Prologue

Kakashi was awoken by a missing presence next to him, the warmth of his wife gone from her being up before him. Why would she be up so early?

"Are you going to get up Daddy?" seven year old Kohaku Sarutobi asked her step-father as she pulled on his pajama sleeve.

"In a minute Kohaku… where's your mother?" he asked tiredly as he pulled himself up from bed to face his step-daughter. She was a gleaming image of Asuma, with her dark hair, amber eyes, and tan skin. Her face and her smile were the only part of her that reflected her mother.

"Packing! Remember Daddy, we're moving today," she said matter-of-factly. Kakashi felt his blood run cold as he realized that he had completely forgot. When he and Kurenai had gotten married a few years ago, they had moved into a bigger apartment, but now that she was pregnant, they had to move again. Deciding that there wouldn't be an apartment big enough to handle their family, especially if they had another kid after this one, they were moving into Kakashi's family's old house.

"Ooooh! Mama was right! You forgot!" Kohaku said in a sing-song voice as she skipped out of the bedroom singing "dadddyyy forgootttt!"

It wasn't just packing that he had forgot. He had forgotten to clean out his old house as well. The last thing he wanted to do was tell hormonal Kurenai that, so he threw on his shinobi uniform and took the bedroom window out of the house. How long could it possibly take for him to clean out a house?

"Kakashi?" Kurenai called as she opened the bedroom door, only to see the window hanging open and his pajamas tossed carelessly into the hamper. Kurenai just rolled her eyes, turning to Kohaku who was standing in the doorway. "Looks like we'd better help your dad clean out the house."

Kurenai actually wasn't mad at him. All she could think about was Kakashi alone in that house, the house his father had killed himself in. She knew from the beginning that he had reservations about moving in there, but she was able to convince him by explaining renovations they could do to his parents' old bedroom.

"I warned him that he should've had Guy help him with the house. He's so forgetful," she muttered to herself as she walked through the streets of Konoha with Kohaku at her side. Minus this slight irritation, Kurenai couldn't be happier. The village had completely recovered from the war, with Naruto's leadership as the youngest Hokage the Leaf Village had ever seen. During the reconstruction years, she had become very close to Kakashi, leading eventually to their marriage. He has been as much of a father as he could to Kohaku, but not out of the obligation of her being one of his friend's children. He truly loved her as if she was his own daughter. Now they had their own child on the way, which was exciting for all three of them, but it would definitely take some adjusting.

"Mama, you aren't mad at Daddy, are you?" Kohaku asked as they approached the house.

"No, why would you think that?" she asked.

"You've been really quiet. That's all," she said as she walked up the front porch stairs and into the house with her mother, where Kakashi was frantically packing things away into boxes.

"I was just thinking Sweetie," she answered, catching Kakashi's attention by hearing her voice.

"Oh… Hi Kurenai…" Kakashi said carefully as he dropped a box he'd been carrying.

"Need some help?" she asked with a laugh. He smiled sheepishly, nodding with defeat. "Alright. Where do we start?"

It took them all day to empty and clean every room in the house except for Kakashi's parents' room and the attic. By the time night had come around, Kohaku went to sleep back at the apartment because she had school the next day while Kakashi and Kurenai made trips between the apartment and the new house to get some of their smaller possessions moved.

"Last ones for the night," Kurenai said with a satisfied smile as she put one of Kohaku's boxes into Kakashi's old bedroom, but no one was nearby to hear it. "Kakashi?"

She looked out of the bedroom and into the hallway, seeing the door to the attic hanging open. Carefully, she climbed up the steep, poorly lit stairs and into the large attic.

"Look at this," he said with wonder as he pulled a few old looking trunks out from a hidden door within the attic. "They're locked though…. There has to be a key somewhere."

"You don't know what's in there!" Kurenai warned as he hurried down the stairs. "Kakashi! What if you find something you don't want to see?"

"You worry too much," he called from downstairs as he searched his house for a key. There was only one room he hadn't checked, but his curiosity pushed his away from his reservations about the room and led to him hurrying into his father's bedroom.

"If I was my father, where would I put a key?" he asked as he rummaged through his father's dresser, only to find nothing of interest. His next thought was the nightstand, but it also was locked and he had no intentions of searching for another key in order to find the key he was looking for.

A book on his father's bookshelf caught the shinobi's eye; The Encyclopedia of Shinobi Weapons and Devices. He pulled it off of the shelf and opened it, only to find that the book was hollowed out with a key sitting inside of it. First he checked the night stand, only to find that it wasn't that key, so it had to be for the trunks.

"You can go home if you want," Kakashi said when he made it back up into the attic, where Kurenai had made herself a little bed out of a blanket she must've found inside a box.

"I need your help getting down the stairs. They're too steep," she answered tiredly as she pulled the chocolate brown blanket tighter around herself.

"Okay, let me just see what's inside one of these tonight, and then we can go home," Kakashi promised as he slid the cool brass key into the old lock. With much reluctance, the key turned and the trunk was unlocked. Filled with anticipation, Kakashi lifted the top of the trunk up and found a bunch of musty old books.

"Oh…" he said with disappointment as he pulled a red leather-bound book off of the top of the pile. "They're just books."

"What were you expecting? Buried treasure?" Kurenai joked as Kakashi opened the one in his hands. Rather than seeing cold printed words, he stared at cursive writing that was unfamiliar to him…

"No… these aren't books… They're journals," he said aloud as he grabbed several of them and began to flipped through them. Some of them were in the unfamiliar cursive while others were in the sloppy hand writing that he recognized, his father's… "Some of them are my father's…. which means that these other ones must be my mother's."

Kurenai lifted her head with interested and crawled over on her knees towards Kakashi.

"They must've been big into recording things," she thought aloud as she stared at the piles of books inside the trunk. "It'd take years to read all of these."

"Maybe for someone who doesn't read much," he said with a smile. "But for me, it won't even take half as long."