Disclaimer: If you've got this far, you should know that I don't own Naruto. Apparently I do own Kiyame, however, because….well, you'll see.
Author's Notes: Anyone with access to the new data book will know by now that I have committed an unpardonable crime. My only excuse is that I started this fic before the data book's release, and that I only know about my sin because of the goodness of kimi no vanilla, who translated the relevant sections for me. To set the record straight: Kiba's older sister's name is Inuzuka Hana; she's an 18-year-old chuunin, and her three dogs are known as the Haimaru San Kyoudai, or the Three Grey Brothers. (But I was right about Tsume's name!) I suppose from this point Kiyame is officially an Original Character… Which is why it took me so long to get this chapter out. But I am not going to abandon it; this fic will be finished if I have to write the last words in blood, à la summoning contract!
Chapter Five: Visits
Kakashi left the hospital two days later, after a long argument with two nurses and a doctor that culminated in the jounin flatly refusing to stay in the hospital bed any longer. The doctor threw up his hands at last and declared Kakashi a lost cause; he wasn't going to get in the way of an elite ninja who wanted out. He added sourly that probably only Godaime herself would succeed in forcing the Copy Ninja to stay in bed. Kakashi knew that wasn't true, but he kept his mouth shut and hobbled around the room collecting the few mementoes his visitors had left. He didn't want the doctor to bring Gai into this, after all.
The nurses were more persistent, especially the pretty one who'd confiscated his crutch two days before. When he asked politely for its return, she folded her arms and glared. "You only came out of surgery three days ago," she snapped. "You shouldn't even be thinking of going home."
"I'm sorry," Kakashi said, and translocated into the hallway to steal a crutch from the supply closet. He didn't bother going back into the room.
His apartment seemed much further from the hospital than he remembered. The translocation had cost more of his limited chakra than he could spare, and he was forced to limp slowly through the streets, leaning on his crutch. At least they'd supplied him with clothes—a standard-issue jounin uniform and vest to replace the ones he'd lost—and the bandages still swathed enough of his face to make up for the lack of his mask.
The nurse was probably right, he admitted reluctantly as he neared his boarding house after three agonizingly slow blocks. Tsunade had pronounced his internal injuries completely healed at his check-up that morning, but his chakra levels were another matter altogether. He'd cajoled Sakura into a few extra healing sessions, and he'd tried his own hand at healing his sliced shoulder and the massive burn on his chest. Result: his heart was pumping as steadily as a fifteen-year-old's, his shoulder was only slightly painful, his chest looked…almost human, and his chakra reservoir was just shy of empty. Well, there was nothing to stop him from collapsing in bed as soon as he got home. As long as it was his own bed, with his own books and his own rules.
Well, there were the boarding house rules, but Fujiwara-san had been renting rooms to shinobi for nearly twenty years, and she'd learned to tolerate their…idiosyncrasies.
Bed was definitely in order. He nodded a greeting to Fujiwara-san, who was wiping down the tables in the dining room after lunch. She worked her way around some exhausted young chuunin who had fallen asleep with his head on the table, and came towards him with a smile.
"Hatake-san! It's good to see you back. Maito-san said you were injured…" Her eyes rested questioningly on his crutch, then slid up to his bandaged face.
He grimaced and bit his lip as scabs pulled on his healing cheek. Fujiwara Keiko ran the cleanest and quietest shinobi boarding house in Konoha, and she made an eggplant miso soup to kill for. She also displayed a distressing tendency to mother her boarders, which generally confined itself to plenty of soup and hot water bottles but could extend to foul-tasting herbal teas and worse advice. (The woman would not understand that you couldn't console a grieving ninja by saying that it wasn't his fault his teammates were dead, and anyway, they were in a better place now…)
"Not so badly," he lied. "Hokage-sama took care of it easily." And if she wondered where he'd been for the past three nights, well, let her wonder. It was all probably classified by now anyway. "But I'm pretty tired. I'll see you tomorrow, Fujiwara-san." He waved vaguely and hobbled off toward the stairs.
He was two doors away from his room (and bed!) when Gai jogged out of the bathroom, wet hair still dripping from his shower. The older jounin paused mid-stride to stare at Kakashi. "You are supposed to be in the hospital for another three days," he said accusingly. "Genma and I were going to come visit you tonight!"
"Beat you to it," Kakashi muttered, fumbling with his doorknob. "Oi, Gai, I'm just gonna collapse for a while. Tell Fujiwara-san not to save me any dinner."
"You'll need it," Gai objected with a frown. "The best way to rebuild your strength—apart from training, of course—is to eat healthy and regular meals." His eyes lit. "I shall make my special dumplings to aid in your recovery!"
Kakashi winced. He'd eaten Gai's dumplings once, before he'd known that there was a reason why the other man lived at Fujiwara's instead of in a regular apartment. (Not that Kakashi was much of a cook himself, of course, but he knew good food when he tasted it.) "Uh…thanks. But no." He propped his crutch up against the bookcase by the door, plopped the flowers and the books onto his desk, peeled off his vest and his forehead protector, and took two steps across the floor before sinking onto his bed. Gods, it felt good…
"Shut the door when you go out," he directed his pillow. Gai gave a muffled laugh.
"Do you plan to sleep with your sandals on?"
He shrugged his left shoulder and buried his face in the pillow. "Too much effort to take 'em off."
Gai's strong fingers wrapped around Kakashi's ankles and tugged the sandals off. "Sleep well, Kakashi. I'll come by in the morning. We'll have to train early and often to get you back up to speed!"
"Hn," Kakashi told his pillow.
Gai chuckled again as the door snicked shut behind him.
-
When Gai came by the next morning, Kakashi was already gone. The curtains flapped in the breeze from the open window, and a note lay on the desk beside the empty vase, held down by a well-thumbed copy of Icha Icha Paradise.
Gai
Sorry to cancel our date. I remembered a previous engagement.
Kakashi
Kakashi reached the Heroes' Stone as the last blush of dawn was still fading from the sky. Rin had always liked this time of the morning best; he'd often arrived at their team meeting spot only to find her already there, watching the sun rise.
He'd never asked her what she loved so much about sunrises. It was #137 on his constantly-growing list of regrets.
The bouquet the other jounin had given him was still at the peak of its bloom; he'd plucked off only a few wilted petals on the way here. He laid the flowers at the base of the memorial and stepped back, hands stuffed in his pockets, face once more expressionless under the black mask.
There were three new names carved into the face of the stone. Little sparkles of rock-dust still clung glittering in the engraved characters. Shinui Kaji… Tanaka Kazushi… Matsumoto Ichiro…
Kiyame's ANBU team. They must have held the memorial service while he was still in the hospital. He wondered absently if Kiyame had attended. The public memorials were supposed to be more for the survivors than the deceased, but he'd never found that they helped much.
"What would you do?" he asked the stone quietly, his eye unconsciously seeking out the familiar names. Obito, Rin, Sensei… "Sensei, you always knew what to say. Rin, you never even needed to say anything at all. And Obito…"
Obito hadn't known what to say. But he'd said it anyway, breaking through Kakashi's barriers with all the energy his warm heart possessed. Maybe on purpose, maybe on accident, he'd found the words that would cut Kakashi to the core as nothing else could.
"I believe that the White Fang is a true hero…"
"Maybe it's none of my business," he told the stone. "Probably it's not. But none of you would have sat back and watched, would you? Obito, you'd be charging in there already." Just the way he'd charged through life and into death, because Obito never held back from helping anyone who needed it.
Neither had Rin, or Sensei. All three of them had given their lives to protect others, to defend those who couldn't defend themselves. In one way or another, they'd all died for Kakashi.
It wasn't too much to ask that he live for them.
-
The Inuzuka estate was the largest in Konoha, appropriate for a clan who augmented their substantial numbers with an even more substantial pack of nin-dogs. The walled compound sprawled across acres of the forested land on Konoha's western edge, encompassing private training fields, outbuildings, and what was quite probably the largest kennels complex on the continent.
Kakashi had very dim memories of coming here as a child, walking proudly at his father's side. The Hatake family had had close ties with the Inuzuka—back when there had been a Hatake family, before Sakumo's disgrace. Sakumo had been good friends with the former head of the Inuzuka clan; Kakashi even had one or two memories of Inuzuka Shikon entering the Hatake house, one hand resting on the head of his enormous grey dog as he shucked his sandals at the door and traded cheerful insults with Sakumo.
But Sakumo had been dead for twenty years, and Shikon for eleven, and the comforting home of Kakashi's childhood was a memory far fainter than that of the night he'd come home to find his father sprawled in a pool of blood on the floor of the family dojo.
He pushed those thoughts away sharply. Here and now, he told himself, and slipped through the half-open gate into the Inuzuka courtyard.
It was a large, open yard with a packed-earth floor, surrounded on three sides by a two-story house with numerous doors and opening onto the courtyard. An archway at the back gave him a glimpse into another yard and what looked like several more wings. A handful of dogs lay scattered around the courtyard, basking in the warm morning sunshine, and two half-naked children romped with a litter of brown puppies in the center of the yard. A brown bitch watched them with an indulgent eye that sharpened noticeably when she scented Kakashi. She lounged to her feet and strolled towards the gate, displaying long white fangs in an immense yawn.
"Hatake Kakashi," he told her, extending a hand. "I'm here to see Inuzuka Kiyame."
The dog's ears twitched back, then perked forward again as she sniffed his hand. Her fringed tail wagged briefly, and she nudged his hand with her nose before turning and trotting towards the back of the yard. He followed bemusedly, side-stepping the wrestling children and puppies that spilled across his path. The children's cheeks were already tattooed with the crimson fangs of their clan, he noted, although neither of them could be older than two. Their shrill voices rose high in a mixture of childish babbling and uncannily accurate barks.
Kakashi was beginning to revise his opinion of the Inuzuka, and he'd added quite a few more questions to his mental list.
His guide stopped at the archway that tunneled under the house's second story and into a second, smaller courtyard. There were more dogs in this courtyard, but they sat or lay in furry heaps around the walls, dark eyes fixed on the two women sparring in the center of the courtyard.
Kakashi recognized Inuzuka Tsume immediately; he'd never worked with the short, wiry woman, but he'd seen her at enough village functions to have a healthy respect for her temper and for her skills as a tracker and fighter. She seemed almost evenly matched with her opponent, though, a taller, slender young woman in a black tank-top and shorts. The younger woman's long dark ponytail whipped around her shoulders as she dodged a savage blow, thick locks sliding over her bandaged left bicep and ANBU tattoo. Her face was set, eyes narrowed in concentration, lower lip caught between her teeth. The crimson fangs on her cheeks seemed to blaze against her tanned skin.
He hadn't planned to interrupt. But the dog at his side barked sharply, and the fighting women broke apart, pivoting to face him. Tsume's shoulders slumped as she recognized him, and she lifted a weary hand to wipe sweat from her brow. Kiyame stiffened. The dog barked again reprovingly and thwacked her tail across the back of Kakashi's thighs. He took a startled step forward, and neither he nor Tsume missed Kiyame's flinch.
But she didn't run, or yell, or attack, or do any of the dozen things he'd half-expected. She just stood there, hands fisted at her sides, head thrown up, eyes wide and strained, looking like nothing so much as a cornered wolf.
Kakashi bit his lip, and tasted blood.
"Hatake Kakashi." Tsume's voice cut through the tension like a katana through flesh. Her tone was even, refusing to hint at her thoughts. "We didn't expect to see you here."
He wondered what they had expected—for him to turn tail and run after what he'd seen and heard? (Well, he had…hastily retreated, but that had more to with avoiding Kuromaru's teeth in his throat than with…anything else.) He rubbed the back of his head with one hand and turned over a few possible responses. "Sorry to surprise you," he said at last. "I wanted to talk to Kiyame, and this seemed to be the place to find her."
Tsume cast a quick glance at her daughter. After a long moment she said quietly, "He has the right."
Kiyame shivered. "I know," she said. Her hands clenched convulsively, then relaxed with an obvious effort. She didn't meet Kakashi's eyes, but she hitched one shoulder slightly as she turned, inviting him to follow her into the house.
Kakashi began to wonder what he'd gotten himself into.
Author's Notes: Many thanks to Phoenix, my beta reader; to Chevira Lowe, who graciously agreed to take a look; to kimi no vanilla for help with names; and to all those who've taken the time to read and review, even if I couldn't directly answer you. Criticism is a wonderful thing.
Chevira Lowe: I did it, see? I hope you're happy…And I promise, you will find out about the seal in the next chapter!
crazy-antman: I leave it up to your imagination. That's the wonderful thing about dashes, yes?
link no miko: I'm so glad you like it! I'm trying to keep my take on Kakashi unfiltered by all the other (excellent!) fics I've read on him, so hopefully his blend of "uber!serious and quirky" will stay consistant!
Luneko: Agreed: the Kyouken no Jutsu is monumentally cool. It causes monumental problems, though, as you will see…in a few weeks, when I get Chapter 6 written!