No one is cruel enough to tell Naruto exactly what happened, or openly blames him, but he blames himself enough for all of them put together. He drags himself around camp, when he bothers to get up at all.
The fight has devastated them. Not only are they down a quarter of their fighting force, but it seems to have sapped all their strength and will. If Obito finds them now, they'll probably just lay down and die.
"Maybe we should find a big hole in the ground and leave me there," Naruto says bitterly, late one night when they're as healed, physically, as they're going to get. There are more scars than usual, now that they have to make do without Sakura.
And it's not doing anything for Naruto's mood that everyone except him has some visible reminder of the fight against the Kyuubi. Kakashi got off lightly; his face was only blistered, and the scars will be nothing compared to the rest of his face. Ino was struck across the back, and any movement is agonizing for her. Neji can't use his left leg at all. He's been spending time with Raidou, trying to see if he can create a puppet replacement for himself. Raidou himself is severely burned across almost a third of his body. He had to be carried off the battlefield.
Even Gaara didn't escape unscathed. When his sand shield failed at a critical moment, he tried to catch a tail in his bare hands. The extreme heat reacted badly to his sand armor and there are chunks of glass fused with his skin.
It has to be incredibly painful, but Gaara seems to be enjoying the effect, forever holding his hands over the fire to watch the light reflecting off them.
It's Neji and Gaara who break free of the general apathy and get them up and moving. They have to teleport to a new camp before Obito can find them, they remind everyone. Eventually it becomes less trouble to follow along than to put up with their nagging. By unspoken agreement, they find a cave with a stream, where they can (hopefully) stay for some time, so any healing of the non-physical kind that can happen will have the chance to.
Two weeks later, Ino asks for a private word with Kakashi.
"I don't have the range my… my father does. Did," she says, speaking too fast and mostly to the wall as she attempts to find a comfortable position to sit in. Her back did finally scar over, but the scars have seriously limited her mobility, and still pain her greatly.
Kakashi lets her fidget and babble. He's not going to deny her whatever small comforts she can find.
"But he showed me how to reach Shikaku-san, and even if I can't quite communicate across it, I know the connection's there. But this morning… it wasn't." She bites her lip, which is raw and bloody. "It could mean nothing. I could have made a mistake somehow."
"But you think he's dead," Kakashi says heavily.
"Yeah. I didn't want to say anything… and it doesn't mean Kumo has fallen…"
"Thank you, Ino. You were right to tell me this."
She slowly and painfully lurches out of the tent.
Kakashi explains the situation that night, everyone huddled around their fire in hopes it will warm their spirits as well as their bodies. They even put together a special pallet for Raidou, so he can hear the news at the same time as the rest of them.
"So… is this it?" Anko asks, after a painfully long silence. "I wouldn't bet on us in another attack like that last one."
Shikamaru shifts, but doesn't say anything. He barely reacted to the news of his father's death. Kakashi is worried about him. He's worried about all of them. Including himself.
"Just say it," Kakashi says. "We have to consider anything at this point."
"I was just wondering… what happens if Naruto dies," Shikamaru says, sending an apologetic look at his former classmate. "Obviously if the Akatsuki capture him, they can extract the Kyuubi, but…" he can't bring himself to finish.
"Would that help?" Naruto asks, so calm and serious and accepting that Kakashi's battered heart twists in his chest. It's morbidly fascinating how, just when he thinks he's taken as much emotional hurt as he can, something happens to twist the kunai even more.
"No," Kakashi says. "Inside a Jinchuuriki, the bijuu is at least somewhat protected. If the Kyuubi is… released… it will have no defense against the Uchiha. It doesn't think or reason, and they would simply have to follow the trail of destruction and snap it up. It would be a matter of days, at best."
There's another agonizing silence.
"Well, what about the dark hole idea," Naruto says. "Or maybe the middle of the ocean. Can a bijuu drown?"
"We'll sleep on it," Kakashi says firmly, because he can't listen to this for one more second and retain any shred of sanity.
The next morning Kakashi goes to check on Raidou and finds him with his tanto through his stomach.
How did he even manage to move enough to do that? Kakashi wonders. They've been taking turns feeding him, because he can't bend his arms enough to reach his mouth.
He's still standing there an hour and a half later, when Neji and Gaara come looking for him. His face feels as empty as his soul, but they must see something worrying there because they don't leave him alone for a second.
He thought it was bad having to call another assembly so soon to break the news, but then he sees Naruto, who looks almost jealous. That gets a full quarter-turn of the metaphorical kunai.
Two days later it's Ino cold in her tent, though she finds some kind of plant to do the job. Kakashi can't decide if that's better or worse. She looks like she's sleeping. Shikamaru is the one who finds her. They went to sleep together like they have every night since that last fight, curled around the empty space where Sakura used to be, but only one of them wakes up.
Kakashi is honestly doubting whether they'll last the week, a prospect he faces with guilty anticipation, when Naruto almost gives them all heart attacks, screaming his head off in a passable imitation of his youthful exuberance.
"What the fuck, Naruto," Kakashi says, once it's clear that they aren't actually under attack. He cuffs him, a little off-center because his vision is shit, despite Sakura's efforts, but Naruto pretends not to notice. Or maybe he genuinely doesn't.
"I had a vision!" Naruto announces.
"You?" Neji scoffs automatically.
There are a few half-hearted chuckles, surprising themselves that they're still capable of such a sound. The resilience of the human spirit is amazing.
"Yeah, Neji," Naruto says, refusing to be daunted. "I had a dream last night, a blond man and a red-haired woman, get this, they said they're my parents, their names are—"
"Minato and Kushina," Kakashi finishes with him.
Naruto rounds on him. "Wait, you knew that?"
Kakashi blinks, painfully. Hadn't he ever told Naruto about his parents? He must have forgotten, what with all the… everything.
"Well, it doesn't matter," Naruto says. "I know now. The point is, my Mum says that there are secrets in her old village that can help us. So we have to go to the Land of Eddies."
He looks ready to pick up and go right this second.
The remnants of their group look to Kakashi. He looks at Gaara, who gives a minute shrug.
Well, Kakashi's done stupider things on shakier grounds. Anything to put off having to think. "Sure, okay. We'll have to walk straight, though. I don't think sensei left any markers there. He visited once, but that was before he mastered the Hiraishin. And we can't keep depending on Gaara to scatter them across the sand. From what I remember, it rains pretty much nonstop there."
Gaara makes a face. "Water," he hisses.
A tiny smile tugs at the corner of Kakashi's mouth. Maybe he's not quite finished yet, either.
At least they have a purpose now, farfetched as it may be, and they make good time to the ruins of the once great village. Their most severely injured members were left behind, so that helps.
Kakashi hates himself for even thinking that.
Naruto's enthusiasm is doing wonders for morale, and Neji and Gaara are picking up the rest of the slack. Neji wasn't able to deconstruct the puppetmaster jutsu just from that arm, and Kakashi was too checked out to help, so Gaara came up with the idea of making one out of sand. It still depends entirely on Gaara's chakra to move, so the group has come up with a game of trying to distract Gaara so the leg moves—or doesn't move—at awkward times and Neji falls.
Sometimes ninja humor is a little strange.
They don't encounter Obito.
Kakashi dredges up every shred of his knowledge about seals to try and recreate the one Jiraiya-sensei created to suppress the Kyuubi chakra, because Naruto won't give him a moment's peace until he does. Towards the end he was just painting whatever seal came to mind. He has to remember to tell Neji and Gaara that Naruto has a storage seal for water across his left hip. They'll probably think that's funny.
Hopefully Obito's still running around the desert looking for them, and not thinking of some way to just kill them all from a distance or some other bit of nastiness. They should have tried striking out in random directions before, to keep from becoming too predictable.
Well, it hardly matters now.
Naruto is fixated on his goal, obviously pinning all his hopes on some miracle from his parents.
Kakashi can't begin to imagine what could help them at this point, unless it's a jutsu that causes everyone with Uchiha blood to suddenly drop dead and everyone else to miraculously come back to life, but whatever keeps Naruto alive and fighting, he'll support it.
The two don't talk to each other, being together only highlights the empty spaces where another teammate should be, so it's a surprise when Naruto corners him one night when they've almost reached the coast.
"I have something for you," Naruto says.
"Um, okay," Kakashi says intelligently.
"I saw you today," Naruto says.
Kakashi winces. Everyone saw him fail to see a rock outcropping right in his blind spot, clock his head, and fall off a cliff like a raw genin. If Gaara hadn't caught his with his sand, he'd probably have died there, in such a ridiculous and pathetic way.
He wonders if he'd have any luck insisting they leave him behind, now that he's become a liability.
"Itachi gave this to me," Naruto says. "Before… well. Before."
It's so wholly unexpected that it snaps Kakashi out of his downward spiraling thoughts. "What?"
Naruto scrunches up his face the way he does when he's trying to do precise chakra work, sparking off fond and painful memories of the early days of Team—of teaching Naruto and Sakura. Then he starts to cough, and by what machination Kakashi can't even imagine he coughs up a live crow.
"Wha—" Kakashi starts to say, then he sees that the crow, impossibly, has a Sharingan eye. A Mangekyou Sharingan.
His blood runs cold.
"Dunno what he thought I was going to do with it," Naruto mumbles, shoving the crow into Kakashi's limp hands. "I thought maybe… yeah."
He leaves.
Kakashi truly doesn't know if he could ever bring himself to wield a Sharingan eye again. But it's a moot point, because without Sakura there's no one with the skill to perform such a delicate surgery. He picks up the crow, which watches him calmly.
He snaps its neck.
He burns the body, because whatever the secrets of this eye, he can't trust anyone with them.
Naruto never brings the matter up, either out of complete—and misplaced—trust in Kakashi, or because he's distracted by their arrival at the village ruins.
Naruto has them crawling over the whole place, poking at everything, until Anko literally falls into a vast hidden library of advanced seal techniques. Naruto throws himself into bookwork with the most enthusiasm he's ever shown for the task, roping everyone else into helping him.
Kakashi, whose remaining eye isn't up to the task of deciphering faded writing in half-light, volunteers for guard duty. Gaara, who it turns out can't read kanji, joins him.
"We're making our final stand here," Gaara says. It isn't a question.
"Yes," Kakashi says. "They don't have the spirit to go on if Naruto doesn't pull off this miracle."
"You'd be surprised," Gaara says. "As long as you continue on, so will they."
Kakashi gives him an incredulous look.
"It's true," Gaara says. "I am also a Kage, a match for you in battle, and certainly the stronger now."
Kakashi doesn't take offense to this bluntness, it's just Gaara's way.
"But it is you the others look to, and are inspired by. I, myself, am not immune to it. When they see how much you have suffered, but you are still determined to stay true to yourself and fight on, they want to do the same."
To his horror, Kakashi thinks he might be blushing. Is that really what he looks like from the outside? It's a good thing they can't see inside his head. It's only the sure knowledge that this suffering is temporary, that it can't be long now, that keeps him going. "I'm not anything special," he mumbles.
"Yes," Gaara says, looking him straight in the eye, "you are."
There's nothing to say to that, and Kakashi doesn't even try.
It's a tense few weeks while everyone except the two Kage comb frantically through scrolls.
"Sensei! Sensei!"
A bittersweet smile crosses Kakashi's face. Only Naruto calls him that now, and honestly, it's a little painful to hear the respectful address when he so spectacularly fucked it up, but Kakashi would never deny Naruto any small comfort he could give him.
Naruto skids to a stop in front of him. "I found it!"
"Well, let's call everyone together then," Kakashi says.
It doesn't take long before they're all assembled. There are too few of them.
"This," Naruto says, "is the same scroll my Dad used to deconstruct the Hiraishin."
"So?" Shikamaru asks. "We already know how to do that."
Naruto scowls, reminded of his own failure to perform the technique. "Well, I knew it was important, but I didn't understand why, not at first. I don't know anything about this seal stuff." He falters for a moment, probably remembering Jiraiya. "But then, but then!"
His enthusiasm is infectious, and Kakashi can't help but smile a little.
"So, the Hiraishin works by bending space, so instead of having to run all the way from one place to another, they're actually right next to each other," Naruto says.
Kakashi winces. That isn't how it works at all. And explains a lot about Naruto's failure to perform it.
"But it turns out, space isn't the only thing that you can bend," Naruto says. "You can also bend time."
Kakashi gets it right away. He sits bolt upright in his chair. "What!?" He reaches automatically for the scroll, cursing when he remembers his disability.
"I mean, it just looks like a bunch of squiggles to me," Naruto says. "But Mom and Dad both promise that that's what it means."
Well, Kakashi has taken advice from worse sources. "Why hasn't anyone used it before?" he asks.
"This is all forbidden jutsu," Naruto says. "There's a bunch of warnings about destroying the fabric of the universe and shit. But since we're totally fucked anyway, I don't see why we shouldn't try it."
A fair point.
"It also requires a lot of power, and I mean a lot," Naruto says. "I'll have to be the one to actually cast the jutsu, and I don't think I can bring more than one person back with me."
"I'm lost," Tenten says. "Bring who? Back where?"
Naruto makes an impatient noise. "Weren't you listening? Back in time!"
There's a moment of utter silence, as the room holds its collective breath, and then everyone starts talking at once.
Kakashi lets it go on for five minutes, and then he stands.
It seems Gaara was right, as usual, because everyone immediately quiets.
"Obviously this is a dangerous, forbidden jutsu, and for good reason," Kakashi says. "That fact is not in dispute. The only question that matters is: are we going to do this?"
Around the circle, heads move. Then there's a chorus of slightly embarrassed affirmatives as Kakashi futilely squints in the dimming light.
"Well, then." Kakashi gives Naruto his full attention. "What do we do?"
They clear out a large cave to use for the seal array. It really does rain constantly here, and they can't risk any lines being smudged. They check and double-check each other's work, and Kakashi is constantly reminding them to take time for things like food and sleep. The irony is not lost on him.
It's all going so smoothly that Kakashi is starting to freak out. It's a genuine relief when Naruto comes looking for him one night, shuffling his feet like he used to when he had to confess to some childish misdeed. Kakashi tugs him inside the bare stone room he is sharing with Neji and Gaara. They're currently inside, but he doesn't have any secrets from them anyway.
"So I was right that I have to be the one to cast it," Naruto says. "But I don't think I can be the one who goes back."
Kakashi doesn't know what he expected, but this wasn't it. So really, that's why he should have expected it.
Anyway.
All the talk the last few weeks has been around who will be lucky—or unlucky—enough to accompany Naruto back in time.
"Shikamaru figured out this bit at the end," Naruto says. "Only the spirit can go back, and you can't go back further than your own lifetime. And… and only one spirit can exist in a single moment in time, so you'll have to… overwhelm your younger spirit. I think that's a polite way of saying kill."
No wonder this is a forbidden jutsu, Kakashi thinks.
"We also found that the you in this time, well, you die. And we've already decided that I can't die," Naruto says. "Hopefully, this time will never exist, after we—I mean you—fix things, but we don't know for sure. You might start a completely new timeline, and I can't abandon my responsibility to this one."
Kakashi wants to appreciate his student's maturity, reasoning this out instead of shouting about the injustice of it all, and selflessly offering to stay behind, but… "What do you mean 'you'?"
Naruto has the temerity to roll his eyes at him. "Sensei, the only one who didn't know it would be you going back is you. You're the obvious choice."
It hadn't been obvious to him. Kakashi needs a minute to muster his arguments for that issue. "Naruto, you can't bear the entire responsibility for this future on your own. And… you know there isn't much hope."
"I know," Naruto says, trying out a weak smile. "It's not only that. It's… whoever goes back, they'll fix everything, we'll all live long and happy lives."
Kakashi highly doubts that, but he can't ruin Naruto's dreams.
"But not for the person who goes back. They'll have to remember all of this, the way things could have gone. And sensei… I don't want to. I want to be happy." He raises eyes gone shiny with tears. "Is that so bad?"
Kakashi smiles at him, decision made. "That's what I want for you, too. Of course I'll go."
"And…" Naruto looks at Gaara, guiltily. "We think it would be best if you go, too. You have the best chance of withstanding the kind of power we're going to call up."
Gaara inclines his head, accepting the task with dignity.
"What about me?" Neji asks.
Kakashi feels a pang. He and Gaara and Neji have been living in each other's pockets for over a year now, and it will be very strange to leave one of their number behind.
"Are you sure you can't manage three?" Neji asks.
Naruto gives the three of them a long look. "For what we're asking you to do… I'll have Shikamaru take another look at the equations."
They stand in slightly awkward silence for a moment.
"I'll just go give them the message," Neji says. "Come on, Gaara."
"I wanted to sleep," Gaara says, but lets himself be dragged out, anyway.
Naruto chuckles weakly. "Subtle."
"Oh, you wanted to talk to me alone," Kakashi says, wanting to smack himself for his obliviousness.
"It's just…" Naruto is silent for a long time. "Sasuke."
Kakashi can't help his snarl at the sound of that name.
"I know, and… I'm not defending him, or what's he's done, but… he wasn't always like that. You remember, don't you, sensei?"
When he lets himself think of those days, Kakashi finds himself dwelling on the seeds of arrogance, or obsession, that he'd failed to give the proper attention to. But he is self-aware enough to know that his perceptions might be colored by more recent events. He settles for a neutralish grunt.
"Please, sensei, try… try to save him?"
What Kakashi wants to do is run a blade through his traitorous heart. If he's younger it will only make it easier. But Naruto is shouldering an enormous burden, and Kakashi can't in good conscience deny him this one request. "Alright."
The raw gratitude on Naruto's face is too painful to look at. "Thank you."
"You don't need to ask," Kakashi says to the wall. "You need only order."
"What do you mean?"
"Well," Kakashi says, darkly amused at the irony, "it seems that you are to be the Nanadaime Hokage."
He doesn't even try to face up to whatever is on Naruto's face just then, just chucks the filthy, ripped hat in the general direction of his head.
After that, it seems like Kakashi blinks and then he's standing in the center of a huge seal, the most complex he's ever seen, stark naked and wondering if that was really necessary. It's cold in here.
Gaara, who technically is the one in the exact center of the array, looks downright miserable. They hadn't even let him keep his sand, concerned that it would interfere in the process in some unspecified way, and the desert boy is shivering.
"Don't forget to destroy the library," Kakashi says. "And all evidence of this array."
Shikamaru rolls his eyes. "Yes, mother, geez."
By universal agreement—behind Kakashi's back, of course—everyone will continue to defer to Kakashi until his actual departure, at which point Naruto's unofficial appointment will officially begin. Kakashi's just glad that he remembered to hand off the hat. Anything's better than forcing Naruto to retrieve it from his corpse.
Naruto places both palms on the ground, in the circles inscribed for that purpose, and begins pouring his chakra into the seal.
Kakashi watches, fascinated in spite of himself, as the lines and words inscribed on the floor seem to rise up and flow into Gaara's body. It has to be painful, but he grits his teeth and doesn't voice a word of complaint.
"You'll do it, right?" Tenten says.
Kakashi looks at her.
"You'll do better this time?"
Kakashi opens his mouth to reply, and dies.