Kakashi was back on the battlefield by the time he reached his fourteenth birthday. He returned to Konohagakure less than a month later. Not for rest or recuperation- rather, it was to face a threat greater even than the enemy nations they fought in this now waning war.

And the next time Kakashi entered his clearing, it was not for training. The date was October 11, and Kakashi's training area was destroyed. He was there to pick up the pieces. Fallen trees and fallen bodies littered the ground. Blood tainted the stream.

The Fox attack had been swift, frightening, and devastating. The aftermath, draining and disheartening. Clearing debris, transporting the injured, gathering and identifying bodies: it was slow, painful work.

His sensei, Minato, was gone, having sacrificed his life to save the village. And now Kakashi was truly alone.

Death had stolen the last of his precious people. He wanted to scream, to cry, to shake his fist in the face of cruel fate.

Because however powerful he became, however many jutsus he learned, it was never enough to save the people he cared about. Perhaps it would never be enough.

But the fourteen-year-old did not scream, or cry, or shake his fist. Instead, he aided in his village's recovery as stoically as one would expect from Sharingan Kakashi, war hero and ANBU. Through the ordeal, he found comfort in one fact. He would never lose another precious person. Not again.

Death could not take what he did not have.

Eleven-year-old Iruka wandered the disaster zone, picking through foliage and digging through smaller pieces of debris.

All his life he had trained for war. Yet when war came to his village, he'd not even been allowed to fight.

Pulled from the battlefield and separated from his recently-returned parents, Iruka was left with no role except to count the dead. And he'd had to pester the ninja in charge of clean-up to get even that job.

His task was fairly simple. When Iruka came across a body, or a piece of one, he marked the area with a small chakra-infused flag for the recovery team to collect.

The boy shivered in the autumnal wind, which howled as mournfully as the spirit of village. Konoha had won the battle against the Nine Tailed Demon Fox. But where was the triumph? Where was the glamour?

Faced with grotesque remains of what were once living, breathing, humans… falling in a blaze of glory during battle suddenly didn't seem so romantic a prospect

The air was thick with ash, smoke, and acrid Fox-chakra. It stung Iruka's eyes and burned his throat. He suppressed his coughs, afraid that if he opened his mouth the contents of his stomach would escape. Sick as he felt, he didn't wish to stop the search.

If asked, Iruka might have admitted that he was searching for more than just bodies. Mom and dad had not come home last night. The boy was sure they must have stayed out all night to help aid the wounded. They must have. And if he kept his eyes open, he just might find them.

Iruka found them. Or, at least, he found what was left.

Kakashi gave his report to the Sandaime, shoulders slumping with exhaustion. As tired as he was, he couldn't help but notice how deeply weary Sarutobi looked. The elder seemed to have aged a decade over the course of one night.

In the middle of his report, a recovery team arrived to drop off another list of names.

Sarutobi scanned the list of dead shinobi, his expression tight and inscrutable. "Be sure to make a copy of this list for the engravers," he ordered finally. "They will need these names for the memorial."

The team's leader hesitated. "Do you want them to have… every name on this list, Lord Hokage?"

"Of course," Sarutobi replied with a raised brow. "Why wouldn't I?"

"Well," the shinobi gave the Hokage a significant look, "Umino Kajiki and Koeda are on that list."

The leader lifted his chin slightly. "…And?"

"And... isn't the memorial for Konoha ninja only?" A couple of the recovery squad team members nodded at their captain's remark. "Kajiki's name, at least, should not go to the engravers… He is not Leaf."

Sarutobi frowned and his reply was unyielding. "Umino Kajiki has served Konoha faithfully these past fifteen years. He purchased his place on the memorial with his blood. His name stays on that list."

"Yes, my lord." The captain sighed and left room.

Kakashi noted that they were speaking of Iruka's parents. Guess all the kid's training was for nothing; they didn't even live long enough to celebrate their anniversary. But Minato-sensei had been right after all. Umino Kajiki would sooner die for Konoha than betray it.

Some time after the Kyuubi attack, word was received that the Third Great Shinobi War had come to an end. The news encouraged the spirit of a village so recently decimated by the demon fox.

After nearly six years of constant warfare, peace had become a figment from a distant past. Indeed, for the younger generation, peace was something they only heard about secondhand from older siblings.

Iruka- five years old when the war began and with no siblings to enlighten him about the time "before the war" while his parents were away- could only stare blankly at the messenger who proclaimed the good news, not quite able to grasp the significance.

He knew war was the reason his parents couldn't be with him most of the time, why he took care of the house and cooked his food alone even back when he needed a chair to reach the stovetop. They often said "after the war" they would be together again.

If he couldn't have that, then what good was peace anyhow?

For Kakashi "before the war" was a vague memory, a barely glowing ember that smoldered down a little further with every blood soaked battlefield he helped create. He had been…was it eight or nine?...when the fighting officially began. He couldn't remember, and really it didn't matter, since he had fought and served during the tension and unofficial skirmishes that began long before.

War was his life. The only thing at which he knew he excelled. The only purpose he'd ever really had for existing.

For now, peace meant that he and his comrades were free to return, rest, and help rebuild their broken village. Beyond that, he just wasn't sure.

When Kakashi finally found the time to practice his katas in the forest, he was exasperated to find another dead body that had escaped the retrieval team's notice. Shinobi had been stumbling across body parts for days, but this was the first intact corpse he'd come across.

He approached the bedraggled form and was instantly on guard when he noticed the lack of stench. If this were a kyuubi victim, it should be decomposing already.

The body lay sprawled facedown close to the bank of the stream. Before getting any closer, Kakashi cast his chakra around, checking for any enemies that may be using the body as bait. Sensing it was clear he advanced quickly, as his sharp eyes remained alert for signs of traps.

His eyes widened when he realized the "dead" body was in fact the still-breathing form of Umino Iruka. When Kakashi placed his fingers on the boy's neck, he was relieved to feel a strong pulse. "Hey kid, wake up."

Two taps on the boy's face brought him back to the consciousness. He squinted up at the jounin, confused. "What are you doing here?"

"The real question is what are you doing here?" The jounin had been looking forward to have his spot to himself once more.

"I guess I fell asleep." Iruka sat up with a groan and rubbed his face tiredly, causing dirt to streak onto his face. Fallen leaves had gotten caught in his hair and his clothes were damp from stream water, giving him a decidedly pathetic look.

"You were training again?" Kakashi guessed.

He nodded miserably in response, staring at his hands with a scowl. "I still haven't learned that technique. But I won't stop trying."

"Go home, kid," Kakashi sighed. If he didn't stop him soon, the pre-genin would be risking chakra exhaustion. "This is my training ground, anyway."

"I don't see your name on it," Iruka replied tiredly, casting a half-hearted glare at the jounin as he echoed the words from the first day.

"You are such a child." Kakashi rolled his eyes.

But Iruka was back to ignoring him. Instead, he decided that wasting his dwindling reserves on beginning the jutsu again was somehow a good idea.

A gloved hand grabbed the child's wrist. "You will stop this now, or you will force me to break your hand and make you stop."

Iruka looked panicked. "No, don't! I can't practice this jutsu with a broken hand!"

"That's the idea."

"But I only have three days left!"

"Three days?"

"Until my parents' anniversary, dummy!" Iruka cried in exasperation. "Were you even listening at all?"

Kakashi's shoulders slumped. Had no one broken the news to the kid? Surely he would have figured it out by now. "Listen to me, Iruka. Your parents are dead."

"So?" He asked, his voice thick and tremulous.

"I know you don't want to believe…" The jounin paused and furrowed his brow. "Wait…what?"

"I said I was going to learn the jutsu for their anniversary, so I'm going to learn it for their anniversary." Iruka tugged experimentally, testing the strength of the grip on his wrist, but pointedly keeping his watery eyes anywhere but on the other ninja. "That…that other stuff doesn't matter."

"Other stuff" was an unusual euphemism for death.

The jounin stared at him for a moment. "All right, kid. I get it," Kakashi said, releasing his hold on the boy's slender wrist. "But, you still need to go home for today before you pass out from chakra exhaustion."

"I can't," Iruka insisted. "There's not much time, I'm not leaving."

"So what do you plan on doing, then?" Kakashi growled. "Train here until you're so far gone you end up in the hospital? Are you that selfish? The hospital is filled beyond capacity with Kyuubi victims, they don't need to babysit some brat who's too dense to know when to stop training. Just go home."

"I can't," the boy choked back a sob, "There's no one at home. And there's never going to be anyone there. Everything there reminds me of them. I can't do it, Kakashi-san, I can't. I don't want to be alone."

"You're not the only one to lose people, kid. This isn't easy on anyone." The teen sighed. This was rather awkward. He wished the pre-genin didn't have to be so melodramatic.

Iruka sniffled, furiously wiping at his eyes. "I know. I…I know you're alone too. And that your dad killed himself…or a character assassinated him…or something." He looked up with wide brown eyes, as though he'd just realized something important. "Maybe that's why you're so mean."

Kakashi's face hardened. "Don't presume to know anything about me."

"Well, it's only a guess," Iruka pouted. "I just figured, if you were mean for no reason at all, Minato-ojisan wouldn't 've liked you so much."

"Sensei talked about me?" Kakashi remarked, and to his vast annoyance, his voice chose that exact moment to crack. It was the whole puberty thing. Kakashi was not getting emotional. He was not.

"Only all the time." Iruka sighed. "He said if I looked underneath, I'd see you really aren't just a big jerk, like I thought." The boy gave him a sideways glance, holding just a touch of defiance. "I don't see it."

Kakashi frowned and looked away, his thoughts on his deceased sensei, the closest thing he'd had to a father ever since his own gave up on life and left him.

Minato had asked Kakashi to be nice to the boy.

The copy ninja sighed. He wasn't always a good listener.

"There are lots of things you don't see, kid," Kakashi finally replied to Iruka's comment. "Like the fact that you keep messing up that jutsu because you don't put enough thought into molding your chakra the right way."

The pre-genin gave him a startled stare. "What…?"

"You're so focused on getting your hand signs exactly right, that you don't concentrate on what your body is doing with your chakra," the teen elaborated. "The whole point of using those signs is to train yourself to manipulate your chakra system a certain way. With the more elementary signs, that can happen almost without conscious effort, but the more advanced hand signs require you to actively mold your chakra. That's why they don't teach them in the Academy."

"...Oh," was all the young boy could think to say.

"As exhausted as you are, it's impossible for you to try right now. That's why you need to go home, eat something, and get a good night's rest. No one can push themselves indefinitely without serious consequences. You have to take care of your body, idiot."

"But…you don't need to sleep," Iruka protested. "That's what everyone says."

"Of course," Kakashi sighed. "And I don't need to breathe either."

"For real?" Iruka's eyes widened in an awed expression.

"No."

"...Oh."

Just a note on the timeline: The entire story takes place in the course of just over four months: early June to mid October

~Ch 1 begins early June, a week after Iruka's 11th birthday (May 26th).
~Ch 2 has Kakashi leaving one week later, then returning two months later to recover from typhoid, making it early August. He suffers for three weeks in the hospital, and after getting out, hopes to be back on the battlefield in two weeks, in time for his 14th birthday (Sept. 15).
In the two months and three weeks since he last saw Iruka, the pre-genin has opened the scroll and has been trying to learn the jutsu on his own. (If Naruto can learn a forbidden jutsu in less than a day, I don't think it's stretching it to say that Iruka could get as far as he got given almost three months time)
~Ch 3 takes place during Kakashi's two week reconditioning in September.
~Ch 4 we find out that Kakashi did make it back to the field by mid September, but returned to Konoha because of the Kyuubi attack (Oct. 10). The rest of the chapter takes place in the days immediately afterwards.

Once again, a most heartfelt thank you to my reviewers, Reidluver, yure-chan, InARealPickle, Ally Plz, jumpingbeans480, Rangerfan58, Prescripto13, the2ndpenguin, Victoria Levi, XcrazyXookamiX, iNsAnE nO bAkA, Ir1s, Auphora66, umino-gaara, dk-joy, and Antimatterannihilation.