Kakashi spends the rest of his recuperation in his hospital bed, obeying all medical instructions to the letter.
He can hardly avoid it, with sensei hovering over him every waking (and probably sleeping) moment.
Besides, that's the deal: if he cooperates with the medics, sensei keeps him updated on everything that's happening.
And there's a lot happening.
The ANBU uncover a massive base under Konoha, where Danzou has been training his own private army right under the Hokage's nose.
And that's only the tip of the iceberg.
Danzou kept extensive records, detailing his clandestine dealings with all kinds of shady groups, his plans for the future of Konoha… and his orchestration of the Third Shinobi World War. It's all right there on scrolls, which would be unbelievably arrogant on anyone else, but instead is just Danzou being Danzou.
How he started sowing the seeds of dissent.
How he learned that Konoha's White Fang was growing suspicious.
How he deliberately fed him false information and sent him on a one-way mission.
How he raged when his carefully orchestrated plans fell apart and Konoha took the blame for starting the war.
On and on it went, right up to his plans to recruit Kakashi, only days before his death.
"I guess father must have overheard him," Kakashi says.
"You knew about these plans?" sensei asks, horrified.
The Sandaime takes all these scrolls and plans and sordid agreements and rats out everyone else's secret societies, and in a few short weeks, the whole world is reeling with shock, because the war is over. What were they fighting about, the Sandaime asks everyone, gently cajoling. Shouldn't we all be working to get our own houses in order?
And wonder of wonders, it works. It's too soon after the last war, and no one really wants another one, so they draft some more treaties that no one's going to take seriously in a few years and… go home.
It's all tied up so neatly that no one seems to care that, once again, Kakashi is an orphan. Oh, this time his father is lauded as a hero, and his name is carved into the Memorial Stone, but… he's still dead.
So Kakashi doesn't fight his restriction to the hospital as much as he might have.
He absorbs all the news quietly, his body recovers, and he tries to avoid feeling anything about anything.
Eventually he is declared well enough to go home, and he spends the first hour and a half sobbing hysterically in his father's room while sensei tries to console him.
"Sorry," he mutters, after he finally calms down.
"You're sorry," sensei says flatly.
"For being so irrational."
"There is nothing irrational about being sad that your father died."
"He's a hero," Kakashi reminds him. "He saved the village, maybe the whole world, stopped a war… a death worthy of a shinobi."
"It's okay to still be sad."
The next morning, Kakashi goes down to breakfast and Jiraiya is there, eating whatever mystery concoction sensei is calling food today.
"Why are you here?" Kakashi asks, debating between the yellowish thing and the blackish thing.
"This happens to be my house," Jiraiya says, passing Kakashi a ration bar under the table.
"Really?" Kakashi looks around, observing the house with this new insight in mind. It does show elements of Jiraiya's style, in that it's opulent to the point of gaudiness, but does this mean Jiraiya is from a clan after all? Ninja housing in Konoha comes in two basic options: apartment or clan compound.
Jiraiya looks embarrassed. "Yeah, well, after the war when I finally had a bit of money, I decided I wanted a house, so I convinced my team to pool our money together and build this. And then Orochimaru refused to live in it, and Tsunade… left, so..." He shakes his head. "Actually, I don't even live here, really. I'm thinking about selling it."
Kakashi lets him babble, palming bites of ration bar when sensei isn't looking.
"I don't think it's helping Kakashi to live here," sensei says, interrupting whatever Jiraiya was saying.
"I just said I was thinking about selling it."
"So we're going to go look at apartments," sensei says, pointing a partially burned wooden spoon at Kakashi, looking like he's bracing for a fight.
Kakashi just shrugs. It's pretty much the same story as the last time he was orphaned, except with Jiraiya in the background. Having his own place isn't so bad. There's never any quiet when sensei is around, and the food is better.
"Well okay then," sensei says, looking a bit bewildered.
Kakashi goes to get dressed, and his body doesn't know what routine to follow. He puts his hitai-ate over a non-existent Sharingan again, and he tries to shoulder a tanto that blew up, and he ends up crying as quietly as he can into his pillow, hoping sensei doesn't come looking for him.
But no one comes, and he gets his face washed and his clothes on right and he meets sensei just as he's finishing cleaning up the disaster in the kitchen.
Sensei starts talking about how he found the perfect place, highlighting all the features he liked, and Kakashi tunes out the words, just listening to the comforting lilt of sensei's voice.
The neighborhood they end up in doesn't look much like what Kakashi remembers, but it's been a long time since he lived here. He keeps thinking that right up until the landlady lets them inside a pleasant, spacious two-bedroom apartment, with a well-appointed kitchen and a seating area for guests.
This is definitely not the one-room dive that Kakashi had last time. It's also totally inappropriate for one kid on a genin's salary.
"What's this?" he demands, interrupting the landlady extolling its features.
"What do you mean?" sensei asks, managing to look innocently confused. How does he do that?
"I can't afford this," Kakashi says. "And I don't need this much space."
Sensei frowns at him. "What are you talking about? I'll pay for it, of course."
Kakashi frowns right back. "You're going to pay two rents?"
"No…"
Then Kakashi gets it. "Oh, no. Absolutely not. We're not getting an apartment together."
"Why not?"
The landlady quietly excuses herself, which neither of them acknowledge.
"Because we can't."
"That's not a reason."
"But… but where will Kushina sleep?"
Sensei turns bright red. "Who told you…?"
Oops. "Jiraiya," Kakashi lies.
"We're not living together, Kakashi, whatever Jiraiya told you, and please don't tell me what that was, I don't want to know. And even if she wanted to visit, she could, um, stay with me."
"But I can't live with you!"
"Yes, you can."
"Well, I won't."
"You will."
"Won't."
"Will—what the hell am I doing? I'm buying this apartment, and you're living in this apartment, and that's the end of it."
Kakashi crosses his arms over his chest and glares. Sensei can't make him live here.
Both of them are still annoyed with the other and more or less storm into the house for dinner.
"Now what?" Jiraiya says, looking like he sorely regrets sticking around.
"I want to live here," Kakashi says.
"Absolutely not," sensei says. "And that's not even true, you hate it here."
"It's not that tacky," Kakashi says.
"Hey," Jiraiya says.
"That's not what I meant and you know it. Staying here is not an option."
"Then I want my own place."
"You are five years old, I'm not letting you get an apartment on your own."
"I'm six, and I know how to take care of myself!"
"Okay," Jiraiya says. "This conversation is over. Minato, take a walk."
"What?"
"You heard me. Get out. Eat something that isn't poisonous. Take a few deep breaths. The kid will still be here when you get back."
Sensei glares, but Jiraiya isn't impressed. "He'd better be!" he mutters as he leaves, slamming the door.
"Okay, I know what his problem is, now what's yours?" Jiraiya asks, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"What do you care?"
"I really, really don't. I can't stand kids and I have no interest in being a parent or a sensei."
"You are a sensei," Kakashi points out.
"Yes, thank you, I'm not senile yet. Maybe someday I'll tell you how our esteemed Hokage blackmailed me into the job, but Minato is so mature, most of the time" he glares at the door "that it could have been a lot worse. That boy was born forty years old."
Kakashi's stomach growls, and he decides he might as well make dinner while he waits for Jiraiya to get to the point.
"I can do that," Jiraiya says, once Kakashi starts fiddling with the stove.
"I'm not a baby!"
"Okay, okay, fine. You can't be worse than Minato."
Kakashi can't contain a tiny sound of amusement, because sensei really is a truly terrible cook.
"That doesn't mean you're getting out of talking to me."
"It's not really any of your business."
"Well, since it concerns my student, it unfortunately is."
"What, did you get lectures like this from the Nidaime?"
"Hey, I'm not that old—ugh, that's right, my student has a student. I am the Nidaime."
"Don't get too carried away," Kakashi says, reluctantly amused by Jiraiya's look of total dismay.
"Cute. Now, talk."
Kakashi focuses on the vegetables he's cutting. "What's there to say?"
"Any idiot can see you're lying through your teeth about wanting to stay here. So what's the truth? You didn't like the apartment Minato showed you?"
"It was fine," Kakashi says, decimating an innocent pepper.
"Uh huh. What was wrong with it?"
"Nothing was wrong with it." A dozen mushrooms meet a similar end.
"Okay."
"Sensei wants to live there with me," Kakashi says, stabbing the cutting board now that he's run out of vegetables. "You don't think that's weird?"
"Well you don't have any friends, so it's not like the other kids are going to make fun of you."
Kakashi glares at him.
"So what are you worried about?"
"That apartment," Kakashi says, dumping the vegetable puree into a saucepan, "is a family apartment. Sensei isn't my family. It's weird."
Jiraiya opens his mouth, but Kakashi talks right over him.
"And he has a girlfriend, he's going to have a real family someday, I don't want to… to get in the way, hanging around and… getting in the way." Everything's burning, but it doesn't matter, it would have tasted awful anyway.
Jiraiya stands up and turns the burner off. "Kakashi. Minato isn't going to just… wake up one day and forget about you."
"He will," Kakashi says. He was pretty fucked up after Obito and Rin died (understatement), but he remembers how excited sensei was when he found out he was going to be a father. "So it's better he not get too attached now. I don't want him to feel bad. Not that he should! It's a natural thing."
"Kid, that ship has sailed. You know he has an official reprimand on his record now? If Danzou hadn't died right when he did, he probably would have been demoted."
"What?"
"He just walked away from his post! In the middle of a battle! And yeah, it turned out to be a good thing, but there's no way he could have known about Danzou's conspiracy, he just heard you'd put yourself in a coma and came running."
Kakashi hadn't thought of it quite that way. "Well, that was irrational."
Jiraiya scrubs a hand over his face. "Yeah, tell me about it. The point is, he cares. About you. It's too late for takebacks."
Kakashi can feel himself starting to panic, sits down in the middle of the floor where he won't knock anything over by accident and rides it out, breathing and counting and counting and breathing until he feels calmer.
Jiraiya hands him a damp towel. "I'm disturbed by how good you are at handling that."
Kakashi shrugs, wiping his face. He's had years of practice, but he can't exactly tell Jiraiya that. "But what if something happens to me?"
Jiraiya's face goes very neutral. "What do you mean?"
"Do you think he'd be upset?"
"Yes, I'm sure he'd be… upset. Why?"
"I'm a ninja, it's a dangerous job." Kakashi frowns at the towel. "I don't want anyone to care about me. What if I died? There's nothing worse than being the one left behind."
Jiraiya gives him an extremely awkward pat on the back. "I'm afraid you can't control other people's feelings like that. You'll just have to do your best to always come back."
Kakashi's not sure he's ever been in this position. He's the protector, not the protectee. And he doesn't like it.
The door opens, and his head comes up as he tenses.
"Go on, get out of here, you get a reprieve for tonight," Jiraiya says.
Kakashi is up and sprinting out of the room before he's even finished the sentence, but he pauses just on the other side of the door, where he can listen without being seen.
"Did he say anything to you?" sensei asks anxiously.
Kakashi's chest feels tight.
"You have to stop smothering him, you're freaking him out," Jiraiya says.
Kakashi creeps away.
Jiraiya isn't there when he comes down to breakfast the next morning, but sensei is.
Kakashi hovers in the doorway.
"Come in and have some breakfast," sensei says, sounding very tired. "I won't make you leave if you don't want to."
Kakashi edges into the room, takes a seat at the opposite end of the table. "Where's Jiraiya-sensei?"
"Out. He didn't tell me where he was going."
"Oh."
Kakashi looks at the table, and the silence stretches.
It's finally broken when the door slams open, to their mutual relief.
"I swear, if this is just some perverted scheme to lure me back to your place, you're going to learn a whole new definition of pain, old man."
"Kushina?" sensei asks, sitting up and running a hand through his hair, making it stick up even more.
"Charming as ever," Jiraiya grumbles, leading their guest into the kitchen. "See? One missing victim—excuse me, boyfriend—as promised."
Kushina smacks him absently, and goes to give sensei a hug. "I wondered where you were hiding."
"Oh, well, I—"
"Shut up. Your sensei already told me everything. You know you can always ask me for help, right? I'm pretty great, you know."
Sensei gives Jiraiya wide eyes over Kushina's shoulder.
"And you must be Kakashi," she says.
He can't help cringing a little in his seat as she charges around the table at him.
"Aren't you adorable? I'm Kushina. Minato's told me all about you, of course, but he seems to think I'm going to scare you-" she glares at sensei over her shoulder "-which I'm not, right?"
"Um, no?" Kakashi says.
"Great, let's go then!"
She hauls him up out of his seat and out the door, and he decides not to question where they're going.
Sensei catches up to them after only a few steps, and he's soon smiling and making cow eyes at Kushina.
Kakashi wants to fall back and give them some space, but Kushina has a hand clamped around his wrist and it's not budging.
She consults a list she's carrying, and drags the two of them to an apartment complex.
"What do you think?" she asks.
"Er," sensei says.
Kakashi is just confused. Whose side is Jiraiya on here? On the one hand, Kushina is doing an excellent job distracting sensei, who seems to have forgotten Kakashi is even there, but on the other hand, this is still obviously a family apartment.
"I don't like the color," Kushina says. "Can we paint it?"
The landlord jumps at the abrupt address. "Uh, no."
"Well, on to the next one then," Kushina says, pulling Kakashi back out the door.
"What exactly are we doing?" sensei asks.
"Your sensei showed up at my door and told me you wanted to look at apartments, so we're looking at apartments," Kushina says.
"Well, but…" Sensei's whole face turns a brilliant, brick red. "Do-do you mean, like, together?"
Kushina whirls around, forcing Kakashi into an awkward hop-step to keep on his feet. "Of course! Though it was pretty cheap of you to send your sensei to ask me, you know!" She pauses. Ominously. "Unless you don't want to live with me."
"Of course I do! I mean, if you want to. I just thought it was… kind of soon… I wasn't sure if I should ask you yet."
"Namikaze, you know that when I make up my mind, I never go back on it. I said you were the one, and I meant it. Didn't you?"
"Yes! I-I would love to get an apartment with you, Kushina."
Kakashi can't feel his hand anymore. "Can I go?"
"No. What do you think about this one?"
The only difference from the last two is a sort of office-area off to one side. "I'm not living here," Kakashi says.
"It's not so bad," Kushina says. "Could use more orange."
Kakashi tries to escape again, but he thinks her hand might be fused to his wrist. "There's only two bedrooms," he finally says.
"Um, Minato and I can share," she says. She turns to sensei and whispers—loudly— "What have you been teaching him? Doesn't he live with your perverted sensei?"
"But your kid!" Kakashi insists, glaring at sensei. He's sure Jiraiya tattled on him after he left.
"Did you tell him I'm pregnant?" Kushina demands.
The landlord looks like he wants to be anywhere besides this room.
"No, he came up with that on his own!"
"Well," Kushina says, "how about that other room then?"
"What?"
"What?"
Growling, Kushina seizes sensei's wrist with her other hand and drags them both into the study. "See? We can put a bed in here, no one wants to do boring paperwork, anyway. Then we have a room, you have a room, the non-existent baby has a room, how's that, huh?"
Kakashi glares at the rubbish bin. He doesn't have a good argument against that, at least nothing that would work against Kushina. He didn't know her that well, because he was disappearing into ANBU when sensei introduced them the first time around, but he well remembers that she's a force of nature. Just like her son.
"…fine," he grumbles.
Sensei gets this uncomfortably blissful expression on his face, leans over to kiss Kushina—right over Kakashi's head!—and Kakashi already regrets this.
"Guess what, sensei!?"
Kakashi rolls his eyes as sensei barges into Jiraiya's house and then his personal space, catches an expression of pure relief on Jiraiya's face before sensei tackles Jiraiya right off his chair.
"Yes, yes, didn't I tell you that I was an expert on women?" Jiraiya grumble. "Calm down."
Sensei does not calm down. "We should celebrate!"
"As long as you're not cooking," Kushina teases.
Kakashi huffs and goes to look through the cupboards. They probably don't even have any food.
"We can go out," sensei decides. "My treat."
"Deal," Jiraiya and Kushina say at the same time.
Sensei gives them both a wary look.
Well, Kakashi thinks, at least he has a jounin's salary.