Kakashi's POV. Happy Thursday!
"Kakashi," you glance up from your book to gaze at the Hokage as she stands menacingly above your hospital bed. Her blond hair is well kempt, indicating she's at least slept since you got out of surgery. You try to not feel a twinge of guilt at the blisters of chakra burns on her fingertips, because she can still pummel you. You hate being bedridden for this very fact—scary people with fists of doom can sneak up on you and you can't even get away. Sakura didn't even defend you, she's just napping happily under your arm.
"…Yes, Hokage-sama?" If you play innocent, she won't yell at you.
"You should know better by now than to come home so completely mashed up—I would much rather treat a team-full of lightly beaten up ANBU than feverishly work to save the life of a masochist such as yourself. You are lucky I'm very good at what I do, otherwise you'd never be able to throw shuriken Left Style ever again. Your arm, from the elbow down to your wrist, came to me far more floppy than it is now. Idiot." You scowl at her—you were conscious for that conversation with her, your arm was mostly working fine. It just hurt like hell. She scowls right back at you.
"Your ANBU mission clearance is being revoked, and you're also being taken off active duty for the time being. You need some time to have that shoulder heal, and I can't have you killing yourself in the prime of life." Her voice is calm, her eyes level, as she takes away your family's livelihood. Sakura can't possibly be the breadwinner for the six of you, she already works too much. Missions haven't been bringing as much as they used to, not even for you, the Copy Nin. And you don't have any other trade than being a field operative. You could teach, but then you'd have the same hours as Sakura, no one would be home with the kids…
"And I'll be mentoring you for the position of the Rokudaime." You wrench yourself up from the bed, startling your wife awake, and stare aghast at Tsunade. She's smiling serenely in that freaky way of hers which says to anyone watching that she's being devious.
"Godaime-sama, you've been Hokage for just over a decade, I'm sure you don't need to retire yet and then there's Naruto—"
"Naruto is not nearly mature enough for the position!" her shout rings in your ears in the most unpleasant of ways, "He's only just been promoted to Special Jounin. Neither does he have the years of diplomatic missions under his belt that you do. And I'm certainly not the strongest shinobi in the village, not even the best medic-nin," she smiles sweetly at Sakura at this, "and you need to be around for your family." She has a valid point, but not one you want to cede to her this easily.
"But I don't want to be Hokage," you even raise your voice, something you rarely do. Even if she is the Hokage, she can't order you to take her job, only the elders can do that. "You can't make me do this, Tsunade-sama. You don't have that power, only the—" She smirks in a way which is hardly comforting. Sakura has told you that when she herself heals people she has a lot of time to think about things, that it's become so second nature to her that she doesn't have to actively concentrate unless the injuries are really serious. Sakura also smirks when she has the upper hand on you, just like Tsunade just smirked at you. The Hokage had spent nine hours in surgery on you, which means she's had far longer than you to think about this. One of her hands (hopefully not clenched into a fist of doom) dives in and out of her pocket at lightning speed.
"Oh, but the elders and I have come to an agreement about you. You are quite the only person they'll take for the job."
The scroll which she delicately holds in front of your face has the daimyo's seal, the individual and joint seals of the elders, and the signature and mark of the positively evil Godaime who stands at the side of your bed. At the top, it reads, "Let all the nation of Fire be notified, knowledgeable, and agreed to the following appointment of Hatake Kakashi to the position of Rokud—" and then the world goes fuzzy as you feel a faint coming on.
You learn more about being Hokage from the people surrounding the position than from the actual woman herself. Izumo and Kotetsu have worked in and around the bureaucracy for years, and both Sakura and Shizune are well-versed in what needs to get signed and what needs to be replied to. So this explains some of the horribly long nights Sakura would pull when you were dating, years ago.
You can't even shirk your work with this position, even if you do show up late to the Tower, you've already been forced to do work at home by Sakura.
"Really, Kakashi, it won't pile up as long as you stay on top of it! There isn't all that much to do, only a few hours at most," is a common motivator she adopts. Once you begin to finish all the paperwork at the Tower, however, it stops following you home. Which is a vastly marked improvement compared to trying to answer formal letters while Takara and Takeo cry, or Akihito and Masato fight with each other. Your wife is happier to see you at dinner rather than bringing it to you in the living-room-turned-office.
But you begin to feel impotent in the goings on of the village. You watch as members of the Rookie Nine go out on missions, as well as all of your colleagues your own age. Tsunade is right that Naruto is not yet fit for the title he so staunchly pursues. But at least right now he is going out every day and risking his life for what he believes in. You can't even force yourself to get a papercut. That would be giving credence to everyone's assessment that you're a masochist.
It's not exactly depression which grips you, but on one of your few days off Sakura drags you down to one of the Jounin training fields where Gai is already waiting. The fact that you fight for three hours and come out of it at a solid draw comforts you. Your long fight with your old friend cheers you up in ways you didn't even know you needed cheering in. You're still you. You're still Sharingan no Kakashi, son of the White Fang of Konoha. Yes, Konoha has lost one of its better field operatives, but the village still has men and women like Gai going out every day to defend it.
The long spar also opens your eyes to the fact that being offline means you can actually spend time with your children—your two eldest and the infants Takara and Takeo. You'd been strong-armed into teaching a Genin team when Akihito and Masato had been babies, you only remember snippets of their early lives—coming home to Sakura telling you Akihito could tie his shoes or Masato was walking. You hadn't fully grasped how much you've missed until you help Takara edge her way across the living room on her own two feet. Your family life is suddenly within your reach in a way you'd never known before.
Now you can actually say you'll train with either of the older boys on a given day—and be there. You never let them get their hopes up before because there was (still is, actually) unrest in Ame which is rippling out through the nations, you could've been called away on a mission at any moment. You hadn't wanted them to think you didn't value their efforts by skipping out on them. But being offline means you aren't on the mission roster, which means you can't be called away. You're on desk duty essentially.
It's on one of these new days of training with Akihito that you notice something you've seen before: perfect chakra control. To test it, you teach him a delicate and complicated base sign for a wind jutsu. The full jutsu itself is far too hard for a boy of five, it's something you struggled to master for your Jounin promotion exam, but the base is something which will easily tell you of your son's chakra control abilities. For several days he struggles, but a brief stint at teaching Naruto is enough to teach patience even to you, so you don't mind helping him with finger patterns and other problems which arise. By the end of the week your son has the base mastered (tempting you to push him to learn the next few signs, but prudence and past experience warns against such a course of action), and you tell Sakura of your finding.
"It's a minor bloodline limit, at least in my family. Not anything to speak of, however, because it's something which occurs in some shinobi in general. It's just if your name is Haruno, it can be expected that you have perfect chakra control. That's just how it is," you are a bit crestfallen that your news isn't exactly new to her, "but," she continues, "Akihito inherited your chakra patterns. The fact that you're his father gives him a good chance of being an excellent shinobi in the future—but if he's got perfect chakra control…There'll be no waste of energy," her eyes sparkle with pride, "even you waste tiny amounts of chakra. If you help him, and he gets the right teachers, he'll surpass you one day. Unless of course one of his four younger siblings is even more of a prodigy than he is."
"Sakura, we've only got Masato and the twins after Akihi—WHAT? How?"
"Surely you know where babies come from by now, Kakashi," she growls as she punches your shoulder—hard.
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