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Chapter Text

Kakashi is covered in blood when the Hokage tells him that he has an opportunity for him. 

It drips onto the wooden floors. Kakashi is not Kakashi at that moment, but Hound. There is blood coating his ANBU uniform. He is tired. Obito’s eye is hurting him. Hound had just completed a solo mission and had come to report. His target fought back, and now Hound is dripping blood on the floor of the Hokage’s office.

Hiruzen seems to barely take note of the blood, of the dead-eyed stare sent his way. The smell of tobacco makes Hound’s nose itch, even through the two masks he wears. Paperwork is shuffled his way.

“What did you know of your paternal aunt, Hatake Shiho?” Hiruzen asks, completely aware that Hound is not supposed to be Kakashi at the moment. 

It feels like he’s being forced to unmask, and Hound doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want to be Kakashi right now. He can be Kakashi when there isn’t that god awful drip-drip-drip echoing in his ears. 

A beat of silence, and Hiruzen sends him a disappointed look. He frowns, and his tone is low when he orders Hound to take off his ANBU mask. His hands shake as he does, the lighting jutsu he uses wreaks havoc on his nerves. Despite one mask remaining in place, Kakashi feels vulnerable and exposed. 

Kakashi’s voice is rough from disuse when he responds, “She died in the Second Shinobi War, I have no memories of her or much more useful information, Hokage-sama.”

He was angry and tired and not willing to think about his family. Hatake was just him and the branch in Iron. Only one civilian cousin remained in the village, but that wasn’t important. Kakashi’s father had told stories of his older sister, Shiho. His cousin had checked in on him after he died. It was information, but it wasn’t useful . Kakashi didn’t want to think of it.

“Kakashi, you are leaving out something,” Hiruzen said, patronizing him. Like Kakashi was still that stupid, arrogant child he’d met all those years ago.

“She had a relationship with a civilian man, never married, produced one child that was never formally a member of the Hatake,” he forced out. It was hard to keep the annoyance from his voice.

Hiruzen made a show of sighing and acting like he was the one that was suffering, “Yes, and Haruno Mebuki did graduate as a genin, but showed no promise as a shinobi. Your first cousin is not the end of Shiho’s line though.”

That is the first thing that takes Kakashi out of his spiraling thoughts of blood and lighting. Mebuki was older than him, and was living as a civilian with her husband. Worked as a merchant. He’d last seen her when he was thirteen and certain his world was ending. Kakashi had said some terrible things to her over Rin’s grave. She’d stopped bringing him precooked dinners and birthday presents after that. Sometimes, when he was at the Memorial Stone for too long, he counted that in his list of sins. 

Kakashi does not want to think about his cousin. Does not want to know about her and her family. Does not want to be here and be forced to be a man. He’s much better as a weapon.

It seems Hiruzen takes his silence as compliance and continues, “Her daughter, Sakura, started at the Academy last year. She’s not quite a child genius like you, but she’s certainly got the Hatake genes over the Haruno ones.”

Oh, that’s not what Kakashi wanted to hear. Hatake was supposed to die with him and wash away from history in the rain. Immediately, he thinks of the last prodigy he knew. Itachi was a traitor, and killed his whole clan on top of leaving the village behind. The broken seal on his tongue burns . Sakura, a girl he’d never known existed, was not safe. Something deep and primal in him raged. 

“What does this have to do with me?” he snapped, wanting to flee or fight in equal measure.

Hiruzen shoots him a disapproving glance, “Must you be so aggressive? Kakashi, I am giving you an opportunity, a chance to revive your dying clan.”

Kakashi halts, and considers the older man a moment, “How do you know Sakura is more Hatake than Haruno?”

“Well, she displayed some interesting looking chakra during an exercise in class. A note was made, and passed on, and a friend looked in on it for me,” Hiruzen drawls out slowly, purposeful and patronizing, “Which led to a DNA test being run and the information being given to me. Did you know that Mebuki’s husband, Kizashi, is actually a distant relative from the Iron branch of the Hatake?”

Pure, unfiltered rage flows through him. How dare the man dance around the truth? That his cousin’s kid was being scouted by Danzo. Must Kakashi suffer the man’s scheming for the rest of his life? Tenzo was one thing, his own blood was another.

“The opportunity, what is it?” he growls, lowly and bordering defiant.

Hiruzen smiles like he’s sharing a secret, “Given recent events, the elders are interested in strengthening the current clans in Konoha. One way or the other, little Sakura will need to be trained as a Hatake. Kakashi, would you be open to having an apprentice?”

That is the question that turns him into rubble. He signs paperwork and leaves it covered in bloodstains. Perhaps it was poetic that Kakashi had sealed the fate of a child with such carelessness. By the end of this apprenticeship, she’d be as bloodstained as him. 

Kakashi is clean, dressed in clean jonin blues when he meets the child that has been given to him to make into a weapon like him. The sun is shining. It feels wrong, like the weather didn’t understand that he’s attending a funeral, not a family dinner. 

Mebuki looks older. Her hair still carries more of a blonde hue than a silver one, her eyes aren't dark grey, but green-grey. Shiho did not pass on much of her Hatake traits. Kakashi spots familiar sharp canines when Mebuki smiles at him and pushes his comparisons to his father away.

Sakura is hiding behind her mother’s legs when Mebuki opens the door. They exchange pleasantries under the watchful eye of a six-year-old. Her hair is pink and her eyes are green . Kakashi feels duped, lied to in some way. That was not a Hatake, that was an overgrown toddler.

He meets Kizashi, notes that the pink hair and green eyes come from him, and eats a well prepared meal. They pretend he’s a human, not a weapon. Mebuki made multiple eggplant dishes. They pretend they don’t find his mask weird. Kizashi tells Sakura to eat all her soybeans or else she’d be short forever. They pretend like she wouldn’t die as a child soldier under his care.

The house is clean, nice. A testimony to Mebuki’s work as a merchant under her father. It sits in a civilian district known for immigrants and refugees. Uzushio sealwork decorates the front door. Mebuki had hired an Uzushio sealmaster to protect her home. That primal animal that lives in him is happy to see her care in protecting her family. 

It’s not until he’d finished his meal that Sakura speaks.

“So, Mister Kakashi, are you really my cousin?” she says, voice small and young.

He sends her his best eye-smile, “Yes, Sakura-chan, I am your cousin.”

She stares at him, unimpressed. Her tiny little pink brows furrow, and she’s pouting when she speaks next, “But Ino-chan says you're weird . My cousin can’t be weird .”

Kizashi attempts to muffle his chuckles. Mebuki scolds Sakura immediately, “Sakura, apologize to Kakashi now.”

“He didn’t deny it!” she protests, hands waving in the air, “Ino is my best friend and she knows everything. When she heard he was my cousin she told me he was weird!”

Kakashi thinks about the files he’d read in a haze a day before. Sakura’s academy file noted her friendship with the Yamanaka heiress. It seems like Inochi had not kept a tight leash on his kid, and she’d picked up on the gossip about him from his workplace. T&I was the worst. Truly, only ANBU beat them as gossips. 

“No, your friend was right, I am weird,” he says, just to see Mebuki’s disappointed face and Sakura’s happiness at being right. The pink haired girl’s excitement lasts all of two seconds before she’s upset again, “Wait! I don’t want a weird cousin teaching me!”

Mebuki sighs, “Sakura, Kakashi is going to take you on as an apprentice. Remember how happy you were to be able to get out of the Academy already?”

Sakura nods, and it seems like the reveal of Kakashi’s weirdness is forgotten, “Yeah, all that stuff about being a Hatake now and Grandma Shiho.”

She’s so bright and happy that Kakashi feels like he’s hallucinating this whole experience. Hiruzen saw this tiny fairy of a child and ordered him to either make her into a homegrown Hatake killing machine or let ROOT do it. Despite his earlier appetite, he thinks he might be sick. 

Mebuki turns to him, and suddenly the room gets serious, “Kakashi, I know this is strange. You and I both understand why it had to be like this though.”

Kakashi doesn’t trust himself to speak, so he just nods. Mebuki is hinting at Danzo. He feels untethered and lost at sea at that information.

“Sakura is a smart, talented girl. I regret the path that we took to grant her the Hatake name, but I do not regret that she received it. For this to work, I have some conditions for you,” Mebuki speaks with authority bred from years of negotiating, Kakashi always felt young around her, but especially in this moment, “You are officially Sakura’s legal guardian. I want us to live in the Hatake compound, I want you to let me take care of our clan’s estate.”

“Mebuki, I can’t live there,” he protests, uncomfortable with this whole situation, “You should’ve been the clan head anyways, so the estate and its accounts are yours.”

Green-grey clashes with dark-grey as they stare each other down, Mebuki is scowling when she speaks, “My daughter is legally expected to live with you, to eat at your side, to learn your ways. Confront your past, Kakashi.”

Not a word she says is false. The bloodied paperwork was meticulous, showing signs of Mebuki and her father’s handiwork all over it. It was ironclad, and resembled his own with Minato-sensei. Sakura was to be his apprentice until she made chunin. She’d receive the Hatake summoning contract and clan training. She’d be his heir until he had children of his own. In all actuality, she essentially became his child. It’d made him feel nausea reading it, but it also made him happy to have such a strong legal claim over her. Danzo couldn’t take a clan heir for his own. He could take a civilian cousin easily.

Kakashi deflates, and Mebuki’s face softens, “Look, kid, I know we left on bad terms but I still love you like an annoying little brother.”

“I-I love you, too,” he stutters, shy and embarrassed to be so vulnerable, “I didn’t mean what I said that day.”

“You did, still do deep down inside,” Mebuki coos, harsh words coated in honey, “I don’t need your apologies, I forgave you years ago.”

Oh, how that made his chest hurt. Kakashi swallows his pain, and chooses to accept his fate, “The apprenticeship starts in three weeks. Fix the house up, and throw away the flooring and I’ll be moved in when we begin.”

Mebuki’s smile borders on predatory, her eyes intense, “The money for the repairs comes out of your account, and you are fixing the wards to let us in as family tonight.”

“Deal,” Kakashi breathes out. Familiarity takes over, and they shake hands over the table like they did when the world wasn’t so big. 

He flees that loving little family as soon as possible. It held no place for a blade as bloodsoaked as him. Sakura waves at him as he leaves. His chest hurts. 

There’s a lot of work in quitting ANBU. Technically, he’s not quitting, just leaving the team roster. It means that the porcelain mask in his hands will not see the light of day until Sakura can survive a few days without him. 

Kakashi almost mourns the loss of Hound. There was a simplicity in being Hound. His claws ripped, his teeth tore, and he drank in violence with a fervor. Hound followed orders like a good dog. Hound didn’t have family or morals. Hound killed, and Hound was good at killing. 

He goes on one last mission with the remaining Team Ro members. They all know he’s being removed from the roster. Given his policies as captain on being open and honest about who’s under the mask, they all know why he’s being removed.

No one says anything. No goodbyes or well-wishes are exchanged.

When he goes to place his uniform in his locker, he spots a book laying at the bottom. It’s not the familiar cover he’s used to, the gaudy colors a beacon to all those that porn is in the pages. There’s a cartoon puppy taking up most of the front cover. 

He picks it up, and reads the title, ‘ How to Raise a Pup: An Intro into Puppy Parenthood ’.

Something like fondness blooms in his chest. He opens to the first page and sees that his team have scribbled miniature versions of their ANBU personas. Tiger is swiping a paw at Crane in annoyance, Horse is prancing around with flowers in his mane. Cat is the biggest figure, a wide grin on the doodle’s feline face. 

Underneath, in Tenzo’s god awful handwriting, is a message; Congrats! It’s a girl! 

Kakashi laughs, long and hard in that cold ANBU locker room. He laughs until he’s choking on it, until it resembles sobs. The book fits in his jonin vest pocket perfectly. Its weight brings him an odd comfort. He hopes that no one throws him a baby shower.

When he moves in, he moves in at night. The apprenticeship officially starts in three days. His childhood home is occupied by more people that he ever recalls living in it. Kakashi spent years as one of the elite shinobi of Konoha, so he’s got most of his stuff set up in his old bedroom before anyone notices. 

It’s only his heightened sense of hearing that allows him to hear the tiny feet padding their way towards him. He’d done a scan before he started. Mebuki and Kizashi had moved into the master bedroom on the ground floor. Kakashi had assumed that Sakura would have one of the bedrooms on the ground floor. Only two bedrooms, a small office, and a small bathroom were on the second level. His apprentice had chosen the other bedroom it seemed.

He doesn’t attempt to bar her entry. She walks in as he’s hanging his clothes up. Kakashi purposefully keeps his attention to the task at hand. He’s not sure how to talk to the kid. By her age, he’d been a killer.

Sakura has a lack of understanding boundaries, because she strolls up to him, pathetic-looking tiger stuffie in hand. Despite his lack of attention, she doesn’t falter. 

Her tiny hand fists his shirt hem, and she tugs. His single eye stares down at her. 

She smiles, revealing that she’d lost a tooth, and breaks the silence, “Mom says I have to ask you what I should call you.”

Kakashi had not considered what the little girl would call him. He called Minato sensei, but he was not sure he deserved that title. Not when he would be making her into a killing machine instead of a student. He thinks for a moment, ignores the tiny hand fisted into his shirt. The weight of the book in his vest pings his mind. 

“Taichou, you call me Kakashi-taichou, or just Taichou,” he says. Familiar, a reminder of the last prodigy to call him that. A warning.

Sakura beams up at him, “Taichou sounds cool, I like it.”

He nods and turns back to his clothes. Instead of leaving, Sakura is scanning his room with tired green eyes. Her hand is still holding his shirt. 

“Your room is boring, Taichou,” she states, offended by his lack of decor.

“Haven’t fully moved in, pup,” he responds before he thinks better of the pet name.

Sakura does not seem to mind, and is blinking sleepy eyes up at him, “Well, it’s boring. Can I draw pictures for you, Taichou?”

“Why would you?” he asks, willing himself to avoid getting attached. He jostles her hand as he reaches for another shirt to hang. Sakura tightens her grip.

“Because it’d be nice, and I want to say thank you for training me,” she says, voice so earnest it pains him.

Kakashi pauses, and looks back down at her. Her cheeks are unfathomably chubby, her eyes so bright. She’s cute. A doll almost. He sees her dead in a dozen different ways, all his fault.

“Sakura, do you know what I’ll be training you to do?” he questions, desperate for an answer that he doesn’t deserve, “What it means for you?”

Sakura tilts her head to the side, like a puppy, her confusion clear. That long, pink hair is a mess from her sleep. His chest hurts.

“To kill, to be a weapon,” she says. It blindsides him for a moment, and she must sense his shock for she continues, “I am smart. I notice things. When mom and dad started getting nervous about my progress reports, I started watching them. There’s someone else that wants to train me right?”

Seals, dead-eyed children flash in his mind. Kakashi moves his hand to rest in her hair instinctually, “Yes, Sakura, there’s someone else that wants to train you.”

She nods, hand still fisted in his shirt, his own still on her head, “All shinobi kill. Hatake kill the best though, right?”

Fuck, something about that makes him proud. Makes the dark wolf he cages inside himself preen. Most of him feels sick to his stomach. Her small voice reciting words she couldn’t possibly understand. 

Honesty suits him better than lying. He’s a killer, but he can’t force himself to deny the truth to this child. 

He’s patting her head like she’s an obedient puppy, “Correct, pup.”

Sakura leans into his touch. She’s never lived a life where touch is a bad thing. Nothing but love and affection given to her freely from her parents. Kakashi doesn’t remember his time at the Academy, but he knows that she’s not even sparred yet. Untainted from memories of how much touch hurts . 

A feral little feeling wiggles into his chest. Something warm floods his body despite the morbid conversation.

“I am not a good man, I will not teach you to be a good man,” he says, like he’s delivering a eulogy, “I can only teach you to be a good shinobi.”

Sakura’s head moves under his hand in a nod, she’s smiling again. The gap where her tooth is missing is obvious. Her stuffed animal dangles from one hand, his shirt is twisted up in the other. 

Kakashi tries very hard to not let his mind wander with the sight of that smile adorning her corpse.

Chapter Text

It's a cool spring day when Kakashi officially gains an apprentice. 

He wasn’t late. Couldn’t have been even if he wanted to. Kizashi had been all laughs and smiles as he made breakfast for him and Sakura. Mebuki was already at a meeting with her father to discuss investments that she was making with the Hatake clan accounts. So he sat at the table and ate breakfast with his apprentice. 

Sakura wears a charcoal grey shirt with the Hatake clan symbol on her back. He pushes down the bile that rises in his throat at the sight of it.

Kakashi takes her to the newly renovated Hatake dojo. He makes her walk him through her Academy exercises and tries to gauge if she’s needing more work or less. Sakura’s pink ponytail bounces behind her as he makes her run laps around the compound. They exchange very few words throughout this whole process.

The white chakra makes its appearance when he’s showing her an exercise on how to make chakra visible. His father’s kind face fills his mind. They do not train anymore after that. 

The breeze pulls at his hair as he lays on the engawa and reads. Kakashi has had an apprentice for two weeks. 

They have not made it past the sight of her white chakra yet. He’s assigned her reading to fill up her afternoons. Makes her practice all the skills she’d be missing training with him and not studying at the Academy. Sakura is shockingly patient. 

She’s determined. A little shy at times, hesitating to answer his questions. Her stamina sucks, her chakra reserves aren’t where he’d like them. 

The worst thing about having an apprentice, Kakashi decides, is that they stick to you like glue. Sakura’s lack of boundaries has not improved, and she keeps touching him like he’s not dangerous. Yesterday, she’d tugged on his hand to ask a question. He keeps patting her head. A nagging thought that he should read the puppy training manual has become recurring. 

His mind is split between the porn he’s rereading and the crisis of having an apprentice when he hears Kizashi approach him.

Kizashi is an enigma to Kakashi. The older man is as soft and civilian as they come. His appearance is a testimony to his cushy life as Mebuki’s house-husband. Despite his distant relation to the Iron branch of the Hatake clan, Kizashi bears no traits that make him familiar. Memories of the past paint him as a sweet, kind man. Someone that used to tease him about crushes and dessert.

Kakashi barely glances up at Kizashi when he reaches his prone form. Kizashi’s dusty pink hair is bright in the afternoon sun. His face is contorted into a weird mix of disappointed and annoyed.

“Kid, you need a therapist,” he says gruffly. Kakashi is a little surprised at the conversation topic.

He flips a page to fake reading, “I pass my psych exam every year.”

“You are failing my daughter,” Kizashi aims for his sore spot without mercy, remarkably similar to his wife in this moment, “You need to talk to a therapist and get over your grief.”

Kakashi sighs, and gives up on his book. His eyes trace over the other man’s face and finds that his escape route is lacking. Kizashi makes great food. He’d been serving Kakashi blander food every day for the last week. Mebuki’s confrontation would be so much worse. Small blessings.

“I just need time,” he lies. He’d had time. He needed to be in ANBU and not dealing with an apprentice that triggered every bad memory he had.

Kizashi leans down towards him. Kakashi notes that he is much broader than most civilians. His stupid hairstyle blocks the sun, and Kakashi is forced to look him in the eyes as he speaks, “You need a therapist. Go find one. Don’t expect food until you have.”

“I can’t just find a therapist,” Kakashi protests lazily, already dreading the whole affair.

“Kakashi,” Kizashi sighs, done with his shit, “I think we both know that any Yamanaka worth their salt would be ushering you into their office at the drop of a hat.”

The man had a point. A terrible, real point. In all honesty, Kakashi had been avoiding the sessions that Inoichi begged him to attend for years. 

Still, he doesn’t move, and neither does Kizashi, “Kakashi. Go.”

He’s half motivated to simply roll off the porch and into the newly planted garden. Just in protest. The idea of Sakura getting killed because he’s too stuck in his own mind is what gets him to sit up. Kizashi steps back, but stays standing near him. 

Kakashi stares, and Kizashi does a ‘ shoo ’ motion with his hand. He feels like a stray dog being banished from begging for scraps. It’s not a pleasant sensation to saunter off with his tail tucked between his legs. He goes peacefully though. If he frames it as a necessary evil, then Kakashi can trick himself into feeling like it was his choice. 

There’s a moment where he considers just making an appointment. It lasts all of three seconds. Inoichi’s office has a window. Kakashi makes it a door.

The blond clan head is thoroughly unimpressed by his actions. State secrets are in the files that cover his desk, Inoichi has a few open and is clearly attempting to work. Kakashi plops down into the chair across from the desk. He doesn’t think this is the office Inoichi uses to give therapy in, but he finds comfort in the cold, professional room.

Inoichi stares at him with pupilless eyes, unimpressed but unwilling to chastise him. A beat of silence, and Inoichi sighs and closes the files in front of him.

“Why are you here, Kakashi?”

“They gave me a child and I am fucking it up already.”

Kakashi watches as Inoichi rearranges the papers on his desk. The only noise in the small room is that of the rustling papers. When the blond seems satisfied with his arrangements, he picks up a notepad and pen. 

Inoichi stares, and Kakashi crumbles at the weighted gaze, “Her chakra. Can’t look at it. Haven’t even let her meet the pack.”

“Must be a hard transition from ANBU to teaching. Harder than it would’ve been given that Sakura is family,” Inoichi's deep, calm voice comes through. 

Mentally, Kakashi is spiraling. He doesn’t know why he even came here, why he thought this would help. Anything he thinks of saying in response doesn’t seem right. Flashes of blood in the moonlight, of sharp canines seen while smiling, pink hair flowing in the breeze, all go through his mind. 

Inoichi hasn’t spoken. He sits, calm and unrelenting. 

“I am going to get her killed if I can’t train her,” Kakashi blurts out.

Inoichi just nods, the bastard.

Kakashi’s throat feels dry, and he licks his lips to wet them. Silence takes over the room again and he feels the pressure on his mind increase, and just tries to choke out his thoughts, “She’s going to die anyways, but I am shitty teacher so she’ll die sooner. Everytime I try to be a mentor, I fuck up. I know why I agreed to it but fuck, Inoichi, this is a child and I have to make her into a weapon.”

“I don’t think you are making her into a weapon. What happened before is not your fault, and projecting that situation onto this one isn’t helping you,” Inoichi states, so matter-of-fact. 

The thing that the blond man doesn’t get is that it was his fault. Danzo sits on an empire of dead-eyed child soldiers and Kakashi saved only one of them. He’s not Hiruzen, not the man in the hat, but he could do something. Sakura is still at risk if he keeps fucking up. 

“I get that she’s not him ,” Kakashi grits out, “But, she’s got something that I can’t handle. She touches me like I am not a killer, she drew me a picture of us. I will destroy her.”

Inoichi narrows those light eyes, Kakashi feels exposed. His heart races like he’s some prey animal and Inoichi is a predator hunting him.

He keeps fucking talking for some reason, “M-My dad was my only real family. This pink kid is just salt on the wound.”

“Denying that you have family won’t make it easier for you to teach Sakura,” Inoichi intones, his expression far kinder than Kakashi deserves, “She seems to care for you, and you seem to care for her.”

“I don’t care for her!” he stammers out, face hot. Kakashi shakes his head, “I am not a monster, I just don’t want her to die!”

“But you won’t teach her how not to die,” Inoichi repeats his earlier words.

It feels like he’s been stabbed. Was Kakashi a monster? He was a killer, but he prided himself on limiting his cruelty. Sakura was a stupid child. Innocence made flesh. 

“I-I just can’t stand it.”

“Can’t stand it or won’t try?”

Kakashi stands up at Inoichi’s words. He doesn’t speak, and neither does Inoichi. The blond just puts away the notepad and Kakashi climbs out his window.

Therapy was pointless. He needed to check in on Obito and Rin anyways.

It’s warm outside. Sakura sits across from him in the garden and practices manifesting her chakra. Kakashi doesn’t run. 

A week of training. A week where he’d somehow lived despite the sight of his father’s chakra punching him in the gut daily. The tooth Sakura lost is growing in, but she’d lost another on the bottom row. He’d had to keep her from chewing the collar of that goddamned Hatake shirt. 

He makes up his mind, and holds up a hand to stop Sakura, she’s pouting at him, “C’mon, Taichou, I was doing so good.”

“You were,” Kakashi concedes, “I wanted to show you my summons.”

Excitement washes over the tiny child, “Really? Can I pet them? Will I get to meet all of them?”

“Yes, I’ll summon all of my pack, and you have to ask them if you can pet them,” he said, voice patronizing. Sakura picks up on it immediately, smart girl.

“I know it’s serious, Taichou, I promise to be good,” she says, green eyes staring into his one grey eye.

Kakashi ignores that, and instead summons his pack.

A poof of smoke and a small popping noise echoes in the garden. All eight of his ninken stand before him. They are immediately looking around the area, likely attempting to figure out why he’s summoned them.

Pakkun’s unimpressed, squished face, stares him down from his place on Bull’s head, “Kakashi, it’s been awhile.”

He’s sheepish suddenly, scratching the back of his head, “Ma, not that long, Pakkun.”

“We are in the Hatake compound,” the pug says, deadpan, “There’s a child. Seems like it’s been awhile if your life has changed so much.”

“Yeah, uh, the Hokage made me take an apprentice. That’s Sakura, she’s Mebuki’s,” Kakashi diverted the conversation, not wanting to dive into why he’d not summoned his pack recently.

Urushi immediately perks up, the scrappy looking mutt starts to make his way to the awed Sakura, “Mebuki? Treat lady?!”

Pakkun is more eloquent, “Your cousin then.”

Kakashi nods, “So, uh, I was hoping you all would be willing to scent Sakura. We’ll be signing the contract next week, so I, uh, wanted you guys to help with training her pack.”

“Don’t be stupid, boss,” Pakkun said, unimpressed, “We’ll help your pup.”

Sakura is already staring down Urushi with wide, excited eyes. She’s got one hand reached out and almost touching the spiky light brown fur on his head. Bull turns to her so that Pakkun can hop off his head and make his introductions.

“Pup, listen up, I am Pakkun and I am the leader of this operation, you’ll listen to me like I am Kakashi,” he says, feigning sternness. Sakura nods, mouth agape and eyes aglow with amazement.

Pakkun extends a paw, and begins introducing the others, “The dude that has no manners is Urushi, the big guy is Bull, mohawk over there is Shiba, bandages is Ūhei, the idiot in the sunglass is Akino, face tattoo is Bisuke, and whiskers over here is the youngest, Guruko.”

Sakura is polite, and bows lowly to them, “I am Hatake Sakura, please take care of me, ninken-san!”

Pakkun’s half sitting in her lap when she raises up from her bow, paw extended out, “You are good pup, you can touch my toe pads as a reward.”

Kakashi feels like he’s watching Sakura become one of the pug’s henchmen in real time. She ooh’s and ah’s as she rubs Pakkun’s pink toe pads. He knows they are a good reward. He’s a little jealous. 

He clears his throat, and looks at the other pack members that were lingering near him, “Go on, guys, go meet Sakura.”

The commotion is immediate. Bull is as polite as ever, but he clearly uses his size to move Urushi out of the way. The brown and white mutt is yipping at him in annoyance, Shiba grabs him by his scruff on his way to Sakura. Bisuke uses his size as the second smallest ninken to sneak onto Sakura’s lap by going under Akino’s legs. Guruko has gotten shy, timid Ūhei to attack Sakura’s backside with licks and sniffs. Sakura’s giggles fill the air. 

Maybe he should’ve just summoned his pack the first day. It seemed effective. 

Mebuki finds him three days later, surrounded by dogs with a child sleeping on his chest. He’d let his pack chase her in a game of tag, secretly introducing tracking and evasion, and it had worn her out more than he’d expected. When he attempted to move her off his chest, Sakura had suctioned on like an octopus. Kakashi decided that the effort wasn’t worth it when he could still read with her resting on him. Nothing to do with the pleasant sensation in his chest of being a good protector and pack member. 

The pack had chosen to laze around them. Bull had essentially trapped his legs by laying on top of them, Pakkun on his side. Bisuke and Urushi had ended up curled on one side, Ūhei on his other with Guruko tucked into his flank. Akino provided him with a headrest, and Shiba with a foot warmer. It was oddly nice. He’d not been so carefree with affection with the pack since he was a pup himself.

Mebuki leans over into his eyesight, glancing over at her snoring daughter before returning to his face, “Heard you went to therapy.”

“Accusations like that are uncouth from you, Mebuki.”

“Thank you,” Mebuki continued on like he hadn’t said anything, “Kizashi was at his wits end when I told him you’d figure it out on your own.”

Kakashi closes his eye, pretends he’s contemplating a nap, “I like his cooking.”

Mebuki moves to sit near his head. He keeps his eye closed.

She exhales, and then speaks, “I know this hasn’t been the greatest experience for you. That it brings up bad memories. Thank you for trying, for her.”

“Shouldn’t have been me,” he weakly protests. Because, it shouldn’t have been him. Sakura was so smart and eager, she deserves someone better than him to teach her, be her mentor. 

“But it is you,” Mebuki says, so softly that he’s reminded she shares his enhanced hearing, “It couldn’t have been anyone else.”

Kakashi is forced into silence. The breeze has Sakura’s hair tickling at his nose through his mask. His book was left disregarded on his side. He’s warm, the mass of bodies and fur around him creating heat. Mebuki’s scent curls in his nose. She smells like miso, like summer. Sakura smells a little like her, but carries a familiar ozone undertone. He thinks of Kizashi’s sweeter scent. Tries not to think about how he could drown in these smells. In the smell of his pack.

He gives up on faking indifference, and his single eye finds Mebuki’s, “I couldn’t let her suffer.”

Mebuki nods, “I couldn’t either.”

Involuntarily, he tightens the arm he’s got thrown over Sakura’s sleeping form. Like Danzo was hiding in the bushes and would take her at any moment.

“It hurt to give up my daughter to you,” Mebuki spoke, eyes tracing the way he grips the girl, “I may have forgiven you, but I haven't forgiven my mother. I don’t think I ever will.”

Kakashi hums, affirming her words, and she continues, looking off into the distant forest surrounding the compound, “My mother never married my father, told him that she never meant for me to be a Hatake. When I met your father, he was telling me that she’d died. That he couldn’t change my name, but he could be my uncle.”

“He was a very sentimental man,” Kakashi chokes out, uncomfortable with the vulnerability being displayed. 

Mebuki snorts, “Gods, Sakumo was so sentimental, he would do all that weird wolf shit all the time.”

Kakashi smiles, despite himself. Memories of being scented, being toted around tied to his dad’s chest resurge with a vengeance. Hatake were wolves, were pack. 

“I remember holding you for the first time, eleven years old and I thought I might cry when you cried,” Mebuki recalls, fondness dripping from her voice, “You were such a little asshole as a toddler. Demanded to be carried everywhere.”

“Only because you spoiled me,” Kakashi points out, justifying his toddler-self.

Mebuki hums, “You needed it. Look what happened when we stopped doting on you.”

The air shifts with that statement. They’d been toeing around the truth of their relationship. Mebuki had distanced herself when Kakashi became a prodigy. She’d barely survived the front lines, she’d left her shinobi career behind. 

He remembers the way her and his father argued. How loudly they yelled and cried when he wasn't in the room. Mebuki was not a Hatake, and his father could not make her one. Sometimes, he wonders if she’d stuck around, if his father wouldn’t have done it. It didn’t matter.

“Not your fault,” he grumbles, unwilling to explore his post-orphan lifestyle.

Mebuki reaches a hand out, then aborts the motion. She smiles and it looks sad, “You were failed by so many people in your life, that it’s everyone’s fault at this point.”

Kakashi doesn’t want to hear that, and doesn't like the path this conversation is leading to, “Sakura didn’t.”

“No,” Mebuki muses, looking back at her daughter, “Sakura didn’t fail you.”

Chapter Text

Sakura’s glaring at him when he admits that he’s got no clue how her summoning contact is going to work. Tiny hands hold the scroll, and Kakashi is close to fleeing the scene in case she chooses to use it as a weapon.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?!” she shouts, voice way too loud for his sensitive ears.

Kakashi makes a flippant hand wave, “I was too focused on getting you prepared for the changes, not the way the summoning contract works.”

An unimpressed six, almost seven, year old should not be capable of the glare she’s leveling at him.

“So, instead of warning me that I would be on my own for setting up a pack, you made me read about dog teeth?” she exclaims, scorned by his lack of due diligence.

“I wanted you to have signed it before your birthday!” he defends himself, “It’s the best present I could get you!”

Somehow, this logic calms Sakura down. Kakashi’s not proud that he’s had to resort to bribing his apprentice, but if it works, it works. Sakura huffs a little more, her anger always takes longer to leave her than his ever had. 

“Will I be hunted by wolves?” Sakura asks, eyes wide. 

Kakashi is unable to hold in his laughter, “Have you been listening to Pakkun again?”

Sakura’s eyes dart to the side, and she bites her lip, “...No.”

“Pakkun’s a filthy liar that would do anything for a treat. Do not listen to him,” Kakashi states solemnly, “You’ll go to the summoning realm, and will likely meet the canines best suited for you. I met the ninken, and we negotiated what I would need my summons to do.”

Sakura nods, relieved to have more concrete information. If someone had written a book on the Hatake canine summoning contract, Kakashi would’ve given it to her. The girl loved reading, and loved having written knowledge made available to her. He almost felt bad for having not gone over this before.

“I can do it!” she says, much more excited than before, “I’ll come back with the strongest summons ever!”

Kakashi chuckles at her enthusiasm, “Well, you have to sign it first.”

Sakura’s face flushes, and she carefully lays out the scroll on the ground in front of her. He knows what she sees. Faded kanji at the top, the rules of how the Hatake clan uses the contract, how they pass it on from generation to generation. The canines are assigned based on the soul of the summoner, his father received wolves, Kakashi received dogs. He knows his aunt, Mebuki’s mother, had wolves. Sakura was not half-Inuzuka like him, she would likely receive wolves. He remembers tracing the signatures on the scroll, wondering about the lives of his ancestors. One of them had a coyote for a summon, he recalls, truly anything could happen.

Luckily, Sakura has been briefed on what she needs to do, and she holds out her thumb without complaint. Kakashi delicately slices the pad of her thumb with a kunai. He remembers doing this alone, how deeply he’d cut. Sakura presses her thumb to the contract and scribbles out her signature. 

A deep breath, and she’s pushing her chakra through the paper. She is reverse summoned to the canine realm in a poof of smoke. Kakashi is left to wait and stare at the spot she left. 

He’s attempting to meditate. His orange covered books remain tucked away, something about the moment requiring his full presence. The sun beats down on his back. Kakashi is shockingly worried about Sakura, about not being able to see her. 

His mind wanders, he thinks about the little girl. Never would he have taken an apprentice, never would he have even thought himself worthy to teach anyone shit. Sakura was family in some weird way, but she’d wiggled her way into his heart. Kakashi had tried so goddamn hard to not get attached. It was an inevitable thing, he decided. He always got attached to teammates, and they always left. This time, Kakashi just had to be prepared for Sakura to leave.

That decision made, he’s more peaceful. He’s smelling the flowers Kizashi has planted in the breeze, if he strains his ears, he hears the wildlife in the woods around the compound. 

Kakashi is not sure how long Sakura is gone for, so deeply he retreats in his mind, but she returns in a puff of smoke and yips. She’s got a pup in her arms, as small and young as her. Her grin is wide and beaming, and her eyes shine. The pup’s orange eyes look at him, it’s tongue flapping out its mouth. Kakashi takes a moment to examine the pup closely, sees the body structure, the fur texture, and realizes that Sakura has a wolf in her arms.

She’s not aware that it’s been over a decade since Hatake has had a wolf summons, and does not treat the moment with any pomp. Instead, Sakura holds out the pup with a smile and shouts, “Taichou! Meet Udon! He’s gonna be my best friend!”

A beat of silence, and he’s capable of speech again, “You named a wolf after noodles ?”

Sakura, showing off her missing tooth, squishes her face against Udon’s, “It suits him! He likes it I swear!”

Udon yips happily. His tail wags. Kakashi notes that his paws are massive, that this tiny fur ball will be huge in the future. Already, his mind is going places he doesn’t want it to. He’s feeling protective over both pups, thinking about how eventually Udon will protect Sakura. It’s making his chest constrict. 

“Congratulations, Sakura,” he says, as happily as he can with his eye-smile on display, “And Udon too, of course.”

A yip and shout responded to him. Kakashi knows he’s in for a rough time teaching both Sakura and Udon how to behave. 

He leans over, let’s Udon sniff and lick his outreached hand, “Now, remember what I told you about the contract, what happens to you after, Sakura.”

“My teeth hurt real bad already, Taichou, but I’ll be fine,” Sakura says, ignoring the fact that he can already see blood on her gums from the new sharp teeth she’ll be receiving. 

Kakashi knows that Kizashi and Mebuki have chew toys in the freezer already. Baby teething rings and puppy ones for both pups. He watches as Sakura sniffs the air and flinches at the overwhelming increase in scents. All her senses would have increased, she was going to have to deal with the heightened senses as she adjusted. 

If Kakashi had sent Pakkun to get the girl masks like he wore to deal with the overstimulating sense of smell they shared, that was between him and the pug. 

Udon was possibly the most annoying pup that Kakashi had ever had to deal with. White shaggy fur was everywhere. Kakashi had staunchly kept to his regular dark clothes in spite of the puppy’s need to shed on him. Sakura had only encouraged the pup. 

Both of them were little hellions, and it seemed that they were determined to kill him. Sakura was once a polite, mild-mannered child. Now, his apprentice was mouthy, moody, and touchy. 

Which is how Kakashi found himself with a newly seven-year-old Sakura riding on his shoulders as she gnawed on a teething ring. One of the masks that he’d gotten her was pooled around her neck from where she had pulled it down to chew on the ring. He was holding Udon in his vest, zipped up with only the wolf pup’s head poking out. Once, he was intimidating, a scary elite jonin. Now, he looked like a glorified babysitter.

They were walking to see Mebuki and her father, Kenta. Kizashi had asked if he’d be willing to drop off two bentos to them, as he was needed at a civilian council meeting. Kakashi had agreed as he still felt weird around the other man confronting him about his need for therapy. He’d dropped into Inoichi’s office once more, to update the blond on his decision to be attached to Sakura but prepared for her inevitable departure. 

So here Kakashi was, walking with two pups making way too much physical contact while delivering lunch to his cousin. One hand held Sakura’s leg, the other had the bag of bentos dangling and his open book. He was purposefully feigning reading, his How to Raise a Pup book disguised as an Icha Icha one. An appropriate amount of stares and disapproving glares were sent his way for his inappropriate reading material. 

Sakura tugged on his hair to get him to look up at her, “When do I get a tanto, Taichou?”

“When you’re taller than the blade itself,” he grumbled, this had been her newest obsession. He didn't know how she’d found out that he fought with a tanto, but she had been determined to get her tiny little hands on one since.

“Well, we could get a shorter one!” she said, a teething ring muffling her voice as she chewed. He couldn’t see her well enough to know if her gums were bleeding again. 

Kakashi tugged on a skinny ankle, his other hand was wrapped around her leg to keep her steady, “Mah, Sakura, it’d just be a kunai at that point.”

Sakura flings her teething ring at his book, Kakashi moves it away in time, and it lands in the dirt. Her aim had improved. She growls, and Udon growls because he is an enabler of Sakura’s worst wolf traits, “I am not that short!”

“Well, maybe you are too stupid to realize how short you are,” Kakashi says, flipping a page with a thumb. The informational text was describing the benefits of play fighting with your puppy. 

“You’re the stupid one!” Sakura shouts, she’s already pulled up her mask, clearly being in the village proper was overstimulating her heightened senses.

Kakashi just hummed, and kept walking. He was not going to get into a slap fight with a child. 

Sakura huffed and smushed her face into his hair. Kakashi knows that this is not adhering to his decisions about preparing himself for her to leave him. He lets her scent him, curl up around him, treat him like more than a mentor. At this point, he’s woken up to her wriggling under his covers every night this week. Udon has treated him like the leader of whatever fucked-up pack dynamic they’ve formed around him. Right now, Sakura’s little nose is breathing in his scent, seeking comfort from her painful teeth and overstimulation. 

He acts indifferently when the knowing eyes of Pakkun or Mebuki look at them interact. They aren’t around, so he carefully nuzzles Sakura’s leg to take in the soft mix of youth and ozone. She’s not his pup, not truly, but he can indulge himself a little in pretending that she is.

They make it to the Haruno merchant shop in companionable silence. It’s busy, but the blonde haired cousins of Sakura are waving up at her, smiling at him, despite being in a hurry. He ignores it, and Sakura’s grumpy enough to follow his lead. He makes sure to tuck away his reading material to avoid stares. 

When he enters the office in the back of the shop, he doesn’t knock. Mebuki and her father are standing over a table in one corner. They’ve got a map, tiny little figurines on top. Probably planning trade routes. He should ask to escort a caravan with Sakura soon, an easy mission to get her some experience. Sakura is a rarity, she will not take D-rank missions unless she asks or he deems it necessary. He was the same, until Minato made a team with Obito and Rin. 

Sakura’s grumpy, and keeps her face buried in his hair, Udon yips happily at the sight of Mebuki though. That’s what alerts the others to their presence in the room.

Unfortunately, Kenta is the one to speak first, the obnoxious man was far too loud, “My precious granddaughter and honorable nephew have come to visit me!”

A tiny whine from Sakura has Mebuki intervening, “Father, please, quiet voice while Sakura adjusts.”

“Yes! So considerate, my sweet Mebuki,” Kenta coos, voice closer to an acceptable volume, “Kakashi! How large have you grown since I have seen you last!”

Kakashi had dropped off lunch to the duo last week. He just nodded, accepting his fate.

Mebuki takes the canvas bag with the bentos, much more sympathetic, “How’s the gremlin?”

“We are down three teething rings,” Kakashi reports, it’s much easier to treat it like a mission if he imagines he’s recounting a mission report to his cousin.

Sakura huffs, and she tangles her hands in his hair in spite. Both his hands are free to rise up and tug on her ankles in response. Udon, the little shit, yips and bites his sleeve as revenge.

“I assume you will be stopping by the store to pick up more?” Mebuki asks, lingering close to him to give Udon a little head pat. The puppy pretends to behave. Kakashi glares at him.

“Probably, her teeth are taking longer to come in because Udon’s so young,” he says, elaborating for the benefit of Kenta.

The Haruno clan head is dressed in fine silks. His traditional kimono is in garish bright colors, ruining any air of nobility or wealth he could’ve gained through his clothing choices. Kenta was once a blonde, but now he could’ve passed as a Hatake due to his bright white hair. He kept a long, well-groomed beard. There was a flower tucked behind his ear. His large, green eyes were the same color as his granddaughter’s, and they shined with a mischievous sparkle. His face was kind and wrinkled, Kenta had laughed and smiled a lot in his long life.

Now, the old man is smiling indulgently at Kakashi, preening at his supposed ‘nephew’. When Kakashi was young, his father would have Kenta or Mebuki watch him. Kenta attempted to spoil him rotten, but Kakashi was always a serious child. Despite his strange relationship with Kakashi’s aunt, the man held no animosity to the Hatake as a whole. Though, he had once overheard the man curse Shiho for her dismissal of their daughter. 

“Ah, little Sacchan must be in such pain! I will sent a cousin to retrieve some teething rings instead of making my nephew go!” he enthused. 

Before Kakashi could beg him not to, the man twirled away in a flurry of fabric. He’s shouting down the hallway and flagging down a cousin immediately.  Kakashi sighs, and acknowledges that he’s stuck in the office until the teething rings are brought to him.

Mebuki sends him a knowing smile, “Kizashi needs to stop manipulating you to bring us lunch.”

“It’s not manipulation if I know he’s doing it,” Kakashi defends the man.

“Still, I know my father is overwhelming on a good day,” Mebuki says, beginning to unpack the bentos.

The office was large, covered in maps, trinkets, and art. There was a stately desk at one end, a large chair behind it. Shelves of books and scrolls took up the wall behind the desk. The table of maps Mebuki and her father were looking at was in one corner. A low, more informal table with floor cushions was on the other side of the room. Mebuki was setting up the lunch on the low table. Kakashi knows when he’s lost, and he’s tugging Sakura off his shoulders as he walks towards the table.

He hears Mebuki chuckle at his grip on her daughter. Kakashi prefers to hold her under her armpits, like an unruly cat. Sakura is growling and glaring at him, Udon is wriggling in his vest. 

His attempt to plop her on a cushion fails when she grabs his arms. The conditioning he’d been putting her through was paying off, and she was able to hold herself up by the strength in her skinny arms. Sakura looked thoroughly unimpressed.

“No! I wanna stay near you,” she protests, only her eyes visible due to her mask. He can make out the scrunched up nose through the black fabric. 

“I am done being a jungle gym,” he responds, forced to kneel on a cushion as he attempts to detangle himself from the girl.

Sakura’s fluffy pink ponytail hits him in the face as she shakes her head, “No, I want to sit with you!”

Mebuki’s laughter is filling his ears. He’s losing a fight with a child. Kakashi wills himself to be mature and rational. 

“You smell,” he snaps.

“You smell worse!” she snaps back, “You smell sad and dumb!”

Udon wriggles in his vest. His fur is likely getting absolutely everywhere on his navy blue shirt. Tiny little teeth are chewing on his vest, the thick protective fabric barely taking a dent. Mebuki’s laughing even louder now at the argument.

Kakashi is feeling oddly defeated, “I do not!”

Sakura’s glaring, her frustration obvious in her voice, “Yes, Udon’s mama said you were stupid and depressed and I had to make you better!"

Oh, that was new. Sakura had been a little evasive on what her contract with the wolves required of her. His own required him to have a pack, to use them for what he deemed morally correct, to be one with his pack. This was news to him.

He changes tactics, “If I let you sit in my lap will you tell me about Udon’s mama?”

“Yes!” Sakura agrees, excited at winning their argument.

Kakashi settles on a cushion, letting his back rest against the wall. Sakura yanks Udon out of his vest and plops in his lap. She tucks her face into his neck immediately, her little legs dangle over his own. Udon squeezes himself free, and trots off to bug Mebuki for food. He ignores the little smile she sends him.

“Pup, c’mon, start talking,” Kakashi urges Sakura, not wanting this conversation to happen with Kenta in the room.

Sakura doesn’t move her head, so her voice is muffled when she responds, “Udon’s mama said I couldn’t tell you everything, but she’s really cool. Old and powerful and super white. Kinda glowed. Told me to take care of you and our pack, to be a good Hatake.”

Him and Mebuki make eye contact. Her shock is clear on her face, mirroring what he feels inside. Sakura met the patron of the Hatake clan and hadn’t told them. This tiny pink child was given a chance to encounter a spirit, a god.

One of his hands instinctively comes up to pat her hair, and Sakura melts into him even more, “Did she tell you her name?”

“Okuri Okami,” Sakura mumbles, “But she let me call her Mama instead.”

He feels his blood drain from his face. Mebuki’s wide shocked eyes meet his again. 

“Sakura, do you know who you met?” she asks, carefully and with more calmness than he’d be able to muster up if he was her.

Sakura nods against his neck, “I know, Mama told me I’d be able to eat gods one day.”

The room is silent besides the noise of Udon chewing on a piece of Mebuki’s lunch. Kakashi did not sign up to deal with this. Mebuki looks horrified. Sakura’s little breaths on his neck are steady, she might honestly be falling asleep.

Kakashi tries to calm his mind. The Hatake clan legends state that they were protected by a great white wolf who granted them their white chakra. Originally, they resided in Lighting country as lowly farmers, but moved to Iron after the intervention of the Okami. Two branches of Hatake emerged, one became samurai, the other shinobi. Both were sworn to the protection of those weaker than them. There was a poorly maintained shrine in the compound dedicated to the great wolf, to the spirit that protects them as they protect others. 

A few things run through his head. First, Sakura’s summons, as poorly behaved as he was, was likely the child of the Okami. Second, Sakura’s contract was not with summons, it was with the Okami directly. Third, at some point, he’d have to deal with Sakura eating a god.

“Pup, can you tell me anything else?” he asks weakly.

Sakura shakes her head, “No, Taichou, I promised Mama I’d not share our secrets. Like a good shinobi does.”

Kakashi cannot fight the fear in his body, he’s gripping her tightly, “Yes, like a good shinobi does.”

Mebuki sits across from them, face still shocked. Udon, who does not seem capable of reading the tense atmosphere in the room, clambers into her lap. She’s softly stroking his white, oh how did he not link that to the Okami, fur as she stares off in space.

They sit in silence. Kakashi is unable to think. Mebuki’s chewing on her lip.

She’s the one to break the silence, “I don’t think it’s bad news, I’ll just need to read through the clan library and find more information.”

Kakashi nods. Sakura’s breath is even and warm on his neck. 

“Plus, it’s not like we shouldn’t benefit from the blessings of a god,” Mebuki muses.

Like that, his cousin has processed her feelings and moved on. He admires her ability to compartmentalize. Sometimes, he thinks it was unfair for her to have lacked proper training before she became a genin. She would’ve made a dangerous kunoichi. Mostly, Kakashi is jealous of her, of her ease at accepting things.

He just nods again. Sakura is blessed by the clan’s patron. Her wolf pup is that patron’s son. Things are fine.

Then, he thinks about the fact that Okami mentioned him directly. That she’d told Sakura that he was dumb and sad. That Sakura could smell that on him.

Scent changed with emotions, but it wasn’t always obvious. It took a talented nose to catch it, and most of the people in the village were completely incapable of doing it. Kakashi could, and he thought that maybe Inuzuka Tsume could. Usually only those with prior heightened senses that signed a summoning contract could gain the ability. 

He spiraled. Thought he was failing Sakura again by smelling depressed around her. Remembered she was seven and teething and likely was insulting him. Remembered the Okami. Thought he was failing Sakura again. 

Mebuki’s eating her bento, but speaks through the rice in her mouth, “You need to see your therapist after all that.”

Kakashi nods. 

They sit, mostly in quiet contemplation. Sakura is definitely sleeping at this point. He should wake her, stop letting her nap every afternoon. Mebuki eats quietly, slips Udon some bits of her lunch. It’s nice.

Kenta bursts in, loud and bright, and disrupts the mood, “I have returned!”

Mebuki is laughing again at his theatrics and Kakashi slumps further against the wall. Kenta sits next to his daughter and starts to eat his own bento. He, too, slips Udon food. The two talk a little and Kakashi tunes them out.

“Nephew! Your birthday is soon, will you indulge us in a dinner together to celebrate?” Kenta asks, grinning widely. 

He’s about to turn down the offer, when Sakura’s head snaps up, “Kakashi-taichou’s birthday is soon?!”

Immediately, Sakura’s complaining about him not telling her. Kenta’s clamoring about dinner and presents. Mebuki’s laughing, not noticing Udon sneaking away with what’s left of her lunch. Kakashi feels a headache coming on. 

Chapter Text

Yamato comes to his birthday party on the request of his apprentice. Any chance of his reputation making it out unscathed dies when Kenta forces a party hat on his head as his kohai watches. Which is fine, Kakashi can handle that. 

At least Gai hasn’t found out and confronted him about his apprentice yet. He doesn’t think he could handle that emotional outburst.

Something about knowing his formerly scary reputation is in tatters frees Kakashi. So he acts as normally as possible, but with some minor changes. Sakura hangs off his hand or arm or shoulders and he pretends that this is absolutely a regular occurrence. The stares persist, but he doesn’t feel as weird as before.

Now though, he has Sakura training harder than before. 

Revenge for the birthday invite to his kohai or for making him deal with her summon possibly being a freaky spirit-wolf? He can’t decide which.

Sakura’s learning lighting ninjutsu and meditating to expand her reserves. Sometimes he chucks her into a pond and makes her practice her katas on the water. He throws dull kunai at her and Udon and makes them dodge as he and his pack chase them through the woods. A memorable time was when he just didn’t show up one morning at breakfast, and made her track him. 

Kakashi falls into a routine.

Train Sakura like she’s a part of ANBU. Ignore Mebuki’s attempts to discuss Hatake clan records. Break into Inoichi’s office once a week to complain about the previously mentioned stuff. Visit Obito and Rin. Reread Icha Icha. Ignore Yamato’s attempts to invite him out for drinks. 

Beautiful, if he says so himself. 

It all falls apart when Sakura decides she wants to go on a mission. Ruining his perfectly maintained visage of indifference to this aspect of shinobi life.

She’s on the water, her chakra control immaculate. Only her black shorts are wet, the gifted navy short sleeve shirt she’s wearing remains dry. Sakura has kept the mask, even now that her senses have mostly settled down. Running through her katas for taijutsu, and kenjutsu even if she’s not realized he’s given her some of those forms. Udon is out with his pack, getting some tracking training in from Pakkun and the boys.

He, as any good mentor would, is laying on the ground a good distance from the pond and reading porn. Occasionally, he’ll look up, shout a flaw in her stance or a weak point where she’d get stabbed if she was in a fight. Once or twice, he’d throw a dull kunai at her. Throwing pinecones had been banned after Sakura started throwing them back. Somehow, throwing kunai back at him had been too far for the girl. 

Sakura was huffing, the summer sun beating down on her small shoulders. Kakashi took a moment to categorize their similarities. 

Shiho’s genes had passed over her daughter, but when Kakashi saw a picture Mebuki had found of her as a young woman, he saw Sakura’s face. They shared the same large, upturned eyes. Narrow noses and high cheekbones, a Hatake staple. Kakashi knew that he and Sakura even had similar mouth shapes, upper lip thinner than the fuller bottom one. Sakura’s coloring and lack of moles set her apart from him and his father. Still, if one knew where to look, the lean, wiry physique and lanky limbs would be obvious tells of her heritage. She was small and short, but he knew he’d not reached his own full height yet, so she’d likely be a late bloomer. 

Right now though, her face was all Sakura, all rage and annoyance and glares. She was hot, it was humid, and he’d just thrown a dull kunai into her side. Pink hair, newly shortened to her shoulders, was matted to her head with sweat.

“I want a mission! I am tired of just being tortured by you alone!” Sakura shouts at him from where she stands on the pond.

Kakashi knew this was coming, knew that he’d had an apprentice for over five months at this point. Still, he was staring at a seven-year-old and hearing her ask to go on a mission where she’d possibly get her first kill, possibly die. Where she’d see what kind of man he truly was.

“No.”

Sakura huffs, “I know I need to go on a mission soon! Ino-pig said if I was a real genin I’d already have been on one!”

“You are a real genin,” Kakashi sighs, “I just didn’t give your hitai-ate because you annoy me.”

That was true. He barely thought he’d deserved his at six, Sakura was technically a genin, but she was not even close to where he’d been at her age. Still, he’d kept that shiny metal plate headband away from her.

“So, I should get to go on a mission!” Sakura crows, clearly thinking this information helped her argument.

Kakashi considered wasting her time on D-ranks. He really felt that painting fences and catching cats would do her some good.

Somehow, Sakura sensed this, “Taichou, please! We can go on the most boring escort mission ever and I won’t complain at all.”

“No mission is boring, not while you are on it,” he admonishes, feeling the ANBU training taking over, “At any time something could go wrong, you are in danger at all times, and you must perform at your highest level regardless of circumstances.”

Sakura stopped her katas, and dropped the whiny demeanor. Her voice is serious when she responds, “I can do it, I know I’ll have to anyway, and I want to learn how to be by your side, Taichou.”

Kakashi feels weird about her words. Like his chest contorts in a twist of guilt and pride, like this child reassuring him that she’d be happy to become a killer with him was a good thing. He thinks about it, considers it.

When he’d first started this apprenticeship, Kakashi had planned to have Sakura’s first kill happen at least a year or two in. He’d pawn her off to Inoichi and call it a day. If he’d been able to be Hound, to be more dog than man, she’d already have been killed. Rip the bandage off. But he’s not Hound right now, he’s Kakashi. The man wanted Sakura to be wrapped in blankets and in his sight at all times. This wasn’t even touching on if Sakura got hurt or killed. Kakashi thinks he’d become like his feral ancestors, ripping throats out with his teeth. 

He was too attached. Sakura was given to him to be a blade in the night. 

“We’ll discuss the caravans going out that will need an escort with your mother tonight,” he says, trying his damndest to seem unaffected. 

Sakura nods and goes back to her katas. Kakashi runs her ragged until the sun has sunk low in the sky and they’ve missed dinner. He’s forced to carry her back to the compound, her little arms and legs wrapped around him. 

Mebuki and Kizashi are standing at the gates to send them off. Two weeks of preparation, drilling Sakura on her skills, forcing her to run and spar as much as possible. She’s wearing a mesh armor long-sleeve shirt under her usual navy one, full length pants. Kakashi had insisted. Udon, too young to be reverse summoned, is already sitting on a cart receiving pets from one of the little blonde Haruno cousins loitering around. 

Kizashi is forcing Sakura to carry a wrapped up bento when Mebuki approaches. Donned in fine silks, she’s serving as the heir to the Haruno merchant clan right now. She’s got a serious look on her face and he mentally prepares to swear to give his life up for Sakura’s.

“When you get back, you and I will be having a discussion. Find peace on this mission and be ready to talk about your past.”

That was not what he expected.

“Mebuki, I am not about to find peace while guarding a caravan with a puppy trailing my every move,” he sputters, both unamused and unwilling to engage about this topic.

Her face is impassive as she speaks, “You are surrounded by my cousins, going to the Land of Rivers to ooh and ah at artisans and their wares. You’ll find the time to figure out what we need to discuss.”

“Sakura is my priority,” he says, more serious than intended, “Not some weird self-discovery journey.”

“I expected nothing less,” Mebuki says, easily and calmly. Like it was a given. 

Kakashi is unable to offer her anything else. She doesn’t seem to mind his lack of conversation. 

Soon enough, they are departing. Sakura had left the village on merchant caravans before, and she’s not acting all too awed. If anything, she’s got a nervous energy around her. They walk on the sides of the small caravan, and Kakashi’s got clones and his pack running a perimeter around them. Nothing is out of the norm. It makes his skin crawl. Hours pass as they travel towards River country, only the noise of the caravan around him. 

The leader of the caravan is a cousin to Mebuki, a woman in her mid-thirties named Koharu. She’s got the golden blonde hair that most Harunos Kakashi mets have, but blue eyes instead of familiar green. Her demeanor is unfortunately similar to Kenta, energetic and shrewd. Her twin daughters, Akane and Azusa, are little four-year-old clones of her, running around the carts and chattering amongst the assembled group. He’s got to give the Haruno clan credit, all of the caravan is in study, nondescript clothing, their carts dull and uninteresting. 

It seems that they are more than familiar with trading. Everything is set up so that nothing looks more valuable, no one looks too important. 

Kakashi would’ve prayed to countless gods for such easy, educated clients for Sakura’s first mission. Instead, Mebuki had dropped the mission in his lap. No work needed on his part to vet and ensure he wasn’t walking into an unknown situation with a pup on his hip. It did not ease his god awful fear that Sakura was going to be in harm's way. Mentally, he briefly considered praying to Okami, his family’s god. It’d be easy, burning a fresh kill in the campfire that night. 

His internal monologue is interrupted by Sakura sliding into step beside him, “Koharu-san would like to stop for lunch soon, Taichou.”

The sun’s high in the sky, he can spot sweat forming on Sakura’s forehead. They did need a break. He nods, and whistles, calling for his pack. One of the cart drivers beside them jumps at the loud noise. 

“We’ll scout a good spot with the pack, go get Udon, he needs to learn this,” Kakashi orders, watching his apprentice's face morph into giddiness. She always loved learning new skills. 

Sakura’s mask covers her mouth, but he knows she’s smiling when she responds, “On it, Taichou!”

By the time his pack has come to stand off to the side of the caravan with him, Sakura has Udon at her side, ready to go. The wolf pup has gotten large, already bigger than the smallest four of his pack. Bull and Akino still have him beat out by far but it’s only a matter of time before he’s rivaling them in size.

Kakashi slips into explaining and ordering around his team with ease. Sakura follows him like a tiny pink shadow. They run ahead, scout out a good clearing close to the road, and check for any hostiles. Sakura patiently sets up a temporary fire to cook, Kakashi heckles her technique with no heat behind his voice. One of his clones pops out of existence and the memories let him know that the caravan is on their way.

Once her fire is acceptable, Sakura plops down on the ground next to him. Udon is getting into the dumbest wrestling match with Bisuke and Shiba. Urushi is barking out taunts from the sidelines as the larger two play-fight with Udon. 

Sakura is pushing a bento in his hands before he realizes she’d gone through her pack, “Dad says you need to eat more, Taichou.”

“Your father thinks everyone needs to eat more,” Kakashi muses, and pulls down his mask without any fanfare, “Should’ve been an Akimichi.”

He catches the slightest inhale from Sakura at the sight of his face for the first time. He’s got rice in his mouth, waiting for the girl to say something.

Instead, he’s surprised by her simply pulling down her own mask and digging into her bento.

They both eat quickly and their masks are in place by the time that the first of the Caravan is arriving. Kakashi feels strange. He’d expected something more, something like Obito or Rin would’ve done if he’d shown his face so suddenly like that. The quiet acceptance had his stomach in knots. 

Koharu flags him and Sakura over to where she and her daughters have set up to eat, “Cousins! Come sit!”

Sakura glances at him, and he nods. They amble over, but do not sit, rather they kneel so they can easily spring up for a possible attack. 

“So serious, my shinobi cousins,” Koharu teases, her daughter already eating their lunches messily, “I want a status update on the trip, how long until the Artisan Village?”

Somehow, Kenta has infected the entire Haruno clan to refer to him as one of their cousins. It irks him deeply.

“We’re on track to be there tomorrow, I assume the original plan of stopping at the Fire outpost for the night is still preferred?” he says, as dull as he could.

Koharu hums, and her hands find their way in her hair as she braids it back, “Yes, another caravan of ours will be there, so we will have an easier stay there.”

One of the twins, Akane, he thinks, speaks up through a mouthful of food, “Mama, will we see any cool ninja there?”

“Sweetie, you have cool ninja here right now,” Koharu laughs, and bops her daughter on the nose gently.

“Nah, they don’t count,” Azusa whines, “They are our cousins, and Kenta-ji says they are silly-looking.”

Sakura lets out a squawk of displeasure beside him, “Ojii-san said we look silly? The man that wears neon green regularly?”

The twins giggle and Koharu is smiling broadly, “Oh, yes, he said Kakashi-san here was the worst negotiator he’d ever seen, and that you looked like an overgrown weed Sakura-chan.”

“He hasn’t even seen me negotiate!” Kakashi sputters, off put at this new information.

Something about his outburst puts the twins at ease with him, and they both start clamoring about Kenta-ji and how cool he is compared to Kakashi. It’s honestly disheartening. It isn’t until Udon comes barreling over for attention that he is able to flee.

The next few days go on in a similar manner. They guard the caravan, and Kakashi pushes himself to rely on his clones to keep an eye on it all night. He sleeps little, thinks only of how badly this could all go, and gets teased by blonde children. The plan was to stay in the Artisan Village for roughly a week, and only two days into, Kakashi thinks he might die of stress.

He watches Sakura like a hawk. Just waiting for something to go wrong and her to get hurt. She wrangles Akane and Azusa, serves as an escort for Koharu as she meets up with merchants to get trade deals, and overall, Sakura does her job well. Absolutely nothing happens. 

Kakashi is forced to think, forced to do what Mebuki asked of him. He’s got a lot of baggage, guilt to sift through and blame to assign to himself. Despite his dismissal of Inoichi’s therapy sessions, he’d been feeling oddly lighter. His father’s blood still appeared on his hands late at night. He didn’t wander near the room where it took place. But he’d been able to handle the reminders of him, of how similar Mebuki’s smile was to his, the familiar chakra that Sakura had. The other stuff, well, Friend-Killer was not a nickname easily shaken off. He’d been isolated, removed from other shinobi for a while. Gai, oh how strange to think of him, was probably the closest thing he had to a best friend. Kakashi hadn’t even told him about his new apprentice. Couldn’t make himself tell the boisterous man about his life. Tenzo, who’d been going by Yamato more often, was his only other friend. The kid still looked at him with stars in his eyes, like he deserved praise for getting him out of ROOT. Any other people in his life, Team Ro, Asuma, Kurenai, they were too far removed from him to be friends. 

There’s a lot there, a lot that makes him squirm and push down bile at the thought of. Most of it centers on Danzo, on ROOT, on being Hound. Kakashi almost yearns to be Hound again. He thinks of a tiny ANBU agent, with a porcelain weasel mask. Replaces black hair with pink. Let the image make his stomach turn, make his head spin.

Sakura lets him play with her hair, holding her for hours that night. She doesn’t flinch when he takes off his mask and breathes in her scent, when he treats her like how his pack treats Udon. Like she’s his pup. 

So, he’s understandably a little off-kilter when the next day, he spots Momochi Zabuza hauling around a ten-year-old, clearly working for a shady man that’s prowling around the market. The recent rogue-nin from Kiri had his face bandaged, his clothing in all black, his hitai-ate was unmarred, likely a protest towards the current Mizukage’s reign. 

The fucking Demon of the Mist is here. Sakura is here. 

Hound comes over him like a mask. If he keeps his thoughts surface level, he could even feel the porcelain on his face. 

He catalogs the possible threats. The Bingo Book entry for Zabuza did not mention an apprentice, so he’s left in the dark about their abilities. The kid wears a green haori over Kiri pinstriped pants, long hair tucked up and away from their face. Couldn’t be older than eleven at most, gender was irrelevant, as the kid was so androgynous. An old, shady looking merchant stands in front of the duo, clearly attempting to use his missing-nin escort to scare the other merchants around them.

Koharu is in a meeting at a nearby teashop, the twins are with the rest of the caravan. They’d set up a small booth in the market, the campsite on the outskirts of the village had his pack serving as guards. Sakura was in the teashop, outfitted as a shinobi luckily, not playing as a little merchant. It was unlikely that he’d need to engage.

His position on the roof of the restaurant near the teashop was advantageous. Hound was hidden, able to let his dark eye soak in the sight of the two ex-Kiri shinobi as they escorted their benefactor. 

An hour passes without fanfare, his eye never leaving Zabuza’s large form. Pink hair enters into his line of sight as Sakura and Koharu exit the teashop. He does not need to look at her to know she’s looking up at him, and he signs a message to her quickly; Hostile, Mist-rogue, two, do not engage .

Pink hair moves out of his sight, back to the camp ground. A tiny sigh of relief escapes him.

For the next few hours, he watches the rogue-nin, dark eye following their every step. He’s not been in ANBU for nothing, so he’s certain that his presence is unnoticeable. There is not even the smallest tell that Zabuza or his apprentice are aware of him.

Their mission means they will be in the area for another four days or so, less if he can urge Koharu to depart early. From his observations, the Kiri duo would be here for roughly that amount of time or less. The business man that they trail is shady, but smart. He’s aware that he can only pay his escort for so long to keep up the intimidation factor. So, there’s only a few more days of observing the possible hostiles.

He watches them go into an inn, and settles in for a long night of no sleep. 

In the quiet darkness of the night, waiting on his prey’s next move, he feels more at home. After all, Hounds were meant to howl at the moon, no?

Chapter Text

It’s been two full days of observing his targets before Sakura disobeys his orders. He’d gotten to her in the morning of the first day with descriptions and orders to not engage and not leave Koharu or the twins. She’d studied the Bingo Book entry with fervor, and easily agreed to his demands. 

He’s not sure when she changes her mind about being obedient, but he’s not pleased at the sight of pink hair in the corner of his eye. His position on a shop’s roof provides ample coverage, so she’s not visible from the street. At least she’s got manners, and approaches him from his right side so he can see her. 

“Kakashi-taichou, sorry to be here, but you need to eat,” Sakura murmurs, quietly and pushing forward a wrapped lunch.

Only his displeased stare responds to her. The tiny girl visibly wilts, and he watches her regain her wits in a matter of seconds. She’s got the matching mask on, so only her green eyes are visible to him as she looks up at him.

“Koharu and the twins are at the campground with the pack, Udon will come get me if Pakkun sees anything suspicious,” Sakura still speaks lowly, but more confident, “You need to eat, Taichou.”

“You disobeyed me,” he growls out, already returning his attention to the bar he knows his targets are in.

He hears the shuffling of Sakura getting closer, the warmth and plastic crinkle of the wrapped lunch. She’s not even acting remorseful, her tiny hands tugging on one of his to get him to accept the food.

A small huff, and she’s still speaking quietly but not timidly, “Taichou, eat, and you can make me run laps as soon as we get home.”

“I am too soft on you,” he grits out instead of accepting her truce. 

Sakura softly snorts, “You make me vomit from over exertion like once a week.”

“When we get back, it’s going to be three times a week.”

“Deal,” she whispers, and shoves the food into his hand. 

It takes a little willpower to not strike out at the sudden movement. He’s displeased, upset at her lack of understanding. The orders are there to protect her, not to try and work around.

He’s got her hair in his grip before he thinks, and her face contorts in pain. His single visible eye glares at her, at her weakness, “I am going to make you kill before we go home. You will see why I ordered you to stay behind. Do not disobey me again.”

Sakura, who never knows when to stop, who gives into their shared feral heritage far too easily, growls at him. His instincts prickle, and it takes far too much strength to not scruff her like a pup and make her submit as he would one of his ninken. 

“Worth it, just to see you eat, Taichou,” she says, fierce. 

He shoves her away, too forceful for her kindness. She doesn’t whimper, doesn’t make a noise. Slowly, he picks up the food. Sakura is getting up, about to leave the rooftop when he says, “Stay. I trust in my dogs to be more obedient than you.”

There’s a beat of silence, the noise of the streets below them filling the air. She crawls to sit beside him. He picks up the lunch, and eats it. They do not speak.

Maybe, if he was not so engrossed in his mask, he’d feel bad. For now though, he feels like he’s finally teaching her what it means to be his apprentice. 

To be Hound’s legacy.

Sakura sits beside him as quiet as a mouse. Her chakra is suppressed quite well, and he almost regrets teaching her that skill because he can’t deny her presence there because of it. They do not stop their watch, not for grumbling tummies or sleepy eyes. For a seven-year-old, Sakura is decent company. 

They hop from rooftop to rooftop, putting all his tree-hopping training to the test. Her stealth is lackluster, but she’ll improve. Or die trying. 

When she inevitably is worn down to the point of exhaustion, it is a small matter to carry her. Their targets are in the inn at this point, the early morning painting the sky dark. He’s bone-deep tired, bordering on delirious. 

He’s got Sakura on his blind side, and in her sleep she’d curled up like a puppy. The Kiri duo was inside the inn, and he’d overheard the business man talking to them on their way in. It seemed likely that they would be leaving in the morning. A small blessing. 

There’s still people out, the small village held a lively nightlife. Under the stars, the only thing out of place was him and the tiny body pressed against his. 

On the rooftop of the store across from the inn, nothing sparks the interest of any passerby. Their chakra is suppressed, their forms hidden from view. Routine stake-out for him. Familiar and practiced motions for a mission like this. 

Perhaps, he’d been better off remembering it was routine for Zabuza too.

When the Demon of the Mist appears on the rooftop, he doesn’t flinch. The moonlight outlines that massive sword on his back. In his arms, his sleeping apprentice takes deep and steady breaths. His own apprentice stays still and warm beside him.

The rogue Kiri-nin’s face is bandaged, hiding his mouth from sight. He approaches silently, and if he strained, he could almost make out a smile behind those white wrappings.

“Was wondering why I smelt ozone in the air,” Zabuza grumbles out, louder than expected.

He does not dignify that statement with a response. Instinctually, he shifts so his body more thoroughly covers Sakura. 

Zabuza huffs out a laugh at the sight, “Can’t believe the Copy-Nin Kakashi is toting around a toddler.”

“Useful tools need to be honed early,” he growls out. He’s not sure why he phrased it like that, but he knows he’s landed a good hit at the gleam of displeasure in the other’s dark eyes.

“Down doggie,” Zabuza drawls out, and stops his slow steps to stand a foot away from him. It forces him to look up at the other, his sitting position a hindrance. 

Mentally, he catalogs fifty different ways to kill him. The speed and ease of it. The other man leaves his body open to sneaky senbon and kunai attacks while he holds his apprentice. It’d be unpleasant, with Sakura so vulnerable, but he’d win.

Zabuza adjusts his grip on his apprentice, the long brown hair of them flowing in the breeze. The kid couldn’t be older than eleven, angelic face peaceful in the moonlight.

“Well, get on with it,” he grits out, displeasure at the other’s actions running through him.

That has Zabuza moving, but he does not move to attack. Instead, the other man sits across from him. His apprentice is carefully held in his arms, his fierce demeanor softening at the sight of the kid’s face in their sleep.

He has no clue how to handle this. What to do with a S-Ranked missing nin that's carrying a child and sitting down to have a conversation. No ANBU mission prep or T&I training could have prepared him for this. His teeth itch to bite the other’s flesh for being so close to his own apprentice.

Zabuza sighs, and he’s reminded that they are the same age. Tiny bodies turned into legends too young. By the time that the other man reached ten, he’d slaughtered his entire graduating class. 

“You love her?” Zabuza asks, and he stares at him dumbfounded.

An answer races through his mind, almost through his lips before he stops it. 

The other takes his silence for an answer, “Of course you do, don’t know why I asked.”

Thoughts jumble up in his head, scenarios of what happens next, of what he should do. Nothing feels right, and he just sits there. 

“Oh, they got your leash pulled tight, huh?” Zabuza says after a beat of silent observation, humor tinged his words, “At least I took mine in and ran from the system that made me a monster, you are willing to sell your own flesh to be molded in your image.”

A growl rips from his throat without pause, and the other man feigns innocence.

It doesn’t stop Zabuza from speaking though, “Haku here was the only survivor of a clan culling. A useful tool for me as a rogue-nin, but also as a tether to my morals. Can’t forget why we are on the run when I got a reminder around.”

He stays silent and still this time. Only his mind moving rapidly, as he attempts to figure out what the other’s point is. Sakura’s breath is quiet but constant. He’s moved a hand to grip her neck, to feel her pulse, to easily grab her and run.

“Konoha always tried to be seen as the nice village, but they love showing off their latest child prodigies. I remember seeing you in our Bingo Book, seeing how old you were when you made jonin,” Zabuza talks like they are old friends, like they wouldn’t be fighting to the death if this was any other situation, “And the only thing the Kiri shinobi around me said was ‘They let a six-year-old on the battlefield and promoted him for not dying?’ Which really killed any jealousy I held towards you.”

Instead of shutting up, which he would’ve preferred, the other continued speaking, “I wanted to change things, it’s why I did what I did. Surely, Hatake, you want better for your own life? The nice village wouldn’t let a thirteen-year-old kill his whole clan and walk free. Wouldn’t have you with a tiny child teaching her how to kill.”

“Like you don’t teach yours how to kill,” he snaps, feeling feral. Sakura knew what she was getting into. He knew what he was doing. They did it willingly.

Zabuza chuckles, like he’d just told the other a funny joke, “I do it because I want to, can you say the same, Hatake?”

His shoulders rise, and his skin prickles, if his mask was down his sharp teeth would be bared. No thought needed, he spits out his response, “I do it because I need to. I want to be the one to do it. Not because I am some sick fuck that stole a child on my way to becoming a missing-nin.”

That does not impress the Kiri nin. He growls out an inaudible response and tightens his grip on his sleeping apprentice. Briefly, he considers that the other man has placed the children under a genjutsu to keep them sleeping. Through his hold on Sakura’s neck, he feeds his chakra to disrupt one if it was there. The results prove that he’d simply worn his apprentice down enough that this conversation hadn’t woken her.

He realizes then that both of them had been speaking quietly. Their chakra is tightly contained to not emit killing intent. Neither of them wanted to wake their apprentices.

The comparison makes him sick. The words of the other makes him sick. 

“We are so similar, aren’t we, Hatake?” Zabuza asks, and he’s speaking before getting a response, “Monsters made flesh, pretending to care about our little hang-ons.”

Nothing but the noise of the streets below fills the air between them. He doesn’t let go of Sakura, doesn’t move an inch.

Zabuza inhales, and speaks, “The businessman, Takahiro, has a six-year-old warming his bed tonight. I robbed him blind. Make her first kill a good one at least.”

“Outside of mission parameters,” he replies back, far too easily.

“How many kills are within mission parameters?” Zabuza asks, rhetorically, “May our swords sing when we meet again, Hatake.”

Then, the rogue-nin is standing up. His apprentice in his arms, his hitai-ate ties flowing behind him as he leaves the roof. 

Maybe if he’d been more man than dog, he’d not do what he did next. If something about the advice, about the words spoken, hadn’t rang true. In the moonlight, he shakes his apprentice awake. 

Takahiro was slimy and unpleasant from a distance. Up close, he looked even worse. 

Greasy black hair was in disarray from its usual combed back style. Gone were the suits he wore while trying to scam his way into the pockets of the merchants in town. It was unfortunate that his face was so bland, so nondescript. 

The little boy that’d been in the bed with him had been gently delivered to another room. This one had a small family in it. It was all they could do. Especially since Zabuza’s gift came with a time limit.

Sakura looks tired. She doesn’t look scared. 

“Across the neck, deep and strong,” he whispers into her ear. Like he did when they worked on target practice. The scent of youth, of Spring, and ozone hits his nose. 

Sakura nods, and the kunai in her hands does not shake. She climbs onto the bed. The dark silk sheets slide off Takahiro as he sleeps. 

He wills himself to watch as tiny hands deliver a man death. There’s a mechanical jerk of her kunai, the pull of his head so she could access his throat easier. Takahiro moves, once, his hands rising to fight off his attacker. Sakura’s small form is quicker, and she’s got the arterial spray of his blood on her body before his hands make contact.

Small bloodsoaked hands find him. She’d barely made a noise through it all, so he’s not shocked that she only whimpers when he gets his arms around her.

They clean up in a small stream not too far from the campground. Sakura washes the blood of her first kill off her skin. Kakashi washes the safety of Hound off his skin.

Koharu does not question the change in demeanor from either of them. 

Azusa flutters around them both with little comments and touches. Her twin, Akane is a little more forceful, and makes Sakura eat with her at mealtimes. 

For the rest of the mission, Kakashi and Sakura do not speak more than short responses. He’s got a cocktail of regret and satisfaction brewing in his mind. She’s dealing with taking a life for the first time. They balance out their need for comfort in each other and the mission well, and by the time they are settled in the forest at the border outpost for the last night before Konoha, they are seemingly okay.

Well, Kakashi is still stewing in guilt and dissociation. Sakura stopped crying every night though, so he counts it as a win.

Sakura has been forceful in seeking out physical comfort from him. Kakashi sits and holds her, and purposefully does not think of the Kiri duo mirroring their affection. The wildlife around them provides background noise as the night falls.

With both his arms slung around Sakura sitting in his lap, he can’t distract himself with his usual reading. The pack and Udon are patrolling, and he’s not likely to sleep anytime soon. So, he tries to mediate, tries to not think too hard about his actions.

“Taichou,” his apprentice whimpers into his vest, “Do you think Ino will still want to play with me when we get back?”

The interruption has him reeling. He’d let Sakura and Ino foster their friendship despite the apprenticeship. It was important to her, and she’d always been respectful of his training schedule. Inoichi had said something about it, but Kakashi was hesitant to acknowledge the Yamanaka heiress. Felt it was a step too far. Something a parent would do, not a mentor.

He sighs, giving up on coming up with a thoughtful response, “Yeah, she will just ramble on about that boy she likes and you’ll be back to complaining to me about it.”

Sakura shifts so she can look at his face. Her mask hangs around her neck, her tiny pointy fangs rest on her bottom lip as she frowns up at him. A little hand is dragging down his mask in moments.

“I want to see you, Taichou,” she whines, distressed. He can smell the ozone scent of hers souring as her eyes water.

Kakashi rubs her back with his hands, still holding onto her. She chokes down sobs, and when she speaks next, her voice shakes, “It won’t be normal. Ino will be able to tell.”

“And she will accept it, and move on,” Kakashi reassures her the best way he knows how. After all, that is what everyone did to him. He reaches up to cup her head with one of his hands and pauses for a moment to admire how large his hand is compared to her small skull. Sakura does not flinch from his touch, despite his rough handling of her earlier in the week, instead she leans into his grasp.

When she responds, she keeps her eyes closed, “Will this be how they all feel? Even when they are as bad as him?”

He’d been honest to the girl for their entire partnership so far, so he doesn’t lie to her now, “Sometimes they always hurt, most of the time they will fade away from your mind so fast you’ll barely remember you killed them. It hurts more when you see them as human as you are.”

“Taichou, do you hurt?” she asks, eyes still closed, her small arms wrapped around his neck.

Kakashi inhales sharply, “Always.”

“Will I always hurt?” she asks shakily, her grip on his neck unrelenting. This time, her watery green eyes watch his face.

“To be my apprentice, to be a Hatake, you have to.”

Sakura tucks her head into his neck, her breath warm and wet on his exposed skin. Kakashi plays with her hair. They sit, only the light of the distant campfire illuminating the scene.

She’s got her head tucked into his neck still when she speaks again, “Can you tell me about your friends? The medic and the idiot again?”

Oh, how Kakashi regrets telling her the abridged story of Rin and Obito after her first kill. It felt right, standing in the water and scrubbing her clothes to get the blood off. He feels something in his chest twist at the thought of retelling the story of their deaths again.

Sakura, his smart little Sakura, seems to sense his hesitation, and amends her request, “Just the fun parts, please, Taichou.”

When he begins to tell a story about Obito helping an old lady with her groceries, his chest feels lighter. He might be making her a killer, but he could have the legacy of Obito, of Rin, of his dead teammates live on in her mind. 

Haggard and weary, Kakashi finds himself sitting across from Mebuki in the office she’d claimed as her own. It was strange to be so relieved to return to the Hatake compound after a mission. Still, she’d given him a day to rest, to send Sakura off to Inoichi for her post-mision therapy session, before she’d jumped on him. It made him regret not pushing off their mission report, letting Sakura talk him into doing it when they arrived. The cute desk chunin had been her academy sensei, and Kakashi preened at the praise he’d dumped on his apprentice’s shoulders for her report.

Mebuki has papers everywhere. Seals chime and tug at his chakra when he walks into her office. Whatever she was doing in here, it was serious business. 

They settle into the comfortable leather chairs. Mebuki pulls out a file and hands it to him. Kakashi reads it without prompting. It was the least he could do after making her daughter a killer.

As he reads, horror dawns on him. At first, the number of civilian orphans and academy students feels unimportant, dull. Then the charts of the number that went missing after a year in the academy made him uneasy. The correlation of test scores that are high enough to be impressive but low enough to go unnoticed makes him feel bile rise in his throat. He stops, halfway through the handwritten testimony of a civilian family that had their only child go missing at six, to say, “Mebuki, this is dangerous.”

His cousin shrugs, casual despite what she was showing him, “I remembered something when Sakura was approached about DNA testing. A friend from the academy, civilian, talented, unremarkable, and missing. Connected some points in my mind.”

“This is more than some light theorizing,” Kakashi accuses, weary to know what his cousin has been up to.

“Did you know that in the wake of the Uchiha massacre, civilians have no police force to report missing children to? I mean, the serious crimes get a chunin or two on the case, but no one is willing to search for our kids like the Uchiha did,” Mebuki diverts away from the accusation, and he’s forced to take her statement into consideration.

The loss of one of Konoha’s founding clans hit the village hard. It was almost a year since that occurred and even Kakashi had to admit that the response from the Hokage and the Elders council was lacking. The Clan Council was something he didn’t attend but he had heard that the Inuzuka had required their members that were chunin or above to accept at least one shift as a police officer a month. Not every clan did the same. No one was able to fill the hole that the loss of the Uchiha police force had left. 

Which made Mebuki’s words about the missing children feel worse. No one was looking for them. No one knew they were missing.

His tongue itched, his mouth dry.

“What do you need from me?” he asks, afraid but feeling more alive than he had in years.

Mebuki sends him a soft smile, “How much can you tell me about Shimura Danzo’s ROOT?”

Chapter Text

Kakashi spoke to Mebuki about ROOT with the broken seal on his tongue tingling. He cries, to his horror, and she doesn’t even flinch when he chokes up describing how scared he’d been when Danzo had started manipulating him. At some point, Tenzo, who he referred to as Tenzo, Cat, and Yamato interchangeably, was brought up. Emotions mixed up names and events. Mebuki nodded and hummed and responded like he was being coherent. He danced around his role in his ANBU teammate’s freedom from ROOT. It was not worth it to paint himself as some hero, Kakashi felt the pain of failing the other children in Danzo’s scheme keenly.

Mebuki’s grey-green eyes observe him, his fingers twitching, his single visible eye watering, and she doesn’t move away from the disaster sitting across from her. Kakashi feels akin to a bug being pinned for display. 

One of her hands reaches for him over the desk, movement slow and deliberate. He lets her touch his gloved hand. Hers is warm on top of his. His heart constricts in the most interesting way.

“Kakashi, I think that this goes further than even that,” Mebuki says, oh so softly, “I think Danzo has continued even past what the Sandaime is willing to ignore.”

He feels the whimper leave him before he registers his reaction, “I know, Mebuki, but it will take more than this to get a council member tried for treason.”

“Oh, that’s clear, but this is more than enough to get some other important people concerned about it,” she says with confidence, “In fact, it already has.”

“What?” 

Mebuki chuckles, “Do you really think I’ve been taking Sakura to Ino’s house by myself because I am just that invested in their playdates?”

Sakura’s long standing friendship with Inoichi’s kid was something he’d considered of little consequence. She needed a friend her age, and it made her happy that Kakashi had given her some weekends off of training to sleep over there. Kizashi had been staunchly pro-Ino and Sakura being friends, something about bullying before they went to the Academy. 

It makes a terrible amount of sense though. To Mebuki, she saw that her daughter’s friendship with the Yamanaka heiress was politically valuable. Sakura may suddenly be set to be the future clan head of the Hatake, but Mebuki couldn’t rely on that to leverage any support for taking down Danzo. She’d gone where she knew someone would listen. 

“Inoichi knows?” he asks, both surprised and unsurprised at the same time.

“Yes, and so do Chouza and Shikaku,” Mebuki confirms, acting nonchalantly about her political scheming. 

The alliance of the Akimchi, Nara, and Yamanaka was well known. Kakashi briefly considers the implications of the Jonin Commander and the Head of T&I being made aware of Danzo’s ROOT. Surely, they would have known of it.

Mebuki, whose hand still rests atop of his, hums at his reaction, “They didn’t know.”

“At all?” he gasps a little. 

“According to Inoichi, Shikaku had been noticing that things were strange, but Sarutobi had brushed his concerns off,” she replies, somehow, she’s still calm and composed.

Kakashi leans back in his chair. His hand slips from Mebuki’s grasp as he moves. His mind runs a mile a minute. Things were making both more sense, and none, the contradiction of knowledge of Danzo and ROOT being so intimately familiar to Kakashi, but so unknown to others jumbling up his thoughts. 

He thinks of pink hair. Remembers how he’d made her cut the neck of a man last week. The sight of Zabuza carrying his apprentice in the moonlight comes to mind. Words from a traitor to his village echo in his head.  

“I am not the right person to ask to help with this.” 

Mebuki mirrors him, and sits back in her chair, she sighs at his words, “Why?”

Kakashi licks his lips under his mask, his throat feels tight when he responds, “I am no better than Danzo, I make children into monsters too.”

“If Danzo had not begun to move in on Sakura, you would not have been in this position.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Kakashi protests, thinks of the tiny bloodstained hands on his face, “I fucked up, I made Sakura into a killer when she’s still losing baby teeth.”

Mebuki’s face contorts into rage and grief. Sakura had not told her parents of her first kill, Kakashi hadn’t wanted to. A beat passes, the heavy, angry breathing of Mebuki filling the air. Slowly, her face looks resigned. 

She sharply inhales, “Then atone for your sins by making sure we aren’t making any more monsters out of our innocent children.”

It’d have hurt less if she’d yelled. Screamed and hit him. The resigned acceptance, the rage pushed into the abbesses of her mind, it was like he’d been stabbed. 

Kakashi listens quietly as she details what she wanted him to do.

Sakura holds his hand as they walk to buy her new sandals. He’d wanted to get Kizashi to take her, but his pink haired apprentice had insisted. Maybe his guilt from their mission had more sway over him than he’d realized. 

So he finds himself holding a seven-year-old’s hand, with Udon trotting on Sakura’s other side. The scene was positively domestic.

Kakashi keeps his nose in his book, ignoring any of the people looking at them. 

The fear of one’s reputation being ruined forever amongst their peers was not a problem for Sakura. Instead, she’s swinging their hands back and forth, chattering away to him. It’s a far cry from how she was even a week ago, despondent and withdrawn. He’d love to claim his teaching methods had coached her through the emotional aspects of her first kill, but he knows it’d be a lie. Sakura is just shockingly competent, a born ninja. Kakashi got lucky to get her as his apprentice. He would have no clue what to do if she’d been overly traumatized or aggressive. Sweet, smart Sakura was a boon for his non-traditional teaching methods, thinking on her toes and not hesitating to ask more questions.

Thus, he indulges her. Probably too much, given that Udon’s wearing a new collar with a little red bow that matches the one in Sakura’s hair. 

He’d given Sakura the name of the outfitter that he went to, and then told her to find it on her own. Udon was presumably learning to handle himself in a crowd. Kakashi kept a wary eye on him, the wolf pup was large, almost to Sakura’s shoulders at this point, and he didn’t want to deal with him stealing food from a vendor on the way there.

Sakura’s still chattering when they arrive. Something about how Ino’s crush was a loser, and Sakura was much better at throwing kunai and shuriken than him. Kakashi had yet to decide if he cared about it.

He has her order Udon to stay outside, and behave, which was putting way too much faith into the wolf pup. Sakura’s smiling up at him when they enter, all rosy cheeked and bright eyed behind her mask. 

Kakashi hears the shopkeeper, an older retired kunoichi by the name of Eiko, shout out a greeting from the back of the store. He sees that she’s got a customer, but all he can spot is dark short hair and a jonin vest. He steers Sakura to the wall of shoe options, her grubby little hands already reaching towards the weapons pouches.

“Taichou, they have red ones!” Sakura whines, looking over at the pouches on display longingly.

Kakashi keeps a hand on her head, forcing her to stay put in front of the shoes, “You aren’t good enough to have such noticeable equipment.”

Sakura harrumphs, displeased, “I have pink hair, I’m already noticeable!”

“We hide it,” he deadpans, making eye contact, “We’ve had in-depth discussions about how often we have to hide it, like every week. You even had to cut it. Not winning any arguments with that one.”

“Which is stupid! You have the most noticeable hair too! It sticks up all the time and you barely even try to conceal it!” Sakura protests, repeating a familiar argument. 

Sighing, he chooses to not fight about hairstyles with a child, and simply grabs Sakura by the shoulders to make her look at the shoes. Given that this store only caters to shinobi, all would be of a decent quality. 

There’s a lot of styles, some more suitable to cold weather climates, some more for wet terrain. Sakura’s love for fashion prevails over her hatred of his dismissal of it, and she’s focusing on which ones she likes best immediately. 

Her green eyes linger on a pair of boot-style sandals in black. They are shockingly sensible, with low heels and open-toes. The only downside would be that they’d be heavier than the sandals that she’d been wearing, and it’d impact her stealth some. 

She turns to look up at him, “I want to get these ones.”

Kakashi hums, and looks at the price tag. He then regrets taking her to a store that sells high-quality items immediately.

“Mah, what about these ones,” he points to the cheapest option, regular issue shinobi sandals in the ugliest shade of green he’d ever seen.

Sakura simply looks at him unimpressed, “Taichou, are you broke or stupid?”

Kakashi feigns hurt, and grabs at his chest dramatically, “My sweet apprentice wounds me so!”

There’s some noise of Eiko and her other customer in the back, likely finishing up the transaction. He kinda hopes it’s someone he knows. Mostly so he could leave and make them deal with Sakura as a punishment for her rudeness. She deserved to have to have the average jonin’s fashion sense shoved down her throat for dismissing his wisdom.

“I like them, and Mom can definitely afford them if you can’t,” Sakura continues, like Kakashi isn’t pretending to have been stabbed.

He huffs, and drops his act, “Your mom steals all of our money, I hope she can afford them.”

“Kakashi-taichou, you literally gave her access to all of our bank accounts,” she responds, dryly, “I remember you said that the key to being a financially responsible shinobi was to make someone else deal with it.”

Damn. He did say that. Kakashi pretends to consider her words, scratching at his chin in false thought.

“I am going to make you swim in a swamp this week for training, just for that,” he says seriously. 

Sakura’s face is unimpressed. In fact, it’s almost bordering on disappointment. 

He’s saved from whatever terrible insult she’d call him next by the voice of Eiko calling to them, “Ah, Hatake-san, good to see you again!”

Kakashi is halfway turned to look at the old shopkeeper when he sees who her customer had been. Immediately, he goes to flee.

Gai has him in his grasp before he even gets a foot away from Sakura. In all of his green spandex, bushy brow glory. It’s been almost a year since he’d really seen Gai. At first, they’d been on missions too often to meet up. Then, well, he hadn’t really handled his sudden role as a mentor with grace and did not want to deal with telling Gai about it. 

He was regretting that dearly now.

“MY RIVAL, HOW GOOD IT IS TO SEE YOU AGAIN KAKASHI!”

Sakura whimpers at the sheer volume of Gai’s voice. Unfortunately, he’s all too familiar with the shouting, and doesn’t even flinch.

“Hello Gai,” he says, purposely going limp in Gai’s grasp. The taijutsu master is more than capable of holding him up.

Gai’s dark eyes look between him and Sakura in shock. Likely he’s taking in the matching masks, Sakura’s shirt with his stupid henohenomoheji seal on the back, and how she’s already got one hand reaching out to grab Kakashi’s vest. Those thick brows furrowed in confusion, before realization washes over his face. 

Speaking in a much quieter voice, Gai starts to ramble, “Oh, I had heard rumors of you taking on an apprentice, which is very cool and hip of you, Kakashi! This must be a moment of you showing your eternal youthfulness with your apprentice in regards to shinobi equipment!”

“Yes, Gai,” Kakashi sighs, giving up on escaping this conversation, “That’s Sakura, she’s mine.”

Sakura weakly waves, clearly taken aback by the boisterous man in front of her. 

Gai’s face contorts in some strange mix of emotions, then he drops Kakashi to go kneel in front of Sakura. It’s a funny sight, the Green beast of Konoha on his knees in front of a tiny pink child. 

“Hello, Sakura-chan, I am Maito Guy, your mentor’s eternal rival! I am very happy to meet such a wonderful youthful apprentice as yourself!” he introduces himself. Kakashi swears he can see flowers behind him, like a low level genjutsu.

Sakura’s manners kick in, and she bows, “Ah, he has spoken of you Maito-san, it is a pleasure to meet you.”

Kakashi has literally never spoken of Gai. Not even once. He knows she said it to get a reaction out of the other man, and it works immediately. 

Gai bounced back up and grabbed him before he could react, “Oh, Kakashi I knew you would tell your apprentice about me! Our rivalry remains so strong in the face of your absence from our challenges!” 

He’s going to make Sakura swim in a swamp for real. 

“Definitely,” he deadpans, ready to simply shunshin out of here instead of buying Sakura new shoes.

Sakura retreated to speak with Eiko, clearly as an escape attempt from Gai.

There’s a pause, then Gai is looking at him far more seriously, “Are you just training her? No missions or anything?”

“Well, missions with her,” Kakashi sighs, already knowing where this was going, “But I’ll be taking solo ones again once she’s more settled.”

“That’s better than I could have expected,” Gai says so kindly that it almost stings. 

It has been years since Kakashi joined ANBU. It has been about the same amount of time that Gai has tried to get him out of black ops and back in on the jonin roster. His friend cares about him in such a simple way that it makes his chest hurt to think about. Kakashi has been nothing better than a disrespectful brat at best, but Gai’s friendship persists. If Gai ever knew how much their stupid rivalry meant to Kakashi, the man would cry about it for hours. 

He remembers something Mebuki passed on to him, and chooses to be a good sport about it all. Kakashi willingly places his hands on Gai’s forearms, and says, “I like her, it’s worth giving up some of my time from the mission roster.”

Gai’s dark eyes shine with emotion, “Oh, Kakashi, I am so happy for you, rival.”

“Look, I know I’ve been anti-social recently,” Kakashi says, like this is normal behavior for him, “When are you going for drinks with the others? I’ll come.”

“How hip of you! We’ll be going out tomorrow, Genma has insisted!” Gai crows, practically shaking from excitement.

Kakashi almost regrets agreeing, but he still nods at his friend, “Tomorrow, then.”

It still takes ten minutes for Gai to let him go and leave. He likes the man, but the noise and general ‘Gai’ behavior was a lot to deal with without warning. By the time he’d gotten out of his grasp and to Sakura, his apprentice was already trying on a pair of sandals with Eiko.

The old shopkeeper didn’t even acknowledge the waterworks that had just occurred in her store, instead offering advice for sizing a growing kunoichi’s feet. They buy the boots that Sakura wanted, and Kakashi doesn’t even make a joke about the price.

When they step out of the shop, Udon is happily wagging his tail at them. Sakura turns to him, one hand running through white fur, the other holding their purchase, and asks, “So, was that like your best friend or your boyfriend?”

Kakashi groans. This time, he does shunshin away. He hears Sakura’s shout of offense as he runs away on the rooftops. 

The Rusty Kunai was a bar that barely deserved to be called a bar. 

It reeked of alcohol, never had enough seating, and was probably a health code violation on its best day. From the outside, it looked almost dilapidated. Truly, an eyesore to the surrounding buildings and businesses. 

So, of course every elite jonin in Konoha adored the place. 

There were some of the greatest privacy seals on each booth, ensuring they could speak freely amongst themselves. The bartender was a former-ANBU, rare enough on its own, who’d made the place the last refuge for shinobi needing a drink and a fun night. Hana, the old kunoichi behind the bar, ran the place with an iron fist. No fighting, no fucking in the bathroom, and no breaking anything. 

Her partner, another retired kunoichi named Sayuki, probably broke half those rules a night. It was a delicate balance. But the other women worked as a server, and the duo somehow created the only functional bar for the top dogs of Konoha shinobi to drink at.

Kakashi finds himself almost regretting his agreement to come, staring into the shabby bar from the entrance. His eye runs over the terrible decor; Bingo Book pages stapled to the wooden walls, a destroyed dart board filled with senbon, tacky multi-colored string lights hung up around the bar. In one corner, a tiny stage with a single microphone and speaker stood. Karaoke was a competitive sport here. Kakashi shuddered, recalling his worst night as a teenager, when he’d been convinced to do a duet with Gai. 

There’s a corner booth that holds basically everyone he regularly (although he uses that word lightly) drinks with. Gai’s sitting with an open spot next to him, one that would have Kakashi squished between him and Yamato. It was a kind thing, to place him between the two people he’d be most comfortable with. Kakashi considered squeezing between Asuma and Kurenai sitting on Gai’s side of the booth instead, just to be a contrarian. The sight of Yuugao beside Yamato, Genma and Raidou sitting on her side across from Asuma and Kurenai, made his stomach flip. Half of Team Ro was just drinking and laughing together and he’d be expected to join in. Kakashi wasn’t certain he had it in him. He tries to remember his promise to Mebuki, the unabashed emotion in Gai’s eyes. 

He doesn’t get a choice, as Genma spots him before he can decide if he’s going to flee. The man has got a toothpick in the place of his regular senbon, cheeks flushed from drinking. Genma’s voice carries over the noise of the busy bar, “Hatake! Get your ass over here!”

Dread fills him as he walks towards the booth. Would they be able to tell how irrevocably his very being had changed? Sense that he’d committed himself to something other than his death at a young age?

Asuma and Kurenai shuffle out to grab drinks, Gai’s manhandling him to sit in the booth before he can give him his order. Yamato hands him his usual order when Kakashi sits down. He tries to settle in as Gai returns to his place beside him, but being in a place as this new weird version of himself has him on edge.

Yuugao’s leaning over and grinning, dark purple hair shining in the multi-colored light, “So, Hatake, how’s your little fairy princess doing?”

Shit. He knew that everyone knew about Sakura, but he wasn’t exactly ready to talk about having an apprentice. 

Kakashi responds in a voice, almost too low to be heard over the busy bar, “Mah, she keeps getting glitter everywhere. Worse than Genma and his stupid senbon.”

The man in question makes a noise of offense, but the table laughs at his expense. All of them have horror stories of taking Genma home for the night and finding a needle in their sheets afterwards.

“She is very youthful! Kakashi is training her well!” Gai interjects, preventing Genma from getting an insult of his own in.

Yamato cuts off any attempt of his to divert the conversation, “Yeah, Sakura-chan is so cute and smart, it’s a miracle she’s going good as his apprentice and not reading porn in public.”

“Honestly, I’d paid good money to see Kakashi’s pink little clone reading Icha Icha in public with him,” Yuugao teases, lips curled up into a grin.

“I would not give a child erotica novels!” Kakashi sputters, “Even if the plot is well-written and the romance very believable!”

The table descends into madness at his defense of Icha Icha’s romance. Yuugao is an enabler, and she and Yamato dive into a stringent assault on the plot holes in the series romance. Raidou immediately starts into the unrealistic sex scenes, and somehow Genma is defending the books alongside him because he’s insisting it just takes some flexibility. Kakashi’s weak jabs at his former teammates’ attacks on his favorite novels are ignored. It’s a crime that they won’t give them a chance, and he won’t stand for it.

Asuma and Kurenai return to the booth right as Gai finally speaks up, “I think they have nuance, I mean, Innocence is clearly the best of the series but it’d not be fair to judge it on the shoddy plot of Paradise .”

Kakashi grabs his chest as if wounded, and lets out a kneel of pain, “ Paradise is the best of the series! You can’t be serious!”

Yamato’s giggling beside him at his dramatics. Kakashi means it though, the plot of Innocence was lackluster compared to Paradise and it’d not be fair to compare them on the romance.

Gai’s face remains in a blinding smile, “Kakashi, we must be opposed at all times, huh? What great rivals we are!”

“Riveting conversation and all, but how did we get to dissecting erotica when you guys were supposed to ask him about his apprentice?” Kurenai asks, red eyes looking over their friends in the booth in disappointment. She’s smiling though, amused by their antics.

“He’s gonna give his apprentice all the Icha Icha novels, obviously,” Raidou deadpans.

Asuma chokes on his beer, clearly not prepared for the scarred man’s joke. 

“I am NOT giving a seven-year-old porn!”

Kakashi’s shout carries way too far. The noise of the bar quiets for a moment, the patrons clearly trying to figure out who just said that. He feels his face heat, and ducks under the table to chug his drink in one go. Genma’s booming laugh breaks the tension. The rest of the group’s laughs follow, so Kakashi comes back up from underneath the table.

His face is still warm. How embarrassing.

Yamato’s smiling face reassures him a little. He leans more of his weight on his kohai, apprentices the feeling of belonging. Even as this new version of himself, Kakashi will find a way to be awkward and weird. 

Somehow, the people around him seem to enjoy that. He pushes the worries about the future, about when they’ll leave him behind, away. For now, he’ll sit in this shitty bar and listen to Gai’s terrible jokes.

It’s worth it. Kakashi can be a good friend. Just for the night.

Chapter Text

Inoichi is unimpressed at his newest break-in. 

The Yamanaka clan head had trapped his window to hell and back, but Kakashi remained more skilled at disarming them than Inoichi had been at placing them. So when the blonde walks back into his office and sees him, all he does is grumble and pull out the familiar notepad.

“Been awhile, since before the escort mission,” Inoichi says as he sits down. 

Kakashi sits in the chair across from his desk in the most disrespectful way possible. A leg slung over the armrest, slouching and reading porn. He puts away his Icha Icha book, but makes no move to adjust his position. 

“Well, you know how that went.”

“You remain overwhelming lucky that Sakura handled it well,” Inoichi drawls, unimpressed gaze on Kakashi’s form, “If she’d even had a chance of being overly traumatized, I’d have your ass in the Hokage’s office in a heartbeat, getting you pulled from active duty.”

Kakashi frowns, “Hey, we’re allies now, be gentle.”

“Allies, through the work of Mebuki. I am going to prioritize your mental wellbeing and that of your apprentice over your usefulness,” he growls. Inoichi’s face is set in a solemn expression, he means what he’s saying.

Something about the usefulness comment makes his gut turn. Kakashi stays silent for a moment, trying to digest why it makes him so uncomfortable. He’s not stupid, he knows his perception of his self-worth is in the garbage. Maybe it’s the verbal acknowledgment. Inoichi is saying out loud that he would value Kakashi as a person over Kakashi as a weapon. He shudders, unwilling to accept it.

Breaking the silence that’s fallen over them physically pains Kakashi, “I, uh, ran into The Demon of the Mist.”

Inoichi stares at him. An incomprehensible emotion on his face. 

“He has an apprentice with him. I panicked and was Hound. He was the one that told me about the business man, the one that Sakura, uh, you know…”

Inoichi sighs loudly. Kakashi feels a little like a frightened rabbit. The blonde man’s face is stern, serious.

“So, you ran into Momochi Zabuza and did not tell anyone, and did not include it in your mission report,” Inoichi says, lowly, “Which, if I was not acting as your therapist at the moment, would be a much bigger deal.”

Kakashi waits for the other shoe to drop, for the man to reach over the desk and discipline him in some way. Or yell at him. That’s what he’s familiar with.

He doesn’t do anything but inhale, “What about that experience unnerved you so much when prior encounters with rouge-nin don’t seem to have such an impact?”

Silence fills the air. Kakashi knows exactly why it unnerved him so much. He just doesn’t want to say it aloud, to speak the truth. Zabuza and him were two sides of the same monstrous coin, the darker side of shinobi life. They molded soft childish hands into those of a killer.

“He said we were the same. He, uh, also mentioned seeing me in the Bingo Book when we were younger,” Kakashi stutters out. Inoichi’s face looks sympathetic, like he cares.

Inoichi leaves the words to hang in the air. The silence suddenly feels unbearable. 

Kakashi wets his lips before he fills the empty air, “Said that I’d gotten promoted for not dying on the battlefield. That he’d been jealous of me until he’d heard someone say that.”

A sigh escaped Inoichi. The blonde man looks exhausted, like something about this conversation was aging him in the moment. His pale eyes trailed over Kakashi’s form, tensed up in his attempt to appear relaxed and at ease. 

“Which would have been something that would be hard to hear. Especially from a rogue Kiri-nin,” Inoichi finally says. 

“Well, it’s not like there were any rogue Iwa-nin to say it instead.”

Inoichi looks unimpressed with his joke, and is serious when he speaks, “What do you think of his statements? About your similarities, your promotions.”

“That he’s right,” Kakashi blurts out without pausing, “He had a point, both about how similar we are and my promotions. Min-, uh, My sensei always talked about how I was too young to have been out on the battlefield.”

A beat, a moment where Inoichi understands that he’s dancing around the mention of Minato, passes. Kakashi shifts in the seat, shockingly uncomfortable. He’d not realized that the words of Zabuza reminded him of Minato’s own words. 

What’s worse, is that Kakashi never had agreed with Minato about the topic when he was alive. He’d been determined to prove that he was simply too good to have not been on the field. 

“Was that comment that impacted you more, or was it your agreement with it?” Inoichi asks, all soft eyes and sympathy written on his face.

Kakashi thinks about it. The answer comes to him easily. 

“Is my agreement a confession? That I am like him, that I was failed by someone?” Kakashi proposes a question instead of providing an answer. 

“Is that what you consider it? I cannot express what you feel, only guess.”

Damn, Inoichi was good. Kakashi has to stew in his thoughts for a moment, and has to actually search for an answer. He was aware that he’d been far too lax about his childhood, too easily prone to pushing away thoughts and feelings surrounding the things he’d experienced. Now, he operates like a man turned weapon. They were similar, both training younger apprentices to deal the same damage as they did. He was failing Sakura, in a different way to how Zabuza was failing his own apprentice. It made him feel sick, think of Danzo. 

The other man is patiently sitting across from him. Not even putting up a pretence of being busy, needing this to end. A sense of urgency hits him, the need to say something, to answer the question becomes overwhelming. 

Kakashi inhales sharply, attempts to breathe when he feels a bit like he’s drowning, “I think I feel guilty about what happened to me. I think I am like him, that I am a monster. Probably not a good thing.”

“Well,” Inoichi says, far too at peace for the moment, “I can assure you that I do not see a monster, only a young man that is trying to be better.”

At those words, Kakashi’s eyes sting. He realizes later, after sitting in Inoichi’s office for far too long, that he’d been crying. 

Sakura finds him sweeping the pitiful shrine to the Okami the next day. Udon, whose white coat shines in the early morning light, is trotting behind her. She was dressed for training, pink hair tied back into a low spiky ponytail. 

Kakashi had been unable to sleep, tossed and turned in the night. He got up, careful to not wake the tiny child that had curled up at the foot of his bed, and wandered around the compound instead of trying to sleep again. 

Something about the sight of the small shrine, tucked away in a far corner of the compound, had beckoned him. 

It was clear that Mebuki had come by, and had started to clean it up. Ever since Sakura had mentioned the wolf spirit, the woman was reading and practicing the worship that their ancestors once had. Kakashi had been torn up over the “dumb and sad smell” comment and purposely ignored the whole thing. 

Now though, he was sweeping off the stones outside the entrance to the shrine. He’d been skirting around actually doing anything meaningful inside of the shrine. Something about the white stone statue of the great wolf unnerved him.

Maybe he was tired of feeling seen. Of being observed.

So, Kakashi sweeps stones and picks up twigs and branches that had fallen. He’s got his back turned as his apprentice and her wolf approach. Sakura and Udon are loud, yipping and shouting as they come closer.

“Taichou! We found you!” Sakura shouts, “You suck at hiding for real!”

He inhales, deep and steady. I will not bully a child, he thinks to himself, even if the child is annoying me at the moment.

Kakashi turns around and doesn’t even attempt to school his features into a more pleasant expression, “I was hoping your parents had finally sold you and Udon into a child labor camp.”

Sakura snorts, Udon panting happily beside her. She shakes her head like his deadpan comment was something to actually respond to, “No, taichou, we’d never let you get off so lucky!”

He returns to his shoddy sweeping job. Kakashi is being unfair, Sakura deserves him at his best. The overwhelming tiredness, his fucked up emotions; it all has him in a mood. There’s a mix of irritation and sorrow bubbling up inside. He wishes he was still asleep. 

“Are we cleaning the shrine today, taichou?” Sakura asks, bright and happy.

Kakashi grunts in response. She takes it as an affirmative. 

So, now Sakura is picking up twigs and making Udon carry them over to the pile that Kakashi’s already started. 

They work in silence, Kakashi sweeping the stone, Sakura and Udon picking up sticks. At a certain point, he’s just sweeping the same stones over and over again. His apprentice is much more productive, and she starts gathering dead leaves. The sun shines, unwavering on his back. It makes his body feel less like a walking corpse and more like a man.

Sakura gives him an hour of blissful silence before she interrupts their work flow, “Taichou, do you want to talk about it?”

“Talk about what?” he grunts. 

They could talk about a lot of things. Kakashi’s not sure exactly which would be the most important for a kid like Sakura, but he isn’t about to guess. He’d talked about a lot recently. It was not fun.

“What made you all upset? Seems like I should ask.”

He snorts, the tiny voice of a child parroting therapy prompts sounds as ridiculous as he feels at the moment.

“Who taught you that? If it was Ino, I will start banning your sleepovers,” he asks, more upbeat but still in a dry tone.

Sakura, the smart kid that she is, recognizes that he’s joking and plays along, “Ugh, I told her that we don’t do feelings. She made me look at her books on emotional availability.” 

“We should do something about those pesky Yamanaka.”

“We should!” Sakura agrees easily, “They talk about feelings way too much, and their hair is far too nice for a shinobi clan.”

Kakashi pauses his sweeping, and turns to shoot her a grin through his mask, “We could really rectify that second part. Shampoo is easy to tamper with.”

Sakura’s face morphs from a grin to abject horror.

“Taichou, no, if we mess with Ino’s shampoo…” she trails off in fear, “She’ll kill me…”

That gets him to laugh. It’s full bellied. His apprentice, his little kunoichi that has become a competent killer, was afraid of her little friend pranking her back. 

His chuckles fade into the humid air. Suddenly, they are standing and staring at each other. Kakashi hates it. Hates that he needs to do something, say something, be a mentor to this child at this moment.

Sakura interrupts his mental spiral, “When I was really little and in a bad mood because of the mean girls making fun of me, I would pretend like I was running away.”

“Huh? Why would you do that?” he asks, not sure where his pink haired apprentice was heading with this comment.

“Because I didn’t actually want to run away, I liked my home, I liked Ino, I just didn’t like how I felt,” Sakura says, voice calm and steady, “I couldn’t feel better at home though, so I’d pretend like I was running away.”

She pauses here, Udon comes to settle underneath her hand, and she’s looking at him with a contemplative expression, “I would go to the park and sit behind a tree and imagine I was planning my next move. I didn’t go back home until I felt like I wasn’t just gonna be stuck feeling all weird in the same room I have to sleep in.”

Kakashi imagines it. Kazashi and Mebuki probably followed their little daughter to the park and watched this all go down. He pictures Sakura, more of a toddler than a kid, huffing and puffing as she marches to a park to brood. It makes him smile, but it tugs at his heart in a funny way.

When his father died, Kakashi refused to return to the compound. He’d been sleeping in a tree in a park for a week before Mebuki found him. She hadn’t asked why, hadn’t pointed out how bad he’d smelled, or that he’d been coated in dog hair. Just plucked him out of the tree and brought him home. 

He pictures Sakura in that situation. She’s not much older than he was.

An old wave of pain returns to his body as he thinks it over. Thinks about Sakura’s words. In his mind, he remembers a spiky haired boy in goggles hiding under a bridge after training. 

“We’re going camping.”

Sakura smiles, “Good! I already packed, and dad has lunch for us.”

For the record, Kakashi does not mope about how obvious he was to his family. He simply ignores the warm feeling in his gut and the flush of embarrassment as he informs Kizashi about their impromptu camping trip. 

Now though, in the woods near Konoha, with a child glued to his side in front of a campfire, he allows a little annoyance to fill his head.

“Did your mom put you up to it?” he asks, Sakura’s half-asleep and has to fight a yawn to respond.

“No, Ino seriously made me read a book on emotional vulnerability,” she replies. She sounds out vulnerability in a way that reminds him of just how young she is.

Kakashi just hums, and keeps his eyes on the fire. Sakura wriggles her way into his lap at his non-response. 

She smushes her face into his vest. He curls an arm around her loosely.

“Mom told me that you had some bad stuff happen to you when you were a little older than me,” Sakura mumbles into his chest.

He tenses up at her words. Mebuki said that he’d be the one to inform Sakura of Danzo and their plans regarding him. Kakashi had chosen the obvious route, and hadn’t told her anything.

Sakura’s little hand reaches up and pulls down his mask. She rests it on his mouth, like she’s keeping him silent. It’s pointless, he would never interrupt her, not when she’s just dropped this on him.

“A bad man manipulated you, and you lost all your teammates, right?” her voice is small but shockingly steady, “I never had teammates before, but I hope I can be a good one to you. It must’ve been hard to be a teammate without a team.”

His breath catches in his throat, but her little hand has not moved, and Sakura keeps talking, “I know that you messed up during our mission, but I forgive you. I like being your apprentice, and I am happy that you were there for my first kill.”

Kakashi’s eyes sting at this point. He’d made the fire too strong and the smoke was getting to him, clearly. 

He chances a glance down, and sees bright green eyes staring at him. They aren’t pitying, just shining with the light of the fire with pure admiration. His chest hurts.

“Taichou, I am glad that we met. I am proud to be your family.”

There’s a moment of silence. The fire crackles, the wildlife around them fills the air. Dusk has fallen and the warmth of the sun lingers, the humidity has wrapped itself like a blanket around them. 

It’s all too much. Sakura. Her words. His reality.

A sob escapes him, and he’s grasping onto Sakura’s smaller form like a lifeline. She scrambles to hold him in her tiny arms. Her scent, that oh so familiar ozone, hits his nose in such a way all he can think of is his father. She pats his back like Kushina used to with one hand, and the other tangles in his hair like Minato used to. 

He cries like a little kid. His body is wracked by sorrow, by anger, by so many emotions he can’t figure out what to do with them. Too many thoughts and memories are coming to him, nothing can be slowed down long enough for him to calm down. 

A flash of Rin smiling, of Obito calling him names, of Gai racing him through the village, of Yamato saving him with a wooden wall on a mission, of Mebuki teaching him how to tie his shoes. 

He sees Itachi. Sees the kid he failed. A glimpse of Naruto, of the kid he continues to fail comes to him in a rush. Porcelain masks and blood fill his mind.

When he opens his eyes again, all he sees is Sakura.

She’s still holding onto him, small willowy limbs tangled in his own. The fire causes light to dance around her face, to illuminate her watery eyes. 

Kakashi would burn the world to keep her warm.