.

"Leave it like this, please."

I stopped in my kata, raised a hand to block out the afternoon sun, and watched as Sasuke approached training ground three with a scruffy ninken in tow.

He acted as if the dog wasn't trotting along at his side. He didn't look down at it once. The dog returned the favour, holding a position three feet from Sasuke's side with his muzzle pointed straight ahead.

"I never knew you were a dog person," I called to him. "Figured you were more into cats."

His face twitched in annoyance, and I got an eyeroll out of it but no verbal response.

Naruto was more forthcoming when he got to the training ground an hour later.

"I just woke up one morning and he was there!" Naruto said. He was grinning from ear to ear, and one of his hands rested on top of the dog's head. "He's really cool. I haven't named him or nothing, but I can do that later. I'm gonna keep him. He eats ramen and stuff, so like, I don't have to worry about dog food."

I looked at the dog, who I swore gave me the canine equivalent of a shrug. "You fed him ramen."

"Well, yeah."

"Dogs can't eat instant ramen."

"What? How come?"

"They're supposed to eat dog kibble or raw meat."

"Oh. I uh… I guess I can pick up some of that. Think Kiba might give me some? He's probably got lots, 'cause of Akamaru."

"Naruto," I said, almost—almost—feeling guilty about having to be the one to say it. "You realize that you can't keep this dog, right?"

"Wha—wait, why not?"

The dog perked up at this. His tail pad against the dirt and he lifted his head up from where it rested on his paws.

"He's one of Kakashi's ninken."

"Eh?"

I reached over and poked at the Henohenomoheji stitched into his shirt. The dog leaned into the contact, eager for affection. "Look."

"I mean, yeah, he's got weird clothes—"

"Henohenomoheji, remember? It goes on scarecrows, like—"

Naruto planted his palm onto his forehead and groaned. "Ah, man!"

"I was gonna say I'm surprised Kakashi didn't send a note, or something, but then I realized that I'm really not." I turned my eye to the dog. "How come you never told him?"

The dog didn't answer.

"He doesn't talk," Naruto said. "I tried."

"He can talk, I think. He's just choosing not to."

"Why'd he do that?"

"He's Kakashi's ninken," I said again. "Do you really expect anything else?"

Naruto scratched the back of his head. "S'pose not." He leaned over to look at where Sasuke sat a ways away. "Hey, Sasuke! Did your dog talk at all?"

Sasuke cracked an eye open just enough to display his dismay at being interrupted. "No."

Naruto looked back to me. "Are you sure he can talk?"

Both of the dogs perked up, and I felt a familiar signature flash in the immediate vicinity. I bit back my response.

"They can both talk quite well, actually."

Naruto jumped. A panicked yelp left his mouth and he scrambled away, one hand up in the direction of the voice. "Kakashi!"

"Boss!" both of the dogs cried at once.

The one at Naruto's side hopped up and moved to sit in front of Kakashi, tail thumping against the ground, while the other rose from his spot across the field and bounded over with his tongue flapping out around his jowls. Kakashi bent down and placed a hand on either of their heads. The expression on his face held genuine affection, and I swore that if he were alone with them, the next thing to leave his mouth would be babytalk.

"Thank you both for your good work," he said. "I'll call on you again in a bit."

"Got it," they said, again in unison.

A puff of smoke was all that marked them as having been there.

Kakashi turned to us and clapped his hands together. "Alright kiddies, go get warmed up. We've got a busy day ahead of us."

.

.

Kakashi sat across from me and stared.

Naruto and Sasuke were in the forest behind us, the sound of their bickering just audible from where we were. They were tasked with learning how to tree walk in a week. I figured they'd have it figured out in three days' time, at most.

I let the silence hold for a few minutes before I said, "Alright then, I'll bite." I leant back on my hands, and the grass poked through the mesh along my forearms to tickle my skin. "Any reason in particular that we're having a staring contest?" Kakashi blinked. "A staring contest that I've now won."

"Ah, right." He shifted, elbow on his knee and chin cupped in his palm. "I want to talk to you about your current skills."

"What about them?"

"Well, you're a taijutsu specialist who uses some odd, bastardized version of the Konoha standard, which focuses on defensive maneuvers. You've got a kekkei genkai which will be very effective as a way to make stealth kills or sneak through enemies while out on missions once you've mastered it. You've also got chain-based weapons which can be effective at range but not at close quarters, which is where the rest of your abilities function best at." He squared me with a look. "From the outside looking in, you don't appear to have any direction. Am I wrong?"

I swallowed. "No."

"Mmm." The expression on his face as he watched me was odd. It wasn't anything I had seen on him before. I was used to bored, sleepy, fake cheer, and various degrees of the in between. What I saw now was focused, present, hidden beneath an otherwise tired face. Determined, almost. There was intent there, and that was something I found more comforting than anything I had ever seen from Kakashi. "You don't have anything you considered specializing in?"

"Tracking," I blurted out.

He raised his eyebrow. "Is that so?"

I hesitated. "Maybe?"

It was the first thing to enter my mind.

Of the field specializations, it was the least dangerous. The fact of the matter was that I wasn't suited for in village specializations. I would never be a pencil pusher. I would never be an interrogator. I would never be a strategist. I had too much potential to be useful out in the field for that to fly with the village.

Tracking, in and of itself, carried less risk than a lot of other specializations. Unless it was a solo mission, you got sent with other ninja who would be there for the sole purpose of being useful in a combat scenario. Even better were the missions where an item was the goal, not a person, and the chance for combat further decreased.

If I thought I could manage being a recon specialist then I would have pushed for that, but recon involved infiltration and infiltration involved people skills and I lacked those to the point where I doubted I could ever succeed in that specialization. Recon had its own dangers, though.

Tracking would be my best bet. As it was, with my skill in chakra control for enhancing my senses and my extensive chakra radar, I had potential for it.

He made a noise of indifference. "It's a start. I want you to look into finding a more offensive, agility-based taijutsu style. Something fast. I also want you to practice grabbing hold of things with those chains. They may not have much potential for you to use in combat, but they can be used to make up range and catch fleeing targets." He scratched his head, paused. "I suppose I can start you on enhancing your senses for learning to track through the week."

I stared at Kakashi like he'd grown a third head.

He was being helpful; he was taking initiative as our sensei. It was so opposite from the sensei who tossed a ninjutsu scroll at me and left me to my own devices that all I had to stop myself from double checking the signature just to be sure somebody else wasn't sitting in his place.

"Okay," was all I said.

"Good." He pulled down his hitae-ate and opened his sharingan. "Try and channel as much chakra into your nose as you can. I'll tell you what you're doing wrong."

.

.

Through his sharingan, Kakashi watched the chakra travel up through her paths, flit around her chest, worm its way through her throat, and enter the nasal cavity. Her control over the chakra didn't waver for a second the entire trip. If he hadn't sat through the last two hours of her doing the exact same thing over and over without any breaks, he never would have guessed; she showed no hint of fatigue.

It came time for the hard part: coating the entire cavity with a layer of chakra.

She thinned and spread her chakra—Kakashi could see her nose twitch as the chakra began to do its work and she was flooded with feedback from her enhanced sense—around the area. It held for a second, her face scrunched up in discomfort, and her control over the chakra grew shaky. Kasumi sneezed. At the sudden movement, her chakra snapped away from her and slithered back into her reserves.

"Fuck," she groaned.

She broke from her meditative position to flop back on the grass, ever dramatic. She lay there for a second. Kakashi saw her chest rise and fall as she took a deep breath. Then she pulled herself back up and drew her legs into a cross, straightened her back, and settled her hands in her lap again.

Kakashi raised an eyebrow, expectant.

"Yeah, yeah," she muttered. "Lost focus."

"Correct."

"All I could smell was grass and sweat." She cast her eyes over to where the boys were throwing themselves at the trees, having not stopped since Kakashi set them with the task either. He could see the sweat staining their clothes from where he sat.

Kakashi hummed. "Yes," he answered. "You've been working hard. Perspiration is a normal bodily reaction."

She turned her gaze back to him and shrugged. "I smell fine—it's you, I think. I always heard that old people sweat constantly, but I'd never had to find out for myself." She tilted her head. "Is it true that you start sweating in weird places, too?"

Kakashi treated her to a cheery eye-smile. "Channel your chakra again."

She rolled her eyes and gave a muttered "asshole" under her breath, which she didn't bother trying to hide, but did as she was asked.

Despite the running commentary, Kakashi found himself surprised by how quickly she picked things up and how well she applied his corrections. She was a fast learner. If he had bothered to teach her anything himself in the past, instead of just throwing a scroll at her and leaving her to her own devices, he might have already known that.

Kasumi had the chakra over her passage, sneezed, and again the chakra faded. "Fuck." She raised an arm to rub at her nose. "It feels so weird."

"You get used to it," Kakashi said. "Try again." When she squared him with an unamused look, he offered her another eyesmile. "Only way to get used to it is to keep going."

He expected her to throw another barb his way, but she just heaved a sigh. "Yeah, I know." She closed her eyes and began to channel her chakra without another complaint.

Kakashi watched her. He found it funny that of his team, Naruto and Sasuke were the two who grabbed the most attention—if anybody were to ask him, he'd tell them that he was most fascinated with Kasumi, for better or worse.

The two boys were predictable once you spent long enough around them and got over their respective statuses as the village jinchuuriki and the last Uchiha. His kunoichi, however?

The chakra spread out and covered Kasumi's entire nasal cavity. She managed to keep it there for five or so seconds, the control imperfect as minor wisps escaped her grasp during that time, before all it of fell away.

Kasumi opened her eyes and rubbed at her nose, but there was a victorious grin on her face that Kakashi had never seen before. Their gaze met. Without a word from either of them, she went right back to channelling her chakra.

Yeah, Kakashi thought. She's definitely the interesting one.

.

.

I found myself moving further away from the village rather than towards it after team training.

Something on my chakra sense caught my attention. I could sense Lee in the back, where he always trained, but he wasn't alone; there was somebody else with him, and it wasn't either of his teammates. It was one of the last people I would ever expect to be hanging around Lee, especially in a training scenario.

I walked onto the training ground, hands on my hips, and eyes on the body collapsed in a heap in front of Lee. "You replaced me while I was gone, Lee."

"Ah! Kasumi!" he cried. "It is very good to see you!"

"Yeah, you too." I stifled a laugh. "It's uh… nice to see you, Sakura. You're looking well."

I heard a groan come from her body. That was a sensation I could relate to; the mere thought of my first weeks of training with Lee was enough to make my entire body ache.

"Sakura has decided to train with me! I hope you do not mind!"

"Not at all," I said. "But uh… out of curiosity… what spurred this all on?"

Sakura unfurled herself and rolled onto her back. Her face was beaded with sweat, the wisps of pink hair that escaped her braid sticking to it. Her chest heaved. Still, there was a tiny smile on her face.

"Ino and I… were looking for you… a week ago… and when… we got here… Lee was here… but you weren't… so we trained… with him instead…"

"And you came back," I said. "I'm… impressed, actually."

Of the two, I wasn't surprised that it was Sakura to stick it out over Ino. Both girls could be stubborn, but I had always known Sakura to be the more bullheaded of the two, which was exactly what it took to train with Lee. There was also the fact that Ino could get away with skipping out on honing her taijutsu skills. She had a family technique to fall back on and a team designed to keep her safe while she used it, and Sakura benefitted from neither of those luxuries.

It was the same reason Sakura stuck it out training with Tsunade in another life. It was the same reason Sakura had the guts to ask to train with Tsunade in the first place. Two different girls, two different outlooks.

The smile on her face widened. "Ino said it was… too much… with her team… training too… She wants to keep training… with you… but… I kind of like… training with Lee…" She let out a long, gusty breath. "It really… hurts, though…"

"It hurts less after a few weeks," I said. "And if that's the case, then you're getting the better end of the deal. Lee's a far better training partner than I am."

"You are very kind!"

"I mean, it's true. You're fully into taijutsu and you've been doing it for way longer than I have. A lot of what I know, I learnt from you."

His cheeks lit up tomato red and he jerked forward into a deep bow. "I am unworthy of this compliment!"

I tapped my knuckles on the back of his head. "Quit that." He straightened. "I came here to ask you something, anyways. Any chance you have a fast, fluid kind of taijutsu style that you can show me?"

"I do not at this juncture!" he said. "However, if you give me a day, I can ask Gai if he has anything he can suggest!"

"Appreciated," I said. I gave Sakura one last, amused look. "I'll leave you two to your training. Good luck, Sakura!"

Shikaku turned to look at me as I stepped onto the porch of the Nara household. "How's your shogi game these days?"

"Near-nonexistent, as usual," I answered. I settled down across from him. "We're not going to make it more than a few turns into any games we start. Sorry to tell you, if that's all you called me here for."

He snorted. "It's not," he said. "I actually called you here because Hokage-sama asked me to."

"Okay..."

"When were you planning on turning in your mission report?"

"Oh. That."

"That," Shikaku said. "It was supposed to be in the last time you saw your sensei. If you had any other sensei, I'm sure Hokage-sama would trust your sensei to get them from you."

"Kakashi didn't hand his in either, did he?"

"Nope."

"Right, of course."

"One of your other teammates did, though," he went on. "Sasuke Uchiha gave his directly to the desk chunin this morning."

"And Naruto didn't."

Shikaku set me with a look that clearly asked "what do you think?" as he shuffled the pieces on the board into their starting arrangement.

"I was going to turn it in soon?"

"Really? Maen said that he hadn't seen you start working on it."

I muttered a curse. "Traitor."

"It doesn't matter," Shikaku said. "Hokage-sama asked me to get a verbal report from you instead." When I offered him nothing but a stare, Shikaku raised an eyebrow. "That's not optional, either. Naruto has somebody going to him right now to do the same."

"Who?"

"Iruka Umino, I heard." Shikaku sat back, hands folded into his sleeves and eyes holding their usual sharp glint. "You can have first move," he said. I looked down at the board and lapsed into silence—I was going to at least try and put up some resistance. "I want you to talk and play."

I opened my mouth to protest and shut it in the next instance.

A serious game of shogi was played in near silence because all the attention of the players was on the game and how best to finish it. What they think their opponent might do, what they'd do in this or that amount of moves. Planning. If Shikaku wanted me to talk while I played, then I knew he was trying to take my attention either from the report I was about to give or the game that I was about to play.

Which was the more likely motivator was obvious; Shikaku didn't need to distract me to thoroughly cream me in shogi.

"Yeah," I murmured. "Right. Okay."

I recounted leaving the village, scouting on the trip through Fire Country, encountering the thugs and the demon brothers. Shikaku didn't utter a single word. I didn't have any issues.

Then I got to Zabuza and Haku's deaths and things went sour.

"I could still feel his chakra," I was saying. "I knew that he wasn't dead—Kakashi didn't, though. He was just talking to the hunter-nin. I couldn't get a message to him without alerting the hunter-nin. So I… did what I knew I had to do. I threw a kunai aimed at his neck."

The hand that I held the shogi piece in shook. Shikaku flicked his eyes down to my hand, placed his piece, and nodded. "Your turn."

I blinked. I did so after a moment of contemplation.

A couple more moves passed in silence.

"You threw the kunai…" Shikaku prompted.

"Right yeah… I… threw the kunai." I took a deep breath. "The hunter-nin reacted. They lunged for the kunai and knocked it away, and then Kakashi… he got the hunter-nin in the throat with a kunai… at the same time. I think. The hunter-nin fell to the ground and Kakashi finished the job."

My eyes wandered over to the forest, the sky, the grassy expanse behind the house. I could feel a couple of deer lingering near the area but none of them ventured close enough that they were visible.

"Your move."

My eyes jerked back to the board—Shikaku had taken his turn. Moreover, I'd fallen silent.

"Kakashi passed out from chakra exhaustion right after that. I had Naruto and Sasuke take him ahead with the client while I…" I forced out a breath. "While I cleaned up. I followed protocol as best as I could. I diluted any bodily fluids with dirt and scattered them around the area. And I slit Zabuza's throat and burned both his and the hunter-nin's bodies." My chest tightened, and I ignored the near-dead tone that I spoke the words in.

"What did you do with the sword?"

"What?"

"Zabuza Momochi's sword," Shikaku clarified. "What did you do with it?"

"Oh," I murmured. I hadn't thought about the sword since storing it, and with so much having happened since then, my possessing it had slipped my mind. "I stored it. It's still sitting at the bottom of my mission pack—I haven't fully unloaded it yet."

Shikaku nodded. "Hold onto it for now, I guess. We'll see what Hokage-sama wants done with it. Take your turn and keep going." His face gave away no reaction to the information that I had given him.

I put my piece on the board and continued my story. At the points where I stopped, zoned out, Shikaku would give me a minute or two to gather myself before he pushed me forward again, usually with a reminder to take my move. The game did its job in keeping me grounded throughout the recounting.

It got harder the longer things went on, though. Remembering what happened to Inari, the state we left his life in, with no home and no living relatives to call his own and nothing to his name but the clothes on his back. What was he thinking, right now in Wave? How was he handling everything? Did he hate us? I wouldn't blame him if he did. We left his entire life in shambles without so much as a parting word—we ran away with our tails between our legs like cowards. It was the right thing to do for ourselves, I stood by that much, but that didn't change the reality of our actions.

Kakashi needed proper medical attention for the wound on his arm, before the wound on his arm managed to get any worse. I saw the scar it left during our training session a couple of days ago. It was thick and jagged, half of it clearly visible while the rest was hidden by his sleeve.

I hadn't been in any condition to stick around, either. I had hit the point of exhaustion and then flown straight past it, and I hadn't been prepared to face that. I had never imagined things would go the way they did. It wasn't a mistake I would ever make again, not on my life, but it left me ragged. I would have been barely better than dead weight if we stuck around.

Still, still, still.

Inari deserved better than to be abandoned and to have to hear the news from a few people that had no involvement in the situation. He deserved better than having to be in that situation.

We failed him, and we did it so many times over.

"Kasumi, stop. Breathe."

I jolted back to myself and heard the heavy, near-panicked breathing. My own breathing. I was hyperventilating. There was a wetness on my cheeks—I was crying, too.

Breathe.

"In and out," Shikaku said. "That's all."

I pulled air in, forced myself to hold it, and then let it out again.

Repeat.

Repeat.

Breathe.

In, out. Repeat.

Once I finally had my breathing under control, I muttered a small, "Fuck."

Shikaku smirked. "I'll let you get away with that one, I suppose. Have you considered going to talk to a Yamanaka?" He looked down at the board. "Your turn."

"Not really."

Shikaku shrugged. "Up to you, then. Anything else you need to add?"

"No."

"Great," he said. He slid his hand from out of his sleeve and set a piece down on the board to end the game—he won. "Go clean up and help Yoshino finish cooking. I'm going to go grab Maen; you two are staying for dinner."

He'd been dancing around me for the last twenty minutes, stalling the game. He could have ended it at any point with a single move. The only reason I lasted as long as I did—nearly an hour and a half, if I were to guess—was because he let me.

"Maen didn't mention that," I said.

"I just decided," he answered. He stood and stretched. When I didn't immediately move, he jerked his chin towards the house. "Off you go. I'll be back in a few minutes."

He turned and shambled off, leaving me alone on the porch. I was certain there was something more to it but I no longer had it in me to care at that point.

I went inside and the board, completed game on its surface, was all that remained.

"I've called you all here today to discuss the upcoming chunin exams."

A low murmur passed over the crowd that Hiruzen hushed with a single raised hand. Kakashi watched Asuma and Kurenai whisper to each other from the corner of his eye, saw the fourth jonin beside them shift in discomfort. He knew what they all intended to do.

"As you all know, things are moving along with the exams," Hiruzen continued. "The Forest is being readied as we speak, and the last preparations on the arena were completed earlier this week. All that's left now is for our village to decide who we put forth as chunin candidates." He gestured to the four of them who stood in a line near the front of the crowd. "Those in charge of the rookie genin please step forward."

All of them obliged.

"Kakashi, Kurenai, Asuma, and Yasuo. What do you say? Do any of you recommend your students, despite their inexperience? All of your teams have completed the minimum of eight missions that are required of them, but they are still rather green." Hiruzen looked to the right of the line. "Yasuo?"

Yasuo jolted, and his hand shot up to rest in front of his face. "I lead squad three. Sakura Haruno, Minori Funai, and Nao Hoga. I, Yasuo Enomoto, recommend all three of them for the chunin selection exams."

Kakashi felt the entire gathering of jonin behind him stiffen at that.

"My squad's ten," Asuma said before the crowd fully quieted. "Ino Yamanaka, Shikamaru Nara, and Choji Akimichi. I, Asuma Sarutobi, recommend all three for the chunin selection exams."

"I have squad number eight. Hinata Hyuga, Kiba Inuzuka, Shino Aburame. I, Kurenai Yuki, recommend all three."

Every eye in the room fell on Kakashi. They expected him to do the same.

Kakashi's gaze wandered to the back of the room, from where he felt a familiar, heated gaze rest on the back of his head.

Two weeks ago, he might have fulfilled their expectations. He might have brushed off the risk as being miniscule, given that he faced the exams at the age of six and came out unscathed. He might have deemed the potential pain as being valuable, something that could be a teaching aid. He might have ignored the chance of death and permanent mental or physical scarring.

Now, though? After everything?

He didn't think that was a lesson they needed anymore.

Kakashi brought his gaze back to the front of the room. "I'm the leader of squad seven. I won't be entering any of my students in the exams."

The entire room broke out in hushed whispers and mutterings. The heat against the back of Kakashi's head evaporated.

"Hold on just a minute!" a voice cried from the back. Iruka shoved his way through the crowd and situated himself beside Kakashi and the rest of the jonin sensei. "All nine of those names are of students I had at the Academy! I know their skills and abilities. They've got great promise, but they're not ready yet. They need more experience before they're tested. If they try now, they're just going to fail the exam."

Kurenai frowned. She turned to face Iruka, one hand settling on her hip. "Yes, but—"

"No!" Iruka interrupted. "This could destroy them. Is that what you want?" Iruka turned his eye to Kakashi. "Just ask Kakashi-san what happens to your students when you push them into a situation they're not fully prepared for."

Ah, Kakashi thought. Another person who's mad at me.

Kurenai cast Kakashi a glance but otherwise ignored the latter of Iruka's comments. "Of course I don't want to destroy them, but they're my students," she answered. "You should trust me to know what's best for them."

"How could you know? You've barely been teaching them for a month!"

"Enough," Hiruzen said. "You've both made your points. I find that, in this instance, I am more inclined to listen to Iruka." He took a puff of his pipe and his eyes gained a grandfatherly glint to them, his gaze roving over the gathered jonin sensei. "He clearly feels very strongly about this—more strongly than you all, it seems. These genin are young and will have many opportunities in the future. There's no reason to rush any of them."

Kakashi himself didn't agree with Hiruzen's decision, but he did agree with the reasoning. Iruka made a better case than Kurenai, and neither Asuma nor Yasuo even attempted to argue against what Iruka said.

"Hokage-sama—"

"No, Kurenai. I've made my decision. Your students will have to wait for the next exams to have their chance."

With those parting words, Hiruzen disappeared in a puff of smoke and left the rest of the room in stunned silence.