A couple of days later, when Kakashi's body no longer feels too warm and his chakra has gone back to a somewhat-acceptable level, Kakashi makes his way to Ichiraku Ramen to meet his students for lunch.

He's on crutches, his legs not quite yet strong enough to carry his full weight, courtesy of the chakra exhaustion. He's not yet back to full strength by far, but he's able to move again and he's been fever-free for twenty-four hours, so the medical-nin deemed him well enough to be discharged from the hospital this morning. He's grateful for that. Long hospital stays have never been his cup of tea.

He'd spent his morning taking a walk through Konoha, to visit the Memorial Stone, Rin's grave and Minato's face on the Hokage Rock; he had a lot to tell his old teammates. After that, he'd gone by the Hokage's office to finally report Team Seven's mission. Tenzou had already given his own report of the mission, but Kakashi wanted to talk to the Hokage regardless. He needed to demand some things from the Third, and it was much more effective to make those kinds of demands in person.

He knew that he was in no position to demand things from the Hokage – he was supposed to ask for them politely, or not ask for them at all – but everything that had happened lately had left him with no desire to hold his tongue. So in the end, he'd demanded three things, each of them important.

Firstly, Team Seven won't be sent out of the village for missions anymore, at least not for a while. They've had enough for now.

Secondly, Kakashi is now allowed to tell Naruto about his past. Laws and personal feelings had been holding him back from doing that before, but he feels that it's time to tell Naruto now. Especially since Kakashi had apparently said too much about the subject already, when he was too delirious to know what he was saying. If Naruto has questions about his past, he should come to Kakashi for answers, instead of looking for answers himself and possibly putting himself in danger. The Third seemed to agree with that. There will be a day when Kakashi confronts him about why it was forbidden to tell Naruto about his past in the first place, but today is not that day. It's more intimidating to wait until he no longer needs crutches.

The results of his third demand, he carries in his pockets. It's something that he plans to give to his students during lunch.

He almost hadn't expected that the Hokage would give him what he wants so easily, but Kakashi's timing was just right for a discussion like this: there was apparently some drama happening in the Chuunin Exams, and it had the Third really distracted. Kakashi doesn't know what's going on there, and he barely wants to know. He's on sick leave. The village can solve its own problems for a while.

At any rate, the Third was in a rush to finish his meeting with Kakashi as quickly as possible, so he didn't really protest against Kakashi's demands. Which is great, actually. It's nice that something is going well, after things have been going horrifyingly wrong for so long.

With that feeling of relief, Kakashi makes his way to Ichiraku's. It's a pretty long distance to walk on crutches, but he doesn't mind it much. The weather is nice, and he appreciates getting some fresh air – he'd been cooped up in that hospital room for too long.

He can hear his students chatter from outside the ramen stand, though his hearing isn't quite good enough to figure out the topic of their conversation. Their words are lost underneath the voices of the people on the street and the bubbling of cooking ramen. He's been noticing that it's more difficult to hear stuff when there are lots of sounds around him; he hadn't encountered that problem before, because the forest had been so quiet. He'll probably get used to it eventually.

He ducks into the ramen stand with a smile and a "good afternoon". His students are sitting on the stools inside. Naruto turns around to him when he enters.

"Hey!" he greets him. "You're on time for once!"

Kakashi makes a protesting noise, though the exasperation in his tone is fake. "Was it really necessary to add 'for once' to that sentence?"

Naruto laughs. "Sorry," he says, "I was just surprised, that's all. I was expecting you to be late again, like you always are."

Kakashi replies with a thoughtful hum. He never really did make an effort to be on time for his students, did he? "I'll try to be on time, from now on," he replies as he leans his crutches against the wall and lowers himself onto one of the stools. "Maybe we should even start training earlier in the morning, once I can get back to training you. The training regimen that I've thought up is pretty good, but I could teach you even more stuff if we could train for an hour longer…"

His sentence trails off when he looks up and notices that his students are gaping at him. Naruto studies him earnestly, eyes wide. "Who are you," he asks, "and what have you done to our sensei?"

"Being on time, setting up training regimens, actually teaching us – it's really not like you," Sasuke adds with a nod.

"Are you sure you don't still have a fever, Kakashi-sensei?" Sakura asks.

Kakashi dramatically touches a hand to his chest. "Are you seeing this, Teuchi?" he asks the ramen stand owner, who chuckles. "My students are bullying me. They're bullying their poor sensei who's just trying to make an effort." All jokes aside, his students each could have died a horrible death in the middle of nowhere, and they might've been able to defend themselves better if Kakashi had trained them better from the start. He was a crappy teacher, and he could've lost his team because of that. He needs to make up for that. "I will teach you guys properly from now on," he tells his genin, "whether you like it or not."

"I guess that's just another way that this team has changed after our mission," Naruto muses. "Let's add it to the list."

Sakura nods and takes out a notebook and a pencil. It's a familiar sight; the genin have been making lists of all the things that have changed because of this mission, as a way to help them work through their experiences. Gai had helped Kakashi think up the exercise. It's the sort of thing that Kakashi himself would have hated as a teenager, so he wasn't sure whether the exercise would work at all, but the genin really take it seriously. It seems like it's really giving them a way to wrap their heads around everything, and Kakashi is glad to see it.

They made two lists, one with good changes and one with bad changes. The list with bad changes is a list of things that Kakashi plans to help his students with as well as he can; "nightmares" is on that list, unsurprisingly, and "not trusting strangers anymore". The very first items that were added to that list had to do with the genin's worries about Kakashi's health, although most of those items have been crossed out by now, thanks to Kakashi's continuous reassurances and his steady recovery. Only a handful of items still remain on the list, now, among which "my houseplants died while I was gone" in Naruto's handwriting.

Naturally – because these kids are, at their cores, incorrigible optimists – the list of good things that this mission brought them is over twice as long as the list of bad things. "We became friends" is on it, and "we got a lot of combat experience". "Learned ANBU sign language". "Stopped dieting" and "learned to make traps" in Sakura's handwriting, and "learned to block genjutsu" in Naruto's handwriting. One quiet moment, Sasuke had admitted to Kakashi that this mission taught him to care about people again, though he said that adding it to the list would be too embarrassing. Kakashi gets that.

Sakura writes down "Kakashi-sensei decided to be on time from now on" at the bottom of the list. Her handwriting is still a little shaky because she's still getting used to moving her arm again, but she's been getting better.

"By the way," Kakashi says before she has the chance to put away the notebook, "I have another thing that you can add to the list." He reaches into his pockets and takes out three pouches. They make a soft clinking noise as he lays them down on the counter.

"What's that?" Naruto asks, rocking forwards on his stool.

Kakashi slides the pouches over to his students, one by one. "Your rewards," he says simply.

Naruto opens his pouch – and his mouth drops open. "Are you sure this isn't some sort of mistake?" he asks, holding up a handful of coins. "This seems like way too much."

"Well, the things you accomplished during this mission are nothing to sneeze at," Kakashi replies with a shrug. "It's only fair that you get paid appropriately for your hard work." The Hokage had planned to pay them for just their C-rank mission at the harbor, but Kakashi had argued that his genin took out a missing-nin pretty much by themselves, which essentially meant that they'd finished an S-rank mission by themselves. Not to mention that they helped defeat a group of bandits, arrested three robbers, and guarded Kakashi when he was too hurt to move – an A-rank mission, a C-rank mission, and a B-rank mission, respectively.

It all adds up to a fairly hefty sum of money, and that makes for some pretty hilarious expressions on Kakashi's students' faces.

"Well," Sakura says slowly, "we'll pay for lunch, then."

"No need for that," replies Teuchi from behind the counter. "Your food's on the house today."

"That's really nice of you, and all," Naruto says, still holding up his handful of coins, "but we can pay for it, you know."

"Don't argue," Ayame tells him, and Kakashi is pretty sure that there are tears in Naruto's eyes.

Team Seven orders, and the genin chat a little while they wait for their food. They tease Kakashi some more about his decision to be on time from now on. Kakashi pretends to be insulted, but he's actually relieved that Team Seven's banter has returned. They spent such a long time talking about life and death – Kakashi had almost feared that they'd forgotten how to talk about normal stuff.

Their food arrives, and Kakashi finds himself pinching himself. The food looks almost impossibly good. He's never felt this happy at the sight of a bowl of ramen before.

"Thanks for the food," he says, a little breathless, and he pulls down his mask and takes his first bite of ramen. After weeks of mission rations and bland hospital food, the ramen tastes extra good in comparison.

He hasn't had proper food in ages, so he eats slowly, no matter how badly he wants to wolf it all down in one go; it'd be a shame to end up with a stomach ache after this nice experience. He'd normally be rushing to eat his food as quickly as possible, to make sure that his students wouldn't see his face, but he finds that he doesn't care much about that anymore. They can see his face if they want. When he looks up, though, he sees to his amusement that all of his students are subtly facing away from him. Kakashi smiles to himself and shrugs, and returns to his bowl of ramen.

It's bizarre, he finds himself thinking. Here they are, eating ramen for lunch, in Konoha. In his most desperate moments, he'd feared that they'd never have a normal moment like this again – yet here they are, with crutches and with still-too-thin faces, but they're here. They made it out with a bunch of new wisdom and with some cool new scars. Hopefully soon, their bodies will recover and their nightmares will fade, and they'll only be left with the good things that came from this mission.

Kakashi takes another bite of his ramen, content. They have a ways to go when it comes to dealing with the aftermath of this mission, but the worst is behind them now.

They made it back home, and they survived.

-END-

Author's note: Aaand that's a wrap! Thanks so much for reading this fic! This was a blast to write, and I'm glad you enjoyed it enough to make it through the whole story! I hope you enjoyed it :)

I'm currently posting a sequel to this fic on my AO3 account (username ihopethelightwillshineupon). The first chapter of the sequel has already been posted, so if you're interested, hop on over there! The sequel is titled "Home" and it'll just be a small collection of scenes about Team Seven recovering and getting used to being home again.

Thanks so much for reading, please let me know what you think of this fic, and check out the sequel if you're interested ;)