AN: Hey guys, this struck me as conceptually interesting, so I wrote it out. See what you think.

First came Sakumo:

The young boy came in through the door with a rare skip in his step. "I'm home!" The boy called out, wiping off his sandals on the brush mat before slipping them off and heading inside. Kakashi was happier than he had been in some months, at least since the onset of his father's depression, maybe even since mom had left.

The boy had good reason to be happy. Today had been the day when he received his final scores for his first half-year in the academy. He was top of the class, of course, and more than willing to point that out to anyone who would listen: teachers, other students, even passers-by on his way home. The person that Kakashi wanted to share the news with most, however, was his father.

Since mom had left and everyone had started looking at Sakumo like he had betrayed them, one of the only things truly able to break his depression was how well his son was doing at the academy. The boy knew, or at least hoped, that these test results would be enough to get two, maybe even three days-worth of smiling out of his father before the perpetual melancholy sank back into place.

"In the bathroom," came Sakumo Hatake's voice after a few moments silence. "…How was your day?" The voice sounded strange, odd pauses were spread through the phrases where they didn't belong and his tone, instead of his usual despondency, was filled with a wistful melancholy. If Kakashi didn't know better, he'd have said that his father was in a good mood.

"You won't believe what happened at school today!" The silver haired boy raced into the small family bathroom… and stopped dead. Sakumo Hatake sat in the bathtub, warm water running across his skin as the bath filled, near half full with liquid. Sakumo was naked, but that was unsurprising, one rarely bathed while clothed, and a small part of Kakashi's brain noted that, had Sakumo been dressed, the blood would probably have stained the cloth rather badly.

Long, neat slits drew their way across Sakumo's forearms, oozing blood at an unsettling rate. The cuts were neat, clean. Kakashi could tell his father's hand had not wavered even once when he made them. Kakashi stood in the doorway, staring down at his father, shell-shocked. Tears welled unbidden from the corners of the boy's eyes and streamed their way down his cheeks as he drew in a deep breath that seemed to shake its way through his very soul.

"Ahh, yeah," Sakumo said quietly, smiling sadly at his son's reaction. "Sorry you had to see this, little one, I wasn't expecting you home for another hour. Don't you have your taijutsu extension class on Thursdays?"

Kakashi gaped down at his father, the water around him steadily turning redder and redder, and shook his head, barely conscious of his own movements. "N-no taijutsu practice today. It's the end of term… A-are you dying… Dad?"

Sakumo gave his son a look of utter, soul destroying weariness, before nodding. "Yeah," he replied quietly. "I am."

Kakashi tried to take it like a man, to simply be brave and nod and move on like it was nothing. He really did try. The little boy gave a tiny, shaky little nod before letting out a strangled sob as his composure broke. The boy brought his hands to his face as he began to weep, letting his sorrows out for the world to hear.

Sakumo watched his son cry, laying his head against the rim of the bathtub; strange, he didn't seem to have the energy to lift it any more. "Now now, little one," he murmured, just loud enough to be heard between the boy's moans. "It's okay, I'm going because I want to, okay?" Kakashi let out one last quiet whimper, wiping at his eyes with a sleeve before, with great effort, looking at his father stony faced and giving a small nod. "Thank you, Kakashi," the bleeding man murmured, his eyes slowly drifting closed. "Now, why don't you sit down next to your old man and tell him what had you so excited when you came in."

Kakashi nodded, sniffling, and moved forward to sit down next to his father's bathtub. The silver haired boy began murmuring quietly, his voice cracking occasionally, explaining his grades to his father.

Kakashi didn't know exactly when his father passed away; he only knew when Sakumo stopped talking back to him when he spoke. The boy tried to ignore it, filling the more and more obvious silence with words until he was repeating himself again and again just to fill it. He kept going until he was practically shouting, words tumbling over themselves as he tried to maintain the pretense. The medical ninja found them both before too long.

Then came Obito:

The eight year old opened the door to his tiny apartment with numb fingers. The perpetual winter rain had chilled through every layer of his uniform, rendering him cold to the very bone.

The moment the door was closed, the boy began to strip out of his sodden uniform, leaving his mask on in honor of the promise he had no intention of breaking today, the young ninja moved in search of a towel. He didn't find one.

Heading towards the small drawer where he kept his spare towels, Kakashi caught sight of the small picture frame that sat atop it. Three kids, one silver haired boy noticeably shorter than the other two, and their yellow haired teacher. Kakashi had seen the photograph a hundred times since it was taken, rarely sparing it more than a single glance as he got up from bed to ready himself for the day.

Now though, Kakashi stopped and stared at the image. The four figures in the picture were grinning, although, only Kakashi would ever know that, the mask had hidden his smiles well in those days. Kakashi's one open eye drifted towards the other boy in the photo, almost looking at him before, with a mental effort, Kakashi looked away again, why was he so angry all of a sudden?

Unbidden, Kakashi's gaze drew itself towards the image of the other boy. He had been a cheerful youth. Happy, especially for an Uchiha, and his grin had always been the most exuberant, the most open.

With a mental heave, Kakashi pulled his gaze away from the picture, trying vainly to calm the emotion rising within him. With a deliberate effort, Kakashi forced himself towards the bathroom, hoping perhaps to find a towel there instead.

The moment he opened the door, Kakashi realized his mistake. The bathroom mirror sat at an angle, pointed towards the doorway so that the first thing Kakashi saw when he entered the room was his own face, marred by a deep scar, barely healed. By instinct, Kakashi's left eye flew open at the shock and he saw his sharingan in sharp relief, reflected in the crystalline surface. Obito's eye.

Kakashi squeezed his eyes shut and pulled the door closed with a slam, panting heavily despite his lack of exertion. What was wrong with him today? The boy took a long, deep breath, before allowing his right eye to open once again. Unfortunately for him, in blindly stepping backwards out of the bathroom, Kakashi had placed himself once more within sight of the team photograph. Unbidden, Kakashi's gaze went directly to his teammate's grinning face.

Kakashi wasn't ready, he had nothing to filter this with. The boy took another deep breath, trying to force himself to calm. He stepped deliberately forwards, looking straight at Obito's smiling face in the picture, trying to force himself to accept it through sheer force of will.

Kakashi couldn't explain later why he punched the photograph, shattering the frame and driving small shards of glass into his knuckles at the impact. Nor could he explain why he kept punching, driving the torn photograph into the wall and pinning it there with the force of his blow, before launching another punch that left a dent in the sturdy wood of his home. The boy let out an angry yell as he drove his fists again and again into the apartment wall, slowly tearing both the picture, and his own hands to bloody shreds as he pounded again and again at the old timber. After what could have been whole hours, or just minutes, the boy sank to the ground, spent. He clutched his face in bloody hands so cold that he couldn't even feel the damage he had done them, and howled his desperation into the night.

…Rin:

Kakashi had saved his father's knife. Initially, it had been a reminder, just a simple way to remember not to make his father's mistakes. The twelve year old let out a small chuckle. It was a reminder he had utterly failed to live by lately.

Kakashi wondered what his five year old self would have done if he'd seen what he would become, what would he have said? The silver haired ninja gave a perfunctory chuckle when he realized he didn't care.

The boy finished stripping off his clothes and sat himself down in the bath, turning on the tap and letting the warm water flow over him. He had always hated baths, ever since his father's death, opting for showers by preference. But now, in his current mindset, the water felt kind of nice as it washed over him.

Kakashi closed his eyes and picked up his father's knife, holding the tip just a hair's breadth over his wrist. He felt his hand shaking just a little, and berated himself inside, that wasn't how it was done.

Taking a deep breath, Kakashi pushed the blade into his wrist, letting the knife sink deep into the vein. The pain was intense, as was the fear, and it took everything Kakashi had not to waver. The twelve year old opened his eyes, gazing down at his shaking wrist and the stream of solid red that flowed down from it. The sight froze him solid.

Gazing down at his wrist, the mildly blunted blade still protruding from it as deep crimson freely flowed, Kakashi Hatake began to laugh, he wasn't sure why. Filling his lungs, the boy did it again, cackling out his laughter throughout the empty apartment. There was no amusement in it, not quite sadness either, just laughter.

The sound of the front door crashing open stirred Kakashi from his reverie. Someone was coming to stop him, he had to be quick. The boy yanked the knife down, the dull blade parting deep, half cutting, half ripping. The pain was extraordinary, and the boy screamed, dragging the blade wide off course, digging raggedly through the flesh of his arm before, with a flash of yellow, his hand was yanked away from the blade. Before Kakashi even had time to register what was going on, Minato had already begun to bind his injuries, wrapping them in a thick, anesthetic drenched gauze. The blonde haired ninja had tears in his eyes as he moved to forcibly restrain his single remaining pupil, holding him close as he carried the boy out of the apartment, a towel hurriedly thrown around him for some small preservation of his modesty.

"Come on, Kakashi," the Fourth Hokage said quietly. "Why don't you come stay with me and Kushina for a while, okay?"

Kakashi, his attempt at freedom thwarted, gave a small nod of assent as he wept against his teacher's shoulder.

…Kushina and Minato:

Kakashi sat at his desk in the small room Kushina and Minato had set aside for him, utterly kind, as in all things, in the accommodations they had made for him to live with them. The thirteen year old held a pen poised above a small, blank sheet of paper.

Thinking back, Kakashi remembered the day his father had made him promise to wear a mask; his old man's words that day still struck a chord with him, even now.

"Do you know why a ninja can never retire?" Sakumo had asked, gazing absently up at the rafters one evening.

"Why?" The boy had asked, still at an age where every word from one's father was precious wisdom to be gathered.

"Because people out there know their faces," Sakumo had said simply. "There is no escaping your village when someone knows your face, and the way shinobi live, they have a habit of making enemies out there in the world. So answer me this, Kakashi, why don't they wear masks?"

The little boy gave it some thought, his face scrunching up in effort as he worked through the problem. "Umm… because no one could manage to wear a mask the whole time?" The child tried. His father gave a light chuckle.

"Not quite, little one," he murmured. "For a ninja, something like that isn't too much of a challenge. No, the truth of it is, little Kakashi, that most ninja never expect to retire. This job kills too many of us off." The silver fang of the leaf gazed across at his son, watching as the boy mulled this all over in his mind, picking the ideas apart with his unusually sharp little brain.

"Then why don't you wear a mask, daddy?" The boy asked eventually, gazing up at his father.

"Oh, I do," Sakumo said with a wry smile. "A very good one. Wanna see?"

Kakashi nodded eagerly, turning to face his father. The silver fang chuckled, then placed his hands together. With a small puff of smoke, the silver haired, slightly gaunt faced man disappeared, replaced by a brown haired, pale green eyed man with gentle features, looking quietly down at the boy. "Good mask, huh?" The man asked, his voice noticeably softer than the one Kakashi recognized. The boy nodded absently, staring at his father's true face for the first time.

Before too long, Sakumo began making hand-signs, a far more intricate variation than the simple transformation jutsu Kakashi was familiar with. With another rush of smoke, the silver fang returned, gazing down at the boy. Kakashi felt, even as he tried to hold them in his mind, as the images of his father's true face began to fade in his memory, blurring slightly so that, even mere seconds later, Kakashi would have struggled to pick his father's true face from a crowd.

The two sat in silence for a time, until Sakumo produced a small patch of cloth, holding it out to his son. "I want you to wear this from now on, Kakashi, until you're old enough for me to teach you to transform properly. Can you do that for your old man?"

Kakashi took the small cloth loop and gazed down at it, confused. "But… why would I want to retire, Daddy?"

Sakumo lay a hand gently on his son's shoulder. "One day, if you're as gentle a kid as I think you are, you'll get tired of being a ninja. I want you to have options when that happens."

Kakashi bristled at that. "I'm not gentle!" He protested. "I'm fierce! I'm a ninja!"

Sakumo chuckled at his son. "Yeah, of course you are."

Kakashi had worn a mask every day, whenever he wasn't alone and even, usually, when he was.

No one, not even Kakashi, had seen his face in years.

Kakashi stared down at the blank paper, his pen still hanging poised above it. He asked himself why this was taking so long. It wasn't as if this was the first goodbye letter he had written, nor the first time he had run away. Thinking back, his first goodbye note, written at the age of seven, the evening after his first kill, had been written in crayon.

Kakashi found that the more notes he wrote, the fewer words were needed. Less statements of friendship, fewer admissions of feeling. In this instance, Kakashi only wrote five words before laying the pen down atop the paper and standing to take his leave.

'Guy, look after my dogs.'

Jiraiya knew Kakashi well enough to predict that something would happen in the wake of Minato and Kushina's death, even if he wasn't entirely sure what. The toad sage was also experienced enough as a ninja that his grief at the loss of his friends did not dull him. As such, when the sirens began to blare at the village bank, Jiraiya made immediately for the only place he could picture Kakashi going.

The boy hated dark colors, he considered it a shame that so much of a ninja's job and, by extension, his life, necessitated them. Kakashi slipped through the third floor window of the hospital, a small satchel hung about his back, containing all the money the Hatake line was owed by the village. This was his second stop of the night. The boy blended with the shadows perfectly, shifting along walls and floors with fluidity that would make him hard to spot even if one were looking directly at him.

The young ninja made his way between the anonymously clad men and women guarding the small room where a lone child lay, monitors beeping quietly all around him. Kakashi made his way in and gazed down at the small boy, even now, not entirely certain that this was the right choice.

"What are you doing here, Kakashi?" The boy jumped, the deep, adult voice startling him half out of his wits. To his credit, he recovered fast.

"Jiraiya?" He asked, glancing around him, trying to identify the speaker's location and quietly wishing he'd brought along a weapon of some sort, but no, leaving unarmed had been too damned important to him, that need to make a statement. He began to berate himself internally for his stupidity when, casually as was possible for such things, Jiraiya faded into being in a shadowy corner.

"I repeat, Kakashi, what are you doing sneaking in to see Naruto like this?"

Kakashi glanced down at the newborn, snoring quietly through gentle little dreams. He thought back to his childhood, to his life, and thought of Naruto living all that in his place. He shuddered in revulsion at the thought, except, he knew, it would be worse for Naruto. The way the cover story was being set up, the boy was destined to be quietly hated, Kakashi could already see it. He returned his gaze to the Sannin, one of the few adults who remained alive that Kakashi genuinely respected, and opted for the truth.

"Everyone I ever truly cared about has died. I'm leaving here, Jiraiya. I… I just can't do this anymore." As he spoke, the boy fought to keep his voice steady, a single tear building up on his eyelid before swelling over and spilling down his cheek. There was a long silence.

Eventually, after what felt like an age. Jiraiya nodded. "Can't say I blame you," he murmured quietly. "For what it's worth, I wish you the best in life, Kakashi, I really do. You're a good kid."

Kakashi was stunned. He had expected rejection, stern rebuke, maybe even anger. What the old ninja was giving him instead… it seemed a lot like pity… sympathy? No. Jiraiya was too strong for that. The silver haired ninja shook himself, he wasn't done. "I'm taking Naruto with me."

To this, the older ninja gave a tired, sad sigh. "Ah, I thought you might come here to do that. I'm afraid I won't allow that, Kakashi. Not unless you can give me a reason."

Kakashi looked his teacher's teacher dead in the eye, utterly determined. "You know what the village has in store for him if he stays?" The Sannin nodded, not even blinking in the gloom. "And you know what this world does to people like us over time?" Another nod. "And you're willing to sit quietly and let it happen." Kakashi made the words an accusation, glaring across at the old man.

Jiraiya nodded, rising to his full, impressive height. "I have faith in the son of Minato Namikaze and Kushina Uzumaki. He is stronger than anything this world can throw at him. He can make it through all of that, and he can shine."

Quietly, Kakashi let his satchel drop to the floor, freeing himself to move as fast as his lithe body could manage. His hand began to glow with the trademark glimmer of his chidori. "My point," he said in a dangerous whisper. "Is that he shouldn't have to."

Kakashi charged, darting forwards with the prodigious speed matched only, to his knowledge, by Minato's. He held his chidori at the ready as he plunged it forwards, intent upon skewering his unexpected foe.

The boy felt a hand grasp his wrist, Jiraiya's other arm moving to intercept the luminescent blue glove that cloaked the boy's hand. With an inscrutable expression, the toad sage simply batted the chidori out of Kakashi's hand. The silver haired boy watched in horror as the crackling energy slowly dissipated into the empty air.

Jiraiya pulled the boy in close and turned him, pressing him hard against the wall. "That's unfortunate," he whispered sadly. "I really wanted to let you go, Kakashi, I really did. But no one survives attacking me, no one. Was it worth it? Trying to kidnap Naruto in front of me even though you knew you'd fail? Why didn't you just walk away?"

Kakashi squirmed in discomfort against the wall, struggling to turn his head so that he could look at the older man. "Yeah," he grunted. "That kid's the only precious thing I have left in the world. It was worth any risk to save him from this."

From the corner of his eye, his head still pressed against the wall, Kakashi saw the old man give him an appraising look. The two were silent for a very long few seconds. Eventually, Jiraiya stepped back, letting the silver haired boy drop to the floor, panting.

"Change your name," Jiraiya said quietly. "Kakashi Hatake died in the Kyuubi attack. So did Kushina's unborn son, Naruto."

Kakashi pulled himself to his feet and nodded, choosing at this point not to dwell on exactly how close to death he had just been. "Thank you, Jiraiya."

"Don't thank me," Jiraiya mumbled, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly. "Just promise me you'll look after the kid, okay? He gets a better life than we did, a real childhood. Promise."

"I promise," said Kakashi without hesitation. "That's the whole point."

Kakashi moved to the child's bedside, cautiously picking him up and making preparations to move. The old man watched him quietly as he worked. "One more thing," Jiraiya said calmly. "When you find a place to settle, contact me. I want to be there for the kid and, let's be honest, I'm not trusting a mentally scarred thirteen year old to look after a baby."

Kakashi nodded and, without another word, carried the sleeping baby quietly from the room. The guards were unconscious as Kakashi passed them, presumably the Sannin's doing. Kakashi paid it no mind as he bore the child out into the night, spiriting him away from the leaf well before the sun rose.

AN: This idea seemed cool, so I wrote up an intro for it. I'll likely do more if I feel like it, although explicitly not on any particular schedule. This, presently, is more a proof of concept than anything else. If you liked it, feel free to favorite or review. The more feedback it receives, the more likely I am to continue it.