A/N: The title of this chapter is very accurate. This setting is the same setting they arrived at in chapter 3. Some significant things happened in chapter 3 and the few chapters after. They are briefly summarized here, so no worries. But yes; they are facing more than one level of the past in this chapter.

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"How well do you think that will work? It is an...interesting move."

Orochimaru's voice gave away nothing about how he felt, but Kakashi's soul sense picked up an undercurrent of positive regard for the snake's former teammate. No matter what else granting Kumo ninjas the right to investigate secret labs might accomplish, it was interesting, and that alone was worthy of a smile.

Kakashi smirked beneath his mask. "That's shinobi business. Not our concern anymore."

Orochimaru turned that interested gaze on him. Kakashi basked in its glow. Ah, it was good to be feeling alive and vibrant again!

They sat outside in the wild grasses next to a base that they might have used before. This might have been the first place where they had hunted. If so, that would explain the hunt magic it seemed to have. The little cliff above the base promised nests hidden in its hollows. The surrounding trees stood above and shaded the ground very kindly. Kakashi and Orochimaru sat in their shade right now, along with their little brother. Kakashi couldn't wait to find out his name.

Well, maybe he could. Just for a little while longer. Long enough to greet the trees, perhaps. They had the same sort of diffuse glow as the ground and sea did: not exactly distinct souls, but some kind of soul material swept through them. Of course, that wasn't accounting for all the divine material that Kakashi couldn't see. The natural world was rumored to be closer to those sorts of influences than humans were. Perhaps that was why human souls stood out as the brightest things in his view.

But then, there was the vast range of intermediate souls as well. His mother's soul had been as bright as a young human's. Dogs, especially trained ones, were like that. They were tight little collections of soul energy, all bound up and organized and tempting. Kakashi stared up at their guardian tree and finally faced the question. Tempting to what?

"What are you thinking?" Orochimaru tilted his head, a sly smile on his face. "Not about shinobi business, I hope. That's not our concern anymore."

Kakashi laughed. "No. About demon business, actually."

"Really? You have never told me what demon business is, exactly." Orochimaru's pupils dilated noticeably. He's been waiting to know this for a long time.

I'm sorry to disappoint, then. "That's because I don't know it," Kakashi answered. "I can't tell whether or not we have any business. We exist; aside from that, what else?"

"That's it?" The glow in Orochimaru's eyes turned to a blaze. "A demon's business is just to exist? What business is that?" He turned away, readjusting his hold on the young snake he held under his left arm. "You must be mistaken. There must be something you can't know with your intuition alone."

"Mah, I'm not so sure of that…" Gods I hope he is right, but I don't think he is. "If I can know that I should have a name, why can't I know if I should have a purpose? My essential nature is exactly what my intuition tells me about." Kakashi shook his head. "All it tells me about my purpose is that I am drawn to souls. Clearly I am meant to interact with living beings. I don't know why, or in what way. Souls look so tempting. Tempting to what? I don't know what I want to do with them."

"Eat them, perhaps?"

Of course he'd guess that. Isn't that what all stories about demons say? "No, I don't think so. There was a time when I did not think, when I operated purely on instinct and intuition. Back then, I saw my mother's soul, and I...clung to her." Kakashi closed his eyes. I miss you, Mom. "Like any baby would. For security. I just wanted to be next to that light."

Orochimaru's eyes had lost their blaze of anger. He took Kakashi's left hand in his right. "I just thought of something, Puppy." His heart was beginning to beat faster and his soul was becoming more active. Kakashi's eyes opened.

"What is it?" He knew it was something good.

"What if…" The magic words! Orochimaru sat up straighter and raised his arm, settled it around Kakashi's shoulders and pulled him in closer. "What if whatever took your name did more than that?"

Kakashi shivered. "Altered my soul in another fundamental way as well?"

"Yes. You are drawn to angels. Drawn to the only beings that can hurt you. How insane is that?" Orochimaru hissed. "You are probably very different from other demons, Puppy. Drawn to light. Drawn to angels. Purged of whatever history you had before of violence and cruelty. Was there intent behind this? The intent to reform a demon, perhaps?" His tongue traced his teeth. His eyes sparkled.

"Now, now. Let's not get carried away," Kakashi said as his own heartbeat raced faster and faster. "Something that powerful should have been able to do more than leave my redemption up to random chance. Only my own strength has carried me through times where I could so easily have let myself go. I wanted to."

"Something that big could easily be unable to interfere within worlds," the snake countered. "And of course it would have to be your own choice. That's what redemption is. Making you drawn to light would have only given you the ability to make those choices."

"You're making me hungry." Kakashi wagged his tail, feeling hopeful, and with high spirits came the hunt. He growled softly under his breath.

Orochimaru hissed and bit softly at his cheek, tracing one sharp fang along the skin there, making Kakashi's tail wag harder. "So are you." He probably meant a different kind of hungry.

"No." The wolf ninja was not in the mood. He wanted to hunt, then eat, then curl up together and doze in the sun. "Not now."

"You drive me insane when you're like this."

"It's not my fault you have your wires crossed." Kakashi deliberately nuzzled him again, knowing how it would feel. "A more cuddly kind of beast would be able to keep different kinds of touch separate."

"Then you know it's not my fault either. I can't help what I am." Orochimaru cut himself off by biting Kakashi's neck, stopping just short of sinking his teeth in. His tongue licked at bare skin.

It felt very weird, although the intent behind it was clear. Kakashi gently pushed him away. "Save that for our prey."

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The hunt went exactly as planned. They hunted, then ate, then curled up together to doze in the sun. Kakashi was sure he remembered lying in the sun on this little rocky ledge above the base before. He celebrated briefly, then let his mind drift to other matters. Dozing was a time for drifting, not thinking of anything in particular.

He felt looser and looser, as if he was turning to liquid. Before long, he lost track of his body entirely. His mind, too, was lost. Like liquid, it broke up its form and flowed around, lacking shape or subject or size. He remembered all kinds of things, and nothing at all. He remembered Obito's face. He remembered foxes. He remembered the feel of a kunai.

He remembered a screech of metal. He remembered being alone. A vast aloneness, so vast he could not see its borders, so vast he did not even recognize it. He remembered stars.

There was something about the stars. He stopped, held onto this memory. There was something about the stars. What about them? Orochimaru liked to look at stars.

Kakashi blinked his eyes open. "Orochimaru?"

The snake hissed softly as he exhaled. He wasn't going to wake. That's a good idea. I should do that. The memory of the stars was sent off in a dark clone so that the rest of him could go back to dozing.

At some point, this formless state of mind must have given way to sleep and light, fluffy dreams that disappeared as soon as they were touched by the harsh forces of wakefulness. Kakashi remembered nothing of what he had just been thinking about when he awoke. He did, however, remember the creation of the tiny little dark clone that sat in front of him. It wasn't really a clone at all, but a mouse or rat. He yawned and decided the details did not matter.

Orochimaru awoke too. "Who is this?" He studied the mouse with interest, clearly aware that it wasn't a real rodent. A real rodent would have run from his scent.

"You like to look at stars, right?" Kakashi reabsorbed the dark rat, then rolled onto his back and pushed Orochimaru's shoulder until the snake did the same. "Then what do you think of these ones?" With a wave of his hand he spread a sheet of darkness over the sun, blocking its light. On the basis of that strange memory, he poked holes in the sheet of darkness, creating a starscape. Now that Kakashi was fully awake, even he could recognize what had attracted his attention. The starscape was dark, with few stars. But that was normal. It had always...wait, no it hadn't…

"I don't recognize any of these constellations. If there are any," Orochimaru said. "This is no sky."

"It is the sky," Kakashi insisted. "And look, there's the Big Dipper, and the North Star." He traced out constellations he knew.

"What the hell is a dipper?"

"I don't know. That's just what it's called." Where did I learn that it was called that? "And that… It…" Where did I learn any of this? "It's completely familiar."

Orochimaru turned and looked at him. "It can't be. I can't be sure, because most of the stars in it are missing, but based on what is here I'm confident this sky does not exist."

Kakashi looked back up at it. "But it is familiar. It's the sky."

Orochimaru looked back up. "Where do you know this sky from?"

Kakashi hesitated. "The...world." He could not remember.

"Where were you and what was happening, Puppy?" Orochimaru could be a very patient interrogator. He gently probed with, "Were you on a mission? Home? How did you feel?"

"Not any of that," Kakashi answered. "This isn't a moment. This is the sky that I know from seeing it all the time." He tried to recall more nonetheless. "I'm sorry. I can't remember any more. The memory is very well mixed. I barely noticed there was anything unusual." But now that he had noticed, a creeping sensation was coming over him. It was the opposite of déjà vu: the feeling that something previously familiar looked very alien. It wasn't like any sky he'd ever seen on a mission, was it? Where had this memory come from?

He reabsorbed the darkness. "It was so familiar. I...need to think about my memories." He was more confused than he had ever been in his entire life.

Orochimaru hissed softly. "What is blocking out the stars, Puppy?"

Kakashi stared back. "Why the hell would I know that?"

"Because you knew what the constellation was called."

Orochimaru was right. He knew why there were so few stars. How could he possibly know that? "Light pollution," Kakashi answered. If I follow a trail of knowledge I can't possibly have, will it lead me to its source? "Too much light shining at night blocks out the stars."

"Where does this light come from?" He must have the same idea.

"From…" Kakashi's heart rose, but then sank. "From people. Cities." If the trail of inexplicable knowledge had been obvious, he would have noticed it before now. Many of his memories were perfectly normal, or seemingly so. They did not stand out.

"Hmm." Orochimaru tilted his head. He traced his left fang with his tongue as he thought. "Try to see one of these cities."

Kakashi closed his eyes and tried. "The buildings are tall and mostly dark." A normal thing to expect from cities.

"Try to hear it."

"Very noisy. Honking." Yeah, cities were...wait…

"Honking? Are they full of geese?"

"No, a different kind of honking. Not birds." He could imagine the sound clearly in his mind. It was a sound that, now that he thought about it, did not exist. But it did. It was a very normal sound when people got angry with each other for not moving fast enough. Wait… Did people normally yell at each other for not moving fast enough?

Kakashi shook his head. "What the hell? I… It… Two opposite things are true at the same time. It exists. But it does not. Strange and familiar at the same time." He rubbed his forehead. "There is a mismatch in my memories. But they are also so well integrated that I never noticed. What on earth?"

"Fascinating." Orochimaru got to his feet. "You are an endless mystery, as you should be."

Kakashi shook his head as he got to his feet. "I am glad you think so." And that was all he felt like doing with this mystery today.

Orochimaru looked down the slope below the ledge. Kakashi did too. They silently agreed to move on to another topic. "So then. Would this be a good place for a garden?"

The part directly below the cliff would not be. As he looked at it, Kakashi remembered. That field of broken rocks was where they had had dinner. It was not a good dinner. It had been full of miscommunication. This was also the base where he'd had that first anxious breakdown, and where Orochimaru had invented the misguided rule that turned out to be a mistake. This was a pleasant base for extended stays, but its pleasantness masked how destructive decisions made here had been.

But now, they knew better. But now, with the guidance of angels, perhaps that could be changed. The foot of the cliff was covered in loose rock, but greenery grew all along the roof of the base. "Yes. It would be a very good place."

"Go get some seeds," Orochimaru requested. "I am looking forward to starting." His soul held both excitement and anxiety. He had talked about his dreams so casually, as if nothing about them was important. It was obviously a lie. The snake dreamed of defending a garden from intruders, over and over again, with all of his heart even when he knew it was hopeless. Those dreams had to be important. Now, for the first time, he was going to finally face them. Kakashi dispatched a dark clone to race to the nearest town and get seeds. It did not matter what kind. All that mattered was that he was here, now, standing at his favorite snake's side as he faced his dreams. That was the most important of all.

"Perhaps I should do something about my dreams," he acknowledged.

"You should. Your attachment to your childhood friend is more than a little unhealthy," Orochimaru teased. Kakashi knew it was a tease because Orochimaru would never open himself to the accusation of hypocrisy. Instead of mentioning Jiraiya directly, he raised an eyebrow in response. "What? He disappeared from your life when you were 13, after what sounds like a very lackluster partnership. At least Jiraiya and I were close enough and old enough to seriously hurt each other."

"Firstly, ow." Having the second closest bond of his life denigrated as "not serious" hurt. "Secondly, our bond was not lackluster. We fought and didn't get along because we were on the edge of being best friends. We were the closest thing to real friends either of us had, and that matters. He was different from the rest of my peers. He could have really understood."

Kakashi wanted to continue the list, but couldn't. If he did, there was a good chance he would cry. He took a moment to think, instead. Rin supported whatever I did, but Obito challenged me. He challenged me to face the real world and acknowledge that no matter what I had suffered, there still was a world that needed me. If I had listened and understood that I still had a role to play in the world instead of mindlessly retreating from everything, how different could my life have been? Kakashi remembered the man Obito had grown into, and started to silently cry. He had the gift all along. Even as a boy, he was using hurtful-sounding words that were actually not hurtful, that were actually what I needed to hear in order to grow. He grew up so well. He honed that talent so much. But he used it the wrong way. If I had recognized him for who he was, and accepted his challenge, and just let him help me, I could have shown him how words should be used. He could have been a powerful force of good. I failed him.

Orochimaru took Kakashi's hand in his. The wolf ninja whined. "He was the only person that was reaching out to me as if he gave a damn when I was so busy retreating from everything, and I didn't realize it. I didn't let the person who most cared about me reach me until it was too late. He needed me to reach back, because he was so much like I was, and I didn't."

Orochimaru did not speak. That was good. Kakashi gripped his hand tightly. I'm so sorry. You were the only human who could have been a true friend. I missed my chance. That was part of why he felt Obito's loss so keenly, wasn't it? There were many chances he had missed in that part of his life, chances that could never be gotten back. Obito was the greatest, and stood as a symbol for all of them. I missed all my chances. I miss the me I could have been, if I had chosen differently.

Finally, he was ready for Orochimaru to speak. Kakashi leaned into the snake's side and rubbed his tears onto his black vest. "I missed so many chances back then. When I remember him, I remember all of them. I could have become so many better versions of myself. *sniff* But I also could have become a worse version. I could have missed my chance at connecting with you."

Orochimaru hugged him back. "Puppy." Kakashi buried his head in the embrace. "I've experimented on all kinds of people. Babies, toddlers, teens, adults. Healthy, sick, dead, and some that hadn't been born yet. I've found some things that only the young and still developing can tolerate, or that they can use better than adults can. But that is not a significant portion of my results, Puppy."

He removed Kakashi's arms from his person and pushed away. Now he could use those glittering, smart, passionately hypnotic eyes. "The majority of mutations and transformations I tested worked just as well in adults as in younger people. And then, there were many that only adults could tolerate and younger people could not, or that worked better when the subject was older. There were more of those than there were techniques that needed younger subjects, in fact.

"So shut the fuck up about all the chances you missed when you were a child. You have the same or more chances as an adult, just as much potential to transform, and all the time in the world to transform in. You have uncountable lifetimes to change yourself. There isn't as much to regret as you think there is."

Kakashi's eyes were wide. He heard and understood. But Orochimaru hadn't accounted for everything. "Obito is dead. He's not likely to be revived in the future, especially not if we succeed at changing this part of the world. His time is over. I failed him."

"Fine," Orochimaru said. "Regret him if you will. But stop piling regret on top of regret and tossing it all on his shoulders. You don't need to feel that bad, and he doesn't have to mean that much. If you ever do meet him and he finds out you've made him out to be so much more than he is, he won't appreciate it."

Kakashi sniffed. "I've been trying. I will keep trying. I can't be sure I'll succeed."

"You will. There's no way you can stop yourself from transforming. Give it a lifetime or two, and you will be a different person with the ability to let go of things." Orochimaru said this as if he had seen the future and knew it to be fact. He didn't technically have the ability to, but Kakashi refused to look through time and his ability to think accurately was crippled, so in practice the snake was much better at looking ahead. Kakashi trusted him.

He whined softly and nuzzled the snake's forehead. "Thank you. You give me the strength to attempt things I couldn't try on my own. I'm transformed already. So, if you want, before my clone gets back…"

Orochimaru cut him off with a kiss. "I would've tried to transform myself decades ago if I'd known you offered such incentives." He took Kakashi's hand again and pulled them down the cliff.

The dark clone returned just a couple seconds later. Seeing his original going along with this, he knew something good must have happened and he should not interrupt. He enlarged the one remaining pocket on his dark vest, put the seed packets in it, and sent himself through reality to discreetly check on the younger snake.

The boy had been checked over, found to be alright, and left in a room to sleep. The dark clone dropped onto the floor by his side, stood up, and stopped. Something was different about the younger snake. At first, the dark clone could not see what. His instincts told him to be alert, as if there was danger, but nothing was wrong.

He closed his eyes, reminding himself to look for what was perfectly normal that shouldn't be. When he opened them, he saw immediately what was wrong. The boy's feet were now sticking out from under the blankets, as if he had moved in his sleep. That wasn't unusual for anyone else, but he was pretty sure the boy had not done that before. In addition, the boy's face twitched. Eyelids squeezed, nostrils flared, and there was a general level of activity in him that was not unusual in anyone else, but was in him. Before, he had looked visibly comatose. Now, he looked like a normal sleeping person.

The dark clone decided to treat him like one. With a bit of superheated darkness, he lit a candle by the bedside, sat down, and shook the young snake's shoulder. "Hey." This time, he remembered to disguise his vest as well. It took on the appearance of black cloth just like Orochimaru's vest.

The boy slowly and with great effort forced his eyelids open. He stared at the ceiling for longer than a normal person would have, and with a blanker expression, but nothing blatantly beyond the standards of healthy. When the dark clone made a noise, the boy's eyes slid over to him.

"Do you know me?" the clone asked.

The boy showed no signs of recognition. Which made perfect sense, because the clone had disguised his most distinctive characteristic and was in completely different lighting conditions, so he must look very different. It would be truly astounding if the boy had gathered enough of his brain in harmony to recognize the same person in different lighting conditions and angles. The clone smiled. "You will. Eventually."

The boy's gaze slid off him. It landed on the wall, where the flickering candlelight made the wall appear to ripple. The boy's arms shot out, pushing the blankets off of him. He extended his legs, held out an arm, and twisted to the side. But he didn't do these all at once, so he failed to roll himself off the bed. The dark clone moved the candle further away so he wouldn't accidentally touch it and watched.

The young snake eventually managed to fling out an arm and twist at the same time, throwing his upper half off the bed. He stopped himself from falling on his face and got up with a smoothness and coordination that surprised the dark clone. Once upright, the young snake appeared to have completely forgotten why he was doing this. He stared blankly ahead until the flickering light caught his attention again. Then he took a step towards the wall.

He fell down. The clone was baffled by how he fell. It looked like the boy hadn't known where to put his foot, or how to lower it. The typical smooth swinging of the leg hadn't happened.

The boy lay on the ground, staring ahead, looking confused. Then the clone detected something odd in his soul. The boy's soul shifted, and he closed his eyes. He got to his feet and walked forward, swaying a little but staying upright. He walked into the wall, and didn't stop walking. The clone stepped in to pull him back until the boy's soul shifted back to normal and he stopped trying to walk. The young snake opened his eyes and looked at the wall again, and his eyes focused, and he smacked the back of his hand into the wall. He reacted to the pain by looking down at his hand and lowering it. After a short wait, the wall caught his attention again.

The clone guessed that some parts of his mind were coming together, but in clumps, and those clumps had not yet connected to each other. The boy could perceive and react to the environment, or he could carry out complex goal-oriented movements, but not both. However, he could switch between these functions, and the timing and circumstances of the switch made sense as a way of moving toward a goal. It might have been accident, or that ability might be tied to one or both of these clusters.

The dark clone grinned and placed the boy's hand with its palm against the wall. From there the little snake moved it in various directions. There was no way to know what he thought of the wall, or if he was having anything coherent enough to be called a thought. Either way, it was cause for celebration. Once the young serpent was done exploring the wall the clone was going to hunt down a celebratory meal.

The boy stopped moving his hand and his soul settled into a very calm and flat state soon enough. The clone put him back to bed and went out hunting. Party time!

As he found the trail of something delicious, the young serpent stretched out his arms again. The blankets were pushed back, but the clone had tucked him in completely, so the blankets wrapped around his feet. He fell out of bed and could not get to his feet like he had before. He got to his knees and, slowly, one movement at a time, started to crawl. The clone had put out the candle, so the only light was the light shining faintly around the edges of the door. It was the only thing to follow. The boy followed it.

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A/N: Technically, the opposite of déjà vu is jamais vu - a sense of unfamiliarity or newness in something that you know for a fact you have interacted with every day of your life (or otherwise are very familiar with). Kakashi isn't quite experiencing either of these phenomena, because he does not know whether or not he has ever seen the sky in question. There aren't any words or phrases for what he's experiencing, because we in this world do not clone ourselves and do not have to reconcile two different sets of memories.

There is a specific sense responsible for helping you know where each part of your body is, without having to use any other senses. That's how you can bring two fingers together, for example, or clap, without having to use your eyes to constantly monitor their relative positions. It is a significant factor in allowing us to walk, because it allows us to know how our joints are moving and where we are placing our foot without having to look and judge and decide all of that. This sense is called proprioception, or kinaesthesia. It comes from sensors in your muscles and joints and tendons and other stuff that tell your brain how everything is stretching and tensing and so forth, and then your brain puts that together to make a mental map of where your body parts are in relation to each other. I first read about this in a book about how to fight off robots, which mentioned that you could take advantage of this to trip a large walking robot because robots generally do not have this sense and therefore can't move as gracefully. Poor robots!

I find this sense very handy for when I want to put an object down without opening my eyes (which I do most mornings because I keep a glass of water by my bed for morning pills). I can hold the glass in my right hand, use my left hand to feel out the spot where I put the glass down, and bring my right hand on top of my left in a smooth motion with no risk of spilling water or breaking the glass. Woohoo!

Neurology is awesome!