"Sasuke's sick, Tsume," Kakashi said before they went to sleep that night. Tsume glanced up sharply from her position in front of the mirror.

"We're talking about the same Sasuke here, right?"

"Yeah," Kakashi nodded. "He has a fever and his throat hurts. Really badly, apparently."

He smiled at the memory. He had asked Sasuke what exactly hurt, and the raven had promptly thrown a pillow at him, shouting hoarsely at him.

"Is he okay?"

"He should be." Kakashi shrugged. "I gave him some medicine, and he was sleeping the last time I checked on him."

"And when was that?"

Kakashi glanced at the clock. "About an hour ago."

"Do you have any idea what he has?" Tsume asked, snapping the bathroom light off. She shrugged off her vest and dropped it on the floor.

"Tsume, I'm a shinobi, not a doctor."

Tsume rolled her eyes and stared at the door worriedly. "I think I should go check on him."

"Tsume, he's fine," Kakashi said, staring at her from his perch on the bed. He smiled reassuringly at her.

"Kakashi, he never gets sick. This isn't normal."

She ignored his pleading look and went to the boys' room, crossing to Sasuke's bed. She wrinkled her nose. God, they really needed to clean their room.

She gazed down at Sasuke, who was still curled around Rusty. The dog cocked his head at her, and she bent to pat his head.

"Keep him safe," she whispered, and Rusty gave the dog-equivalent of a smile.

One time, when the kids were five—Naruto was actually four—she and Kakashi told them they were adopted. They took the news rather well, but the Uchiha's didn't. The Sharingan users had spent five years looking for Itachi and Sasuke, but they never found them.

But then they did, and there was a custody battle. Tsume and Kakashi could do nothing about Itachi—they technically weren't his parents—but they fought their hardest for Sasuke. And they did win, eventually. Because the Uchiha's may have had expensive lawyers, and biologically they should have gotten Sasuke in the first place, but they had forgotten one thing.

They were fighting against Kakashi Hatake and Tsume Inuzuka. And the couple had definitely earned their reputation fighting with each other against countless enemies—in combat and comrades.

And now the Uchiha's couldn't do a thing about it as they watched Kakashi and Tsume raise Sasuke to be an Inuzuka-Hatake and not an Uchiha.

Itachi, however weird it was at the time, had not gone with his family though. He had remained by Hana's side, ever the loyal best friend. He had seen his little brother grow up, and he had helped train all of the kids.

And now, as Tsume watched her sons sleep, she thanked whatever god that was looking out for them for sending Kakashi to her.

/\/\

Sasuke was sick for the next five days. Tsume had finally taken him to family doctor, her concern for the raven overruling her fiancé. The doctor had checked her son out, concluding that Sasuke had strep throat, and prescribed the medicine he needed.

That very same day, Tsume kicked Kakashi out of the house for being so ignorant to the fact that Sasuke had needed medical attention. The shinobi filled Sasuke's prescription and spent the day at Ichiraku's.

All in all, it was a very strange week. By the time Sasuke was better, Tsume's mother—who had vanished three years ago on a mission—had reappeared very abruptly once the news that her daughter was getting married to Kakashi Hatake was spread through the lands.

Kin, who was ecstatic his wife had finally come home, was submerging himself in wedding plans, oblivious to anything else in the world. Kakashi was actually contemplating killing the man just to save his already frayed sanity. When you have five kids, plus an Uchiha, plus an Inuzuka for a fiancée, added to eight dogs, your sanity loses a bit of itself.

And he also had Kin to deal with.

There were several things wrong with Tsume's father: one, he was way too hyper—and reminded Kakashi of Gai too much. Two, he took his job as a grandfather way too seriously. He literally lived five minutes away and he surprised the kids with a week-long stay at their house. Kakashi almost kicked the man out of his house after two hours.

Another thing was that he wore too much green. He could handle dark green, like the Chunin or Jonin vests, and the green in nature. But when you know a man like Gai, and then you meet Kin, there are going to be some consequences.

Kakashi could only handle so much.

And now, with Tsume glaring at him as he tried to get out of another day planning the wedding with Kin, he seriously considered eloping.

Not that Tsume would go along with it. But he could dream.

/\/\

Shikamaru sighed as clouds rolled through the sky. What he wouldn't give to be a cloud…

Shikaku stared at his son from the porch, his hip cocked against a post. He smiled softly, but his heart was hurting too badly for it to be a real smile.

The loss of his wife was still too fresh.

"Shikamaru," the Jonin Commander called. His son pushed himself up to his elbows, glancing once more at the clouds before getting up and joining his father. "What would you like for dinner?"

"Can we go out?" Shikamaru's voice was small and quiet, more like the child Shikaku knew years ago than the Genin who stood in front of him.

"Sure we can." Shikaku pulled in a shuddering breath and nodded, turning to go back into the house and grab his keys. He walked past the kitchen and tensed, the memory of Yoshino standing at the stove and making dinner too much for him to handle.

He twisted around and grabbed his son's arm, pulling him from the house and through the streets of Konoha to find someplace that didn't have any memories of the woman he had lost attached to it.

A/N: Okay, so I really didn't expect this to happen. I don't even know where it came from. But now I have to go back and change a few things, and then I'll probably start working on the next chapter—which will hopefully focus on Itachi more than Kakashi and Tsume's wedding (which we will get to eventually). Please review?