orochimaru tilts his head to the side as he examines Minato with his eyes. 

“Do you think I signed myself up for all of this? I didn’t. Danzo was the one who put my name in for the candidacy.”

“You— didn’t?”

Orochimaru blinks at him, giving a small shake of his head. “I don’t know… do I want to spend the rest of my career shackled to a desk doing paperwork, when I could be making the next biggest scientific breakthrough since Senju Tobirama? My talents would be wasted under the hat.”

Minato blinks in surprise. Was that… Did Orochimaru just make a joke? 

“Wait,” he frowns, confused. “So… you don’t want to become Hokage?”

The sannin pauses, staring at Minato like he’s examining something underneath a microscope. It makes the blond want to squirm, but he manages to sit still through whatever Orochimaru is looking for. 

He seems to find it, because he lets out a soft sigh and closes his eyes. Minato watches him shake his head again in a slow manner, watches the corners of his mouth turn upwards just faintly. 

“Kushina told me that it’s your lifelong dream to have your face carved into the mountain,” Orochimaru says, and Minato flushes. “I suppose I can’t blame you, for assuming that the Hokage position is as attractive to everyone else as it is to you.”

“When you say it like that, it makes it sound like I only want it for vain reasons,” Minato replies sullenly, crossing his arms over his chest and unable to help the slight pout that pulls at his lips.

Orochimaru smiles. “What do you want it for?”

The question makes Minato pull up short. Why does he want to be Hokage? 

He doesn’t think there will ever be a simple answer to that inquiry, because there’s just so many reasons, and he could go on for hours about each and every one of them. Minato says as such. 

Orochimaru hums noncommittally. “That’s good.” He says. “If your desire to become Hokage had just been for a singular, overarching goal, then I can’t say I’d have been able to support your candidacy.”

“You’ll support me?” Minato asks, jaw hanging open in shock. 

Orochimaru reaches out and tugs at his arm, yanking Minato out of the way of a cart. He catches his footing, taking another step back as the driver shakes a fist back at him and hollers insults. Minato ducks his head and crosses his arms, turning to pout at Orochimaru, but he’s —

He’s smiling, and it’s a little bigger this time, and his shoulders are trembling and the man is laughing at him, dark eyes gleaming bright, and Minato swallows. 

They both turn back to the road, keeping to the side this time. They’re halfway back to Kakashi’s apartment — hopefully it’s still in one piece, he’s been second guessing their choice of a babysitter all morning — when Minato rubs at his arms in uncertainty and glances at his friend from the corner of his eye. 

“If you’d support me…” he begins, and takes a breath. “I… that would mean a lot. It would mean a lot.”

He wants Orochimaru to understand that he isn’t just saying it would mean a lot for his campaign — but that it’s more personal, that it would mean much more to Minato. Because Orochimaru — he’s important, Minato is beginning to realize, and it’s got nothing to do with the man’s infamy. 

But Orochimaru just looks back at him and smiles that smile again.

“I already do,” he says, like it’s so simple, like there was never a question about it. 

Minato blinks, and then turns to face away from him. He prays to every kami that exists that Orochimaru can’t see how red his face is.

Chapter Text

If anyone had asked Kakashi, at any point in his life, if he thought he could ever get along with an Uchiha, he’d have answered with a resounding negative. 

Obito doesn’t count, because by the point of time in which Kakashi would have allowed himself to be more agreeable to an amicable relationship with his teammate, Obito was already d— missing. MIA. 

Anyway, there was no reason to say yes to that question. 

That’s not to say he doesn’t like them, of course. They’re fine, really. 

They’re just bullheaded. Stubborn. They’re prideful and have an incredible talent for tunnel vision. 

Kakashi coughs, and taps his nose with his finger. He selects a single card and lays it, face up, on the floor in front of him. 

Across from him, Anko growls. It sounds identical to a feral kitten. 

“You need to work on that.” He tells her tonelessy as he watches the small, tiny child snatch up an extra three cards from the draw pile. “It doesn’t sound threatening at all.”

“I’m little,” Anko snaps back defensively. 

“That’s no excuse. My littlest puppy can growl better than that.”

“… Sensei says it sounds ‘adorably unhinged.’” She pouts, tossing a dud card down on the floor. 

Kakashi blinks, and then releases a deep sigh. It’s a bit too deep, and tickles his throat into a short bout of coughing. He winced, rubbing at his neck a bit before glancing to the person to his right. 

“It does sound adorably unhinged, Anko-chan, don’t worry.” Uchiha Mikoto assures the girl with a grave, serious expression. “I think you could give a grown civilian man terrible nightmares with that sound alone.”

Brightening, Anko selects two more cards from her hand and delivers a combo. One that can be stacked with the following turn’s play. 

Kakashi squints down at them, wondering whether it would even play out. Mikoto will need the corresponding cards to —

Mikoto cheers, laying down the second half of the double-player combo move, and Kakashi closes his eyes for a brief moment of mourning before he’s forced to bite the kunai and draw ten cards. 

Mikoto and Anko exchange a cheerful high five. 

Cards are a little bigger than he remembers them being, given that his hands are tinier than they were last time he played a game. Kakashi lays his hand face down and picks up the draw pile with care. He begins to count out the ten draw, and makes sure the card he’d slipped up his sleeve is placed on the top of the pile before he sets it back down. 

Unhurried, Kakashi retrieves his hand and begins to sort out his new cards into different fast-plays, with token cards in the back and the two reaction cards he gleaned from the attack at the forefront for easy access, just in case. 

Choosing his move, Kakashi sets down a regular two card combo and ends his turn. 

When he looks back to his left, Anko is still looking pretty smug about her joint-ambush against him, so he casually says, “Sure, it’s unhinged. But a civilian man is all that you’re gonna be able to give nightmares to.”

Anko’s bright expression sours again, and she slaps down a triple card play that nets her an acceptable amount of points before she draws from the deck. Her expression sours further when she sees the card, and her gaze flits back to Kakashi suspiciously. 

Kakashi’s expression remains flat and uninterested, aided by the mask. Helpful thing, in any situation. He will never get rid of it. 

“Now, if you want to give a Shinobi grown man nightmares…” he trails off, leadingly. 

She takes the bait like a starving dog. “ANBU?”

“Uh.” Kakashi says. “Not sure who you’re targeting, but that’s another step above. Take baby steps, maybe?”

“I’m a badass kunoichi,” Anko sneers. “I don’t need to take baby steps with anything .”

She lays down a hand to end her turn. It’s a bit pitiful and doesn’t back up her words at all. Kakashi feels a little bad, but not bad enough to regret it. 

“ANBU are tough nuts to crack.” Mikoto says wisely. She sets down a single card for her play, nice and neatly. “But they’re shinobi too, not just soulless monsters. And everybody has a weak spot in their armor.”

Kakashi gazes at the women with a deep wariness. He glances down at his hand and selects his next play, before looking back to the discard pile. 

He blinks.

Anko is giggling up a storm. 

“Mm.” He sighs, and forfeits every single token card in his hand, as per the rules. He knew his trick had been risky, but being targeted twice in a row hadn’t been in his plan. 

Mikoto is smiling serenely. She accepts the token cards and splits them evenly with the evilly smirking toddler. 

“I happen to have it on good authority,” Mikoto leans in and lowers her voice as if she’s sharing some big secret, “that little girls are very creepy when they want to be.”

“Whose authority is that?” Kakashi asks blandly. 

He takes a second to glance up at the ceiling and pay respect to his losing hand. It was nice while it lasted, but he’ll have to fold soon after this. The bitter taste of impending defeat; not one of his favorite flavors. 

Mikoto snickers. “Let’s just say that some jerk in my clan gets the serious heebiejeebies.”

“Who?” Anko asks, eyes gleaming. “Who does? Do I know them?”

“Now, now, Anko-chan.” The Uchiha chides gently. “Badass kunoichi like us are above such petty things as naming names. It’s a matter of precedence, you see?”

“Oh, okay.” Anko doesn’t look too convinced, but she nods along anyway. Kakashi wonders why she can’t be this obedient for anyone other than Mikoto and Kushina. 

“Anyway,” Mikoto continues, “it’s Fugaku.”

“Ha!”

Anko’s eyes are squinting near shut with the level of beaming she’s got going on. Somehow, though, it’s still a smirk. Kakashi doesn’t know how it’s possible, but he’s not sure he wants to. 

“Your fiancé?” He asks. 

The mere word brings a sneer to the face of their babysitter for today. The Uchiha women can apparently wear the expression of disgust extremely well. So well, in fact, that Kakashi feels the urge to apologize despite not actually being the subject of the look. Damn near fatal, he guesses, if Fugaku himself had actually been here in the room. 

Kakashi really wonders what that guy did to garner such a deep dislike from his own future wife. He doesn’t remember there being anything but a cohesive partnership between them. What the hell happened? How did Mikoto go from this to… well, to that ?!

“Allegedly.”

“Aren’t there, like, documents and contracts that make it legally bindi—“

“It’s an alleged betrothal.” Mikoto maintains, firmly, as firm as the mountain that looms ever-present above their village. 

“You hate him, huh?” Anko seems curious. 

The woman makes a face in response to that. “Mm, no? He’s not evil or anything. Just a jackass who never learned to pull his head out of his ass. Which makes being around him unbearable.”

“All jackasses are evil though?”

“Not really, no. I mean, evil people are all also jackasses, but not every jackass is evil. Sometimes they’re just a complete, absolute idiot who doesn't try.”

Kakashi heaves out a big sigh — this time careful not to aggravate his sore throat — and finally folds in, becoming the first loser of the game. 

“That might as well be evil.” He chimes in. “Purposeful ignorance is the root of malice.”

Both ladies turn to observe him for a moment. 

Anko glances down, spots his hand lying sad and defeated on the floor, and starts to cackle. 

“Our baby chunin is very wise, almost like an old man.” Mikoto says, kind of fondly, as she reaches out to ruffle Kakashi’s hair. 

Kakashi blinks, and then ducks his head down. He lifts up both hands to cover his hair and turns to stare at the wall. 

Then, he pauses. That was… a weird way to react to a friendly touch. 

He quickly lowers his hands down to his lap again and looks back, only to find a strange scene. Anko’s discarded her victorious smirk to glare balefully up at the bemused looking Mikoto.

“Kakashi is not like an old man.” Anko sniffs, chin held high as she glowers down her nose at the woman she’d been teaming up with against Kakashi all afternoon. “His hair is a clan trait. You’re an Uchiha, shouldn’t you already understand that?”

“I wasn’t talking about…?” 

For a moment, Mikoto looks both surprised and confused. 

But Kakashi has already cottoned on to why Anko is reacting like this, and he wants to bury his face into his hands in embarrassment. 

It was one comment! A stupid one, too. It doesn’t even matter that much. It’s not a sore point at all, and his feelings aren’t —! 

But, secretly, it’s kind of adorable. Anko trying to defend him like this. It’s… sweet. 

Face burning — it’s from the chronic fever he’s been experiencing, alright? — Kakashi really does hide his face in his palms. He can’t keep looking at Anko’s little face twisted up in righteous anger.

At this time, Mikoto seems to realize something, because she makes a little wordless noise of understanding. And then, Kakashi feels a stare being directed toward him. It makes him shrink down under her gaze. 

He draws his knees up to his chest and crosses his arms in front of his face so she can’t see how red the tops of his cheeks are. And his ears, he feels it in his ears too. This fever is really hitting him everywhere. 

“Have people really…? No, who am I kidding, of course they do. This village is full of assholes.” The Uchiha woman huffs out an unimpressed scoff. “Baby chunin, listen. If anyone ever says shit like that to you again, come and tell me. I’ll skin them for you.”

Kakashi flinches, jerking his head up to blink across the game at her. Mikoto doesn’t look like she’s joking. 

“You don’t need to… skin them…” he attempts to de-escalate the situation, but Anko beside him jumps to her feet with her tiny fists clenched with enthusiasm. 

She no longer looks upset with Mikoto. Instead, she’s back to the same type of approval she lends toward Kushina. 

“I can help!” The little girl crows. “I’ve never skinned anyone before. If those jackasses say shit about my brother then you need to show me how, ‘kay?”

“Language.” Kakashi mumbles hollowly, a little shell shocked as he thinks about how Orochimaru will react to coming home and hearing Anko’s new vocabulary, but neither of them pay him any mind. 

“That’s the spirit, Anko-chan!” Mikoto, someone who should never be given charge over children ever again, praises. “We can make a girls day out of it! Kushina will wanna to join in, too.”

“Ooh, I’ve never had a girls day before!” Anko looks eager. “Yes!”

“A girls day?” Someone says from the door. 

Kakashi pivots around to find Minato stepping into the apartment, Orochimaru close behind him. 

The blond glances down at the cards strewn about the floor between them, and asks, “Is that… High Noon Duel?”

“Honeypot In Grass,” Orochimaru corrects him, studying the placement of the cards over Minato’s shoulder. “With… the merchant caravan clause?”

“Sea route.” Kakashi says.

“Why are you playing Honeypot with the kids?!” Minato asks Mikoto despairingly. 

“Anko suggested it.” The woman pouts. “Also, why not?”

“Anko?!” Minato echoes, whirling around to gaze searchingly at Orochimaru, who shrugs.

“We play it at home. Good for practice with tactical planning. My team used to play it when we did border camping.”

“That’s not a kids’ game, though!”

Orochimaru, Mikoto, Anko, and even Kakashi regard Minato with a flat, blank stare. 

“Blondie, we’re all ninja here.” Mikoto sighs. “You spend too much time around those simpering civilian council bastards. They’re corrupting you. It’s making Kushina sad, man.”

Minato’s face transforms into something just shy of devastated, and he switches the subject with about as much grace as a running emu. 

“Uh, what’s this about girls night?” He asks sheepishly. 

With little regard to the rapidly shortening fuse of his sensei’s sanity, Kakashi explains. 

“They’re going to go hunt down some civilians for sport and skin them.” He says.

Minato’s face pales. 

He goes a shade even paler as Anko cheerfully chimes in. “Alive!”

Kakashi rubbed a few fingers into his forehead, sighing. 

Shaking his head, Minato says, “No.”

Both kunoichi pout.

“But!” Mikoto complains. She waves her arm toward Kakashi in a wide gesture. “They’re bullying our baby chunin!”

Minato’s eyes take on a strange, sharpened gleam. “Bullying?”

“Kakashi?” From over his shoulder, Orochimaru narrows his eyes. 

Slowly covering his head with his hands again, Kakashi lets out a slow, deep sigh. 

For some reason, he feels really bad for the villagers today. 

Then again, maybe they deserve it?