Somewhere above me, birds were singing. The noise made me want to be dead.
So did the dull pounding behind my eyes, and the firey pain in my stomach. My head felt crunchy, like someone had filled it up with glass recycling, and the light filtering through my eyelids was already too much. I burrowed my head deeper into the pillow, which smelled like hospital-grade antiseptic and dog.
An indefinite amount of time spent wishing I didn't exist later, I began to be able wonder what that meant.
I was still very tired, and I am always very stupid, but these qualities were currently exacerbated by the monster hangover. I didn't want to think about why I was in a western-style bed in a wood frame, instead of a futon on the floor. I didn't want to think about why I was sleeping back to back with someone who logically could not be Fuyu or Natsuki. I had this feeling that when I figured it out I was going to be yet more deeply annoyed.
I remembered most of the party. After a point it started to get jumbled, with things just happening and the context missing. Some moments I could picture clearly, like a tableau. Kurenai gutless with laughter. Natsuki suggesting a dice game. The courtyard, fragrant with flowering vines. How many drinks did I have? I'd gotten up on the roof, somehow.
That part, I knew with complete certainty, had been Hatake Kakashi's fault, but unfortunately by that point I had been extremely intoxicated. I remembered getting into a fundamental ethics argument with him. I remembered howling at the moon. I did not remember why I'd been howling at the moon, except that there were so many dogs it must have made sense at the time. Then.…?
Flashes of Ox-taicho's mask. I'd called him Ox-tan, I was pretty sure. The impression of arguing with him somewhat histrionically, and then just nothing. Genuine blackout.
Nice of sensei to save me from myself, I guess, but where had he stashed me? Not Aunt Kuro's, not Natsuki's, and not his own home in the Hyuuga complex. All three of those were traditional houses with traditional futon beds, and none of them owned dogs. I wondered if sensei had his own ANBU apartment.
(like I said, I am... very stupid. not just sometimes. all the times.)
"gfuck," I said, without opening my eyes. The person I was sleeping back to back with stirred very slightly. It was a single bed, definitely not big enough to support two people with fidgeting included. We must have been sleeping like a pile of bricks, to stay in that position.
I flung an arm off the side of the bed, step one in beginning to get up. Might take a while. My fingers touched fur, and I cracked open one eye to blurrily take in my surroundings. It was, yes, one of those postage-stamp single-ninja bedsits, I could see the front door from here. There were dogs just everywhere, on the sofa, the floor, assorted rugs and dog beds, like the bizarro universe version of Aunt Kuro's house.
We'd all been introduced, last night, but I didn't actually remember anyone's name. Kakashi's summons pack. That would make this his house, then. I probably ought to be embarrassed, but that was an emotion for after you've recovered from the hangover. Headaches leave no room for shame. Mostly I was just… tired. The thought of having to explain… this, whatever this was, made me tired.
It took a while of lying there, lazily petting a dog off the edge of the bed, gathering up the motivation to keep moving, before I remembered. I don't have to explain anything I'm not ordered to. People could think whatever they wanted and I could confirm nothing and it would be frustrating for them and that was really just too bad.
A lot of people, I've noticed, spin themselves really badly thinking they've got to justify everything they do somehow. The idea that you've got to have an explanation for your behavior no matter what, even if no one's asking. But you don't! You don't even have to explain your own actions to yourself. And just because someone asks doesn't mean it's any of their business, actually.
I made it out of bed, but only by sliding to the floor, the hound next to the bed sitting up to accommodate me. The littlest dog, the pug, looked at me very gravely from a dog bed resting on the abbreviated kitchen table.
"You look rough, kiddo," he said, and that was still not the voice I expected to come out of him. I rolled my eyes, found out that hurt, and dropped my head to cradle it gently in my hands.
"Shut up," I said, like five minutes later. The dog laughed.
"Shouldn't drink so much, then," he said, smugly.
"...Y'r just jealous," I said, muffled. "The gods gave me the ability to recreationally poison myself, not you."
"Yeah," said the dog, watching me feel the room spin. "So jealous."
I thought wistfully of my time in Kiri, letting myself fantasize about getting Mikan to roll me a great fat joint to wake up with in the morning. It wasn't a hangover cure, but it was a great step one. Regular pharmaceuticals weren't always easy on the stomach first thing in the morning, and as far as I knew nobody had figured out how to smoke NSAIDs yet. ...Bet you could do it in a nebulizer, actually. Shit, I could probably get a prescription for a nebulizer, with my medical history.
Let's table that for later, I'm getting off track. Ugh.
I lifted my head to take in the room again, this time with an eye for strategy. Had to plan my moves out well ahead of time, with the amount of effort doing small things like turn head and pat dog was taking. It took a lot of willpower and centering myself, but I did make it to my feet, and from there the electric kettle. While water was boiling, I could locate the tea.
Pakkun (he reintroduced himself, and I reminded him my name wasn't "kid") watched me discover how fucking subfunctional Kakashi's apartment was with increasing levels of entertainment. I knew at least there was an ANBU cafeteria, or I would have been genuinely concerned.
"Does he eat dog food too?" I asked, opening the fourth cabinet full of kibble with something like defeat.
"Sometimes," said Pakkun, and god, they really were exactly the bizarro universe version of Aunt Kuro's cats. And here I'd thought that attitude was exclusive to cat summons. Natsuki's rats were all so sweet and unassuming! Clearly I had just been missing data.
There was exactly one cabinet in Kakashi's kitchenette that contained human food, and I use the term very lightly. It was mostly seasoning packets, instant ramen and instant coffee, a bag of rice and thankfully, blessedly, cheap bagged tea. He had exactly two mugs.
"You know, the guy that dropped you off last night left a bag by the door for you," said Pakkun, but he'd waited until I'd gotten all the way comfortable, sitting at the table with my head cradled in my hands directly over the warm steam from my tea. I sighed heavily, and decided that starting to cry wouldn't do anybody any good at all.
"I'm going to cry," I announced anyway, dry-eyed.
"No you're not," said Pakkun with a snort, and before I could tell him he was acting exactly like some cats I knew there was an intolerably loud and sudden knock at the door. Hatake Kakashi shot bolt upright in bed, his mask dangerously askew and his single visible eye open so wide it was almost perfectly round, like a cartoon.
We stared at each other like that, frozen for a long moment. None of the dogs said a word, damn them, until another loud knock made us all jump as a unit. When I looked back at Kakashi, he was standing beside his bed and his mask was fixed, but his eye had gotten somehow impossibly bigger.
"I can't answer," I said helplessly, looking at him and not the door. "It's your house."
"Hey, kid, are you in there?" called the man outside, whose voice I failed to recognize. The sound of it made Kakashi sigh with his entire body, though, so I assume he did. He trudged past me, moving only slightly better than I felt. I reached back and switched the electric kettle on again. He'd want a cuppa before this was over, I had a feeling.
"Jiraiya," said Kakashi, opening the door, and this time I really was going to cry, because there the man was, enormously tall, white-haired and dressed like a kabuki character. Oh my god, that's two sannin in two days.
"Woah, hey, did I wake you up?" said Jiraiya no sannin, a hand behind his head sheepishly. "I'd heard you were out last night but I didn't think-"
I didn't want to look, but the way he'd cut off told me I probably needed to. I turned my head ever so little and ah, yep, he'd spotted me. I really, definitely, one hundred thousand percent should have stayed dead the first time around. I clearly did not know what was good for me.
"Kashi, you dog!" crowed Jiraiya, cackling obscenely. "Here I was worried about you, I didn't know you had it in ya!" He'd knuckled Kakashi in the arm, and we both winced.
"Not so loud," Kakashi begged, a fry in his voice. Gods, me too. At least Jiraiya seemed to get it, coming over sheepish again with a subvocal oops.
"Sorry," he said, letting himself inside. Kakashi closed the door behind him, and the apartment was suddenly extremely small, in a way it wasn't when it was just two teenagers and eight or nine dogs. "I guess you really did tear it up last night? Hee hee…"
"...We got into a philosophical debate," I said, and took a very slow sip of my tea, when it became apparent that Kakashi was not going to volunteer for this conversation, even though it was his house. I had a hand over my eyes, both because of the headache and the not wanting to look at anyone.
"Is that what they're calling it these days?" said Jiraiya, his eyebrows waggling.
"Why are you here, Jiraiya?" said Kakashi, cutting through the atmosphere. He'd straightened up, and there was neither light nor life in his eye, once more. The mirth bled slowly out of Jiraiya's expression, until he was regarding the young man before him with pinched regret.
"I'm leaving town again today," he said, in a different tone entirely than he'd been using to insinuate. "I wanted to catch you before I left and see if-" he glanced aside at me, and seemed to actually take me in this time, see me as more than a physical comedy prop.
"Well, I just wanted to see how you were doing," he finished, his hand behind his head again, and an extremely fake smile on his face. "And, you know. See if you need anything."
Somehow that didn't make it much less frosty in the room. I heard the kettle boil behind me, and turned to switch it off. When I looked up from pouring Kakashi a cup of tea, he met my eyes, and instead of that flat deadness there was just the tiniest bit of- of something. There was just so damned little of his face to read.
"I'm fine," said Kakashi, and sat down at the table, with Pakkun at his elbow.
"It's not like we're unchaperoned," I said, looking at the dog, and then Jiraiya. "The pack was here the whole time." I was rewarded with the visible amount of effort it took him not to say "kinky".
"ANBU Ox brought us back here," said Kakashi, holding his mug up to the side of his face for the warmth. "Take it up with him."
"I might just," said Jiraiya, with a frown that told me he recognized that call sign. Ah, shit. Why does the spymaster sannin know your ANBU handle, sensei?
"Say, Jiraiya," I said, deliberately with no honorific. "Is it true that when you were an Academy student you once took a summer off to live in the hills and wrestle bigfoot?" Even if I hadn't been trying to distract him, the look on his face was worth it.
God I love the unclassified records library. Really. It's like reading the Personal ads in the newspaper, ninety percent dead boring but brother, that other ten percent.
"That's classified," said Jiraiya, when he'd scraped the astonished reaction off his face.
"Hate to be the bearer of bad news, it's absolutely not," I said, taking another sip. Physically, I didn't actually feel any better, but psychologically, the benefits of trolling a sannin, however mildly, could not be overstated.
"They're not bigfoot," said Jiraiya, and looked like he was about to continue elaborating when what he'd just admitted caught up to him, and he sighed. Somehow, without any actual change in facial expression or posture, Kakashi's aura had gone from frosty to smug. I had a feeling that this was not their usual dynamic, which was a shame.
"It's ok," I told him, gently condescending. "Terrible infosec is practically the official Konoha brand."
"I actually take deep and complete offense to that," said Jiraiya, his hands on his hips, but before we could get into an argument Kakashi actually decided to participate.
"Jiraiya-san," he said, still not actually looking at the sannin. "This is Himitsu Haruka-san. Please stop taking her bait, it's very annoying."
"Fun police," I snorted. Jiraiya had a face on like he understood less the more he saw us interact. "He made it weird, so I get to pull his pigtails."
Kakashi squinted, an operation that was definitely not an eye smile, but somewhere in the vicinity. Jiraiya slid back from the table and stood up quietly.
"If you're just going to bully me, I'm clearly not needed here," he said with an overdramatic sigh. "Just- I'm going to be at Hokage Tower the rest of the day, until I head out again. If you want to say hi."
"Hi," said Kakashi, and it was my turn to squint like I was trying not to laugh.
"You're a bad influence on him," Jiraiya told me, on his way out the door. I smiled humorlessly. Someone ought to be. Sure seemed like all the 'good' influences in his life hadn't done much for his mental health.
The apartment seemed to expand again, with the sannin's enormous presence gone, and I felt like I could breathe again.
"Well, that was deeply awkward," I said briskly, when the atmosphere had gotten thick. "He drop in on you like that a lot?"
"Only when he's in town," said Kakashi, staring down into his half-finished tea. "So. No. Not a lot."
"How do you feel about eating something?" I said, glancing back at the kitchen cabinets. Kakashi looked up at me, the skin around his eye pinched. I winced. "No, no. Just, like, rice. Rice won't smell like anything until it's almost done and it's so hard to throw it up."
He still looked queasy, so I shook my head. "Ok. I'll take my shower first, and then start the rice cooking when you're taking yours. That way you don't have to smell it cooking."
That woke him up some, and he sent a slightly wild look at the door to the bathroom. I was just glad he was in one of the actual apartments, instead of one of the ANBU bunks that had communal facilities. As far as walks of shame went, this one could definitely have been worse.
"Y...sure," he said, his eye darting around the room. While before, the mortification had been at being caught left-footed by Jiraiya no Sannin, now it was starting to evolve, as he started to actually think about the situation we were in. I wondered if he'd ever had a girl in his apartment before. Probably not. Boys are weird about that kind of thing sometimes.
"Ox-taicho left me an overnight bag," I said, thumbing at the ugly rucksack sitting by the door, next to my boots. "I won't even have to use your soap."
The tips of his ears reddened. Scent politics were a whole ballgame I'd never had to deal with much, none of my teammates coming from clans with enhanced olfactory senses, but it had been gone over in detail in kunoichi classes. And in some of the spicier romance novels Natsuki liked to read. I wondered if Kakashi had ever read any of those, or if the idea of a girl smelling like his soap really was organically that interesting of a thought.
"Good," said Kakashi, his tone barely even strained. "Don't need to make this more weird."
"Exactly," I said, standing up. I would like to say that I stood up briskly, but I didn't. I was still moving like I needed a cane, and the world was still wobbling a little at the edges. I shuffled over to my bag, thankful for the itty bittyness of Kakashi's apartment, and then shuffled into the bathroom. I pretended not to notice the eruption of conversation that started outside the door as soon as I started running the water.
Twenty minutes later, washed and dressed in clean clothes, I felt almost fully human again. My head still hurt, but not so much that I caught myself wishing I was a jellyfish. Jellyfish don't have brains, the lucky bastards, they can't get headaches.
Kakashi, Pakkun and the rest of the dogs didn't look like I'd interrupted a conversation when I came out, so it must have petered out naturally while I was in the shower. Good. He did look marginally more lively, though, and went straight into the bathroom as soon as I'd cleared out.
I shuffled over to start the rice cooker going, absentmindedly drying my hair as I did. Gods, I knew there was no point in keeping lots of perishables in the house if you expected to disappear on lengthy missions at literally any time, but there was so much you could still do. I caught myself making a shopping list in my head in spite of myself. Not that I really expected to be invited back here, even if we did seem to be getting along fairly well considering.
I turned on the electric kettle again, and leaned back against the counter to wait for it, a dog curling up on my feet as I stood there. I'd like to say that meant his summons pack liked me, but I couldn't be sure. Aunt Kuro's cats piled on top of me all the time, and I still to this day could not tell you how they felt about me.
I stayed very firmly in reality the whole time, which was a nice change. Last night had been swimming in flashbacks, much as I'd been doing my heartiest to ignore it. This morning it was all quiet, nothing but my very immediate personal misery. I was still working on tracking the patterns, what triggered it and what didn't. This week I really would have to buckle down and do some hard meditating. I'd have the time, while I waited for my evaluation appointments to roll around.
"I still can't figure you out, kid," said Pakkun, and I blinked my way out of ruminating.
"That's fine," I said. "I'd hate for someone else to figure me out before I do."
The pug dog snorted. "Fair enough. You don't feel like someone with bad intentions."
"Intent is only ever like a third of it," I said, shaking my head. "I'm just trying to glue myself back together in the right order. We all are, I think. Nobody ever said it'd be neat and clean. Or fun."
"But you tried anyway, right? Interesting custom, throwing a wake. It's not really a Konoha tradition, but maybe it oughtta be." Pakkun licked his right paw, delicately, as I frowned at the sudden squirming in my stomach.
… It's… really not, is it? Not the way we did it. A wake in Konoha, when one is held, is more a vigil overnight with the body. Not a collective party. Not when the coroners haven't even started to release shinobi bodies back to their families. But it'd just…felt shitty. To hold services and then go back to work, with no release, no catharsis. To experience death and loss on a scale like that and then just go back to the grind.
Had the idea bled through from my library of past lives, felt so organic in my head that I hadn't even realized where it had come from? Kind of a spooky thought, even though it had worked out well this time.
"I'm a big believer in cultural exchange," I said, palming it off for now. "Speaking of, are you friends with any cat summons?"
"No!" barked Pakkun, looking outraged.
"Well, you act just like the ones I know," I said with a shrug. I poured myself a cup of tea, the better to ignore him barking at me.
"Stop trolling my ninken," said Kakashi, when he came out of the shower, a towel around his neck placed to keep his wet hair off the back of his mask.
"They should stop acting like cats, then," I said, unrepentant. He snorted, less offended than Pakkun had been.
"Right," he said. "You've been staying with the cat contract Uchiha. You poor thing." Sarcasm, he really must be feeling better.
"It's a trial and a burden," I said with exaggerated stoicism. The rice cooker beeped, and I turned it off and reached up to take down a couple of bowls. Kakashi didn't turn any paler at the smell of fresh cooked rice, so I heaped us both a portion and dug in, turning obliquely so he could futz with the mask in privacy.
"What are you going tell them about where you spent the night?" he asked, sounding very carefully calm. Couldn't blame him, I was kind of on thin ice just by being here.
"Absolutely fucking nothing," I said, and had the satsifaction of hearing him choke a little. "Ox-taicho took care of me, all's they need to know."
"You're really going to let the Uchiha think you did the walk of shame back from the Hyuuga compound?" he said, and then it was my turn to choke a little.
"Who said Ox-taicho is an Hyuuga?" I said, a little spikily. "I'm doing the walk of shame back from the ANBU district. The best lies are the ones that are completely true, you know."
"Obviously," he said, dropping his empty bowl and chopsticks in the sink with a clatter. I was not yet halfway done with mine.
"It's not healthy to bolt your food," I told him, and he gave me an extremely dry look, adjusting his mask.
"I'll cope," he said. It felt kinda bad, knowing that I was making a man uncomfortable in his own home, but then that had just been this morning all over.
"I'd better get out of your hair," I said, leaving my bowl in the sink too when I was done.
"Not out the front door," Kakashi hissed, catching me by the haori sleeve as I made to leave, rucksack over my shoulder. He pulled me to the back of the apartment, where the window opened right over his bed.
"I can't use chakra to stick to things," I reminded him as he slid up the sash and climbed out on the sill. I followed him up anyway- I am a ninja, and it's not like you need chakra to climb out a third storey window. Sure helps, though.
Right outside the window, however, was an enormous healthy tree, one of the broad sturdy branches growing just below Kakashi's windowsill. It was worn flat and a bit smooth with use, and looking at the rest of the building, his window wasn't the only one extremely handy for the tree. Almost looked like it had been built that way specifically, around the tree- but in Konoha, who knew which had really come first.
"Will you really die if you try molding chakra?" asked Kakashi, waiting for me to join him on the branch. He didn't hold out a hand or anything, and I didn't need assistance, but I appreciated him waiting around.
"Almost immediately," I said, with resignation. "I tested it out in the hospital. Luckily, it was right in front of the doctor."
He started tree-walking down the trunk, leaving me to follow the old-fashioned way, but not before he gave me a skeptical look. "Your doctor told you that you'd die if you tried to use chakra, so you thought you'd test it out?"
"What, do you just believe everything a medic tells you?" I shot back, maybe a little defensive.
"Wh- well, no," he said, staring back at me from below me on the trunk, standing there as casually as could be. "But…"
"I'm a medic," I said. "I know exactly how much lying to patients we do."
"But it really was fatal…?" he said.
"I wasn't going to just take senpai's word for it," I said. Honestly, I didn't know why I was defending myself, it had been pretty indefensible. But the alternative was not arguing with Kakashi, and that was apparently a no-sell.
I took my time getting to the bottom of the tree. There were plenty of good handholds in the bark, but while holding up my own weight has never been exactly challenging with as little of it as there is, I still felt sweaty and limp when I hit the bottom.
"...You just say things to wind people up," said Kakashi, who had waited for me. I was kind of touched. He could have disappeared at any time, and left me to wander my way out of the ANBU district alone. Which was probably a security risk, which meant that he wasn't being nice so much as doing his job, but still.
"Sometimes," I admitted. "...Ok, a lot of the time."
"That's valid technique, out in the field," said Kakashi, still waiting for me to finish breathing heavily and pick myself up from the base of the tree. "But you shouldn't use it so much on allies and coworkers."
"A completely fair complaint," I said, nodding.
"You didn't promise not to do it anymore," he said, once we'd gotten on our way again.
"I don't like making promises," I said. He nodded like that was fair.
He led me through the streets of the quiet little residential neighborhood that looked nothing like I'd expect ANBU housing to be. I suppose that was the point, it wouldn't be a very good secret special ops housing district if it looked much different from the rest of Konoha.
"Are you this slow on purpose?" he asked me, from several feet ahead, his hands indolently in his pockets. I gritted my teeth.
"I was supplementing with chakra, before," I said, trying not to clench my jaw. "More than I'd actively realized I was doing. Now I can't, and if you think you're annoyed by it, multiply that by like eighty and you're about where I'm at."
He still sighed like I was doing it on purpose, and I was about to tell him to just grab me and side-along shunshin us to the tower when I looked up and suddenly I knew where exactly in town where we were.
"Hey, that konbini has great iced coffee," I said, but there was no longer anyone there to speak to. Just a limp breeze kicking a swirl of leaves across the street. I stood there and made a face.
He'd just escorted me out of the ANBU neighborhood and bailed. Figures. But on the other hand… I was right outside the ANBU neighborhood, by a landmark I recognized, something not even sensei had tipped me off to. It was probably heavily genjutsu trapped, to get back in, but still.
I still had to get back to the Uchiha district on my own power, but if I was doing it on my own time that was fine. I went into the konbini for that iced coffee. Might as well.
thanks for all the follows + favs, you guys are the best