Kakashi woke up slowly the next morning, his body slowly regaining feeling inch by inch until his mind caught up and leisurely-rejoined reality. He languidly stretched his tight muscles, cramped from sleeping on a couch for a few hours straight. His neck was particularly sore and he had to rotate the muscles slightly to give it a good crack to release the built-up tension. He frowned when he shuffled slightly to relieve the numbness in his lower back from sitting on his arse for so long, his body being restricted slightly by a pale blanket that had been carefully and deliberately placed over his form. He frowned even harder when he realized that he didn't remember even throwing the blanket over himself in the first place.

A sudden thought occurred to him in his still sleep-addled mind that perhaps it was Tsunade who had done so, always being one to show people she cares without really showing people she cares. It was the kind of thing you only really came to understand once you knew her better.

Oh, yes, that's right. Tsunade.

Instantly, memories flooded his mind, wave after wave of images and accompanied feelings crashing through his mind. He relived the grief once more of losing his surrogate family and the hopelessness that consumed his thoughts when he saw his village and fellow comrades being torn apart when there was hardly much he could do about it alone.

Just as his internal pain was overwhelming his worn mind for what must've been the umpteenth time, a bright and vivid blue flashed before his eyes, almost like a calming ocean but with a gentle fire somewhere within its midst; a contrast that interestingly brought an unusual serenity to Kakashi's dizzying and crushing thoughts.

His natural curiosity instantly got the better of him, trying to decipher the significance of this unique colour to his mind that was becoming more and more aware by the moment. He had been so exhausted by his suffering both mentally and physically that his mind and body were still in recovery mode and not quite functioning up to the usual prodigy-Hatake standard.

It took a few moments for his mind to make the connection between that colour and a pair of eyes, then between a pair of eyes and a face, onto a face that belonged to a baby and then finally onto-

Naruto.

Instantly, Kakashi shot up off the couch, ignoring his wounds he had yet to attend to even still, and whipped his head from left to right frantically, desperately searching for his infant. Once he caught sight of the cot placed almost directly in his line of sight (he berated himself silently for being so unobservant even in his current state) he instantly rushed over to it, for some reason needing to see that Naruto was safe within said cot.

He made his way over in a blink of an eye, his ingrained ninja skills useful to him on even the least dangerous of missions, and stared down into the cot, outwardly sighing in relief and slumping his tensed shoulders slightly when he caught sight of a tuft of blond hair and scarred cheeks wrapped up securely in a orange blanket.

Naruto, totally oblivious this time to his guardian's previous distress, was peacefully sleeping his worries away, his eyes lightly closed as his tiny chest rose up and down steadily. He looked so calm and gave off an aura of a happiness of sorts that Kakashi knew he in no way needed to worry about the boy's safety.

Eventually, though, to Kakashi's dismay, he couldn't help but feel a sense of undeniable warmth bloom within him when he noticed one of his miniscule thumbs caught between his rosy lips. He happily suckled away at it, not seeming perturbed by the action in the slightest.

In response to his ludicrous thoughts, Kakashi gripped the edge of Naruto's cot, mad at himself for allowing his feelings to shift in such a…dangerous direction.

The more caught up he got in his internal turmoil, heightened dramatically by his rather abrupt return to his harsh reality only a minute or so before, the more he just wanted to make it all go away. He wanted these stupid thoughts like 'Gee, isn't he cute?' or 'Gosh, that just reminds me of the face Kushina used to pull sometimes' to poof out of existence. They brought up something he couldn't identify that he just wasn't ready to deal with yet.

He was so annoyed in fact that, before he could filter his actions through his quick mind, he released his ever-tightening grip on the rail, that felt like it was almost about to give, and reached towards the offending thumb, abruptly ripping it from the confines of the infant's mouth.

In what appeared to be an instant knee-jerk reaction to most even slightly-distressing situations now, Naruto instantaneously opened his tiny mouth and let out a horrendous howl, making his obvious displeasure at such a rude awakening known to, what felt like to Kakashi's over-sensitive ears, the whole damn village.

Once Kakashi's mind finally caught up with his traitorous body, he momentarily froze in the wave of the infant's rather obvious distress, feeling something unidentifiable in the current moment that caused his chest to ache slightly. His actions had been unjust and he couldn't quite fully fight down the urge to do something to in some way apologise for his stupid and rash actions. It wasn't like Naruto had done anything wrong and, to Kakashi's utter dismay, he realized he had taken his twist of emotions out on a newborn again. He could most definitely now be considered a bad and undeniably pathetic human being.

He shook away his melancholy thoughts and picked up a very distressed Naruto, being careful once again to hold him correctly and to bounce him the way that Tsunade had demonstrated to him earlier. He even added some useless babble in because of his guilt of screwing up on his mission so often. Tsunade might've said that Naruto had bonded with him, but it kept feeling like to him that he just made the poor kid upset constantly. Kakashi seemed to have that sort of affect on a lot of people apparently, even an infant.

Fortunately, it wasn't long before the kid calmed down. He eventually ended up staring into Kakashi's eye once more, as if he knew exactly the kind of effect they had on him and seemed to enjoy screwing with his head as some sort of payback.

Not one to back down to a challenge, issued by a day-old child or not, he quickly snapped his eyes to look anywhere other than at those damn eyes, his line of sight just happening to be staring directly at his living room clock.

He almost dropped the poor kid when he realized just how late it was. Even though he was still recovering from injuries, had gone through great emotional trauma and had only gone to sleep just when the sun was starting to rise, he didn't think he had ever gotten up as late as ten o'clock before. Being a ninja, you got used to getting up rather early for most missions and the habit just ended up kind of sticking, no matter where you were or what you were doing.

Getting over his initial shock, he sighed and went about his new routine of taking care of a baby. He changed his diaper (Ew! Thank God there wasn't much in there this time. Kakashi was sure the kid would've made that predicament rather obvious, though), changed him into a new set of tiny clothes that Tsunade had been thoughtful enough to put in her pack from the night before (Did they really have to be bright orange?) and wrapped him up in the blanket that had been draped over his own form earlier. He gave the kid a bit of formula for breakfast and got himself some cereal for his own, moving on quickly to lay Naruto in his cot while he finally attended to his wounds.

His wounds weren't all that bad compared to many others', but he still needed to do some decent disinfecting and wrapping up of some seriously nasty gashes. Thankfully, he hadn't broken any bones or done any serious damage.

Once he had made quick work of seeing to his wounds (something you became quite adept at when you spent your days as a shinobi), he picked up Naruto from his cot once more and left his home, knowing his first order of business had to be to somehow find Naruto some more supplies even though the village was already in so much peril. Tsunade had been insistent the night before that he do so first thing in the morning and that he was sure to find what he needed at the tents that had temporarily been set up in the village centre to attend to such needs. It had been rather unfortunate that the shops that sold basic needs such as groceries etc. had been at the front of the village and destroyed very suddenly. Tsunade had given him enough to last for a few days tops, but he definitely needed to stock up as soon as possible. He had asked her initially if he should have instead moved his efforts towards helping rebuild the village and offering his services for taking up many vacant spots for missions, rather than getting supplies for Naruto. She had instantly proceeded to go on an incredibly long rant about how irresponsible Kakashi must be if he really thought he could just go off on missions and run around the village when he had a newborn child to look after and that he definitely would not be going on any such errands for a very long time. Kakashi was rather perturbed that he wasn't going to be in action for a long time, but he convinced himself that because this was a mission too he really shouldn't complain. He had assured Tsunade that he'd do as she said and put Naruto first and she had smiled triumphantly at him mid-rant, an emotion swimming in her eyes he was almost too afraid to properly identify.

He was shaken out of his thoughts when he noticed Naruto staring in awe at a butterfly that was fluttering rather closely to his face, his eyes moving around frantically to try and keep up with its white wings. As he continued walking down the dusty path towards where the supply tents were set up, he allowed himself a tiny moment to really take in just how much Naruto looked like his father. He could already tell just by looking at his shock of blond hair and bright blue eyes that he was going to be just as handsome and eye-catching as Minato was. They'd be like two peas in a pod before he knew it.

"Kakashi, is that you?" a voice called to him from a few metres ahead, pulling him out of his reminiscing. He looked up slowly, being incredibly reluctant to face anyone with Naruto in his arms so soon, and saw Gai, Asuma, Kurenai and Anko walking in a huddled group together towards him. It looked like it had been Asuma that had called out to him, his hand already in mid-wave.

Kakashi sighed slightly and moved towards them too, knowing that he would've had to face up to them and many others to come eventually.

They walked up to him with forced smiles, obviously trying to stay some-what cheerful despite their current circumstances. Their fake enthusiasm kind of made him want to puke. It was suffocating and just felt wrong.

"Hey, how are y-" Kurenai started to ask politely until she was rudely interrupted by the always loud-mouthed Anko.

"Not to be a pest or anything, 'Kashi, but why in Kami's name is there a freaking kid in your arms? Don't tell me you decided to have kids so soon?" she started in a jesting tone, not believing for a moment that Kakashi was anything more than asexual to pretty much everyone on this planet except his pervy books and knowing for sure he never would've done the deed with some chick, especially being careless enough to have produced that.

Everyone was silent while Kakashi stared back at them all, having not expected Anko to accidentally have stumbled onto pretty much his exact cover story so soon; it certainly threw him for a loop.

After such a long period of absolute silence, Gai finally decided he could not contain his usual loudness anymore and shouted at the top of his boisterous lungs, "SHE IS ACTUALLY CORRECT?! THAT YOUTH IS ACTUALLY YOUR MOST SOUGHT-AFTER LEGACY?!"

Kakashi cringed greatly at the fact that not only was Gai not using his inside-voice at all and seriously hurting his ears, but also everyone on the street had stopped to stare disbelievingly. Some appeared awed at the fact that the next generation of the great Hatake family was before their very eyes, while others seemed to look down on Kakashi for being so irresponsible despite his incredible heritage and having a child when he was still so young.

Annoyed at their judgmental stares, he gave them all a hard look, meeting every one of their stares until they had all turned back to whatever it was they had previously been doing, snatching sneaky glances here and there and slyly whispering to each other when they thought Kakashi wasn't looking.

He eventually turned back to the small group before him, giving Gai an annoyed stare. Gai had the graciousness to look a bit guilty for blurting such sensitive information at the top of his lungs.

Great, now everybody bloody knew. He sure had not expected something like that to happen at all.

The others remained silently shocked for a moment, their stares switching rapidly between Kakashi and Naruto in stunned disbelief. It looked like they were watching a tennis match between the two and Kakashi almost smirked behind his mask.

It was only mere seconds more before Kakashi and Naruto were both crowded by exuberant bodies, everyone rapidly firing questions like 'What's his name?' or 'Who's the mum?' or 'You really had a kid that young?' and so on and so forth before Naruto became overwhelmed by the noise and commotion and wailed bloody fucking again. Honestly, the habit was getting absolutely ridiculous.

Kakashi instantly turned a death glare on the now very silent gathering, proceeding to do what had become an almost instinctual habit and calmed the infant with gentle rocking and useless cooing.

Either he was getting much better at this or Naruto was starting to like him a bit more, because he almost instantly shut up, his face now much more calm as his still-developing eyes tried to focus in on the looming faces.

Kurenai broke the awkward silence by taking a step back from their personal space and saying in a quiet tone, "Gee, that kid really does calm down with you rather quickly. I've never seen someone able to do that so quickly."

"Yeah," Asuma spoke up once more, "I've seen my fair share of little ones in my time and even I haven't seen something like that. He had really started to get a decent wail going too."

Kakashi ignored the awkwardness he felt at the indirect praise and launched into answering all of their questions now that he and Naruto weren't being practically bombarded, telling them the cover story he and Tsunade had come up with, being sure not to leave a single important detail out. He couldn't help but be touched slightly at their concern for his predicament and their willingness to support him in any way they could. He almost smiled at them for what felt like the first time in a long time until Asuma ruined the moment by stating that he still didn't understand how Kakashi had gotten a kid. It all still just sounded way too crazy.

"Uh well gee, Asuma," Anko started off in a mocking tone, "I'd figure it would've happened the usual way. You know, boy meets girl, boy thinks girl's hot, boy then tries to-"

"Ok ok I know I know! Geez, Anko, you're such a creep sometimes, you know that?" Asuma retorted, his cheeks flaming slightly when Anko pointed out rather sarcastically just how stupid his question really sounded to everybody else.

They ended up bickering quite heatedly with each other, Kurenai trying to gently calm down the embarrassed Asuma trying to defend his pride and Gai loudly exclaiming just how unyouthful it was to fight amongst themselves when they were all fellow comrades and were meant to be tackling the flames of youth together.

Naruto's face started to screw up slightly at the loudness of the rapidly-escalating argument and Kakashi decided that enough was enough for now and snuck away in the commotion, an amused glint in his eye as he bounced the kid into a light nap and proceeded to go do what he went out to do in the first place.