It's currently three in the morning.
Here, have a chapter :)
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Two minutes until they reached the eastern barrier.
The moon had already reached its apex a couple of hours ago and the only reason they kept running through the night was because they knew these woods like the back of their hands. The mission had been exhausting and they were all ready to get back home as soon as possible.
Kakashi sighed in relief when he disarmed the coded seals of the barrier.
Tenzo, Yugao and Keiichi stepped through the opening behind him and they each saluted the sentinels on duty. He could probably find his way towards headquarters with his eyes closed from there and had to restrain himself from actually doing so.
"So," he stretched his arms above his head and cracked his stiff neck, "Rusty Kunai?"
"I'm beat, I think I'll head straight home, Taichou." Keiichi gave them a wave and waited for Kakashi to give him a nod before shunshining towards the Hyuga compound.
"Anything but that karaoke bar, please." Yugao huffed a laugh and waved hello to some operatives they passed by. Kakashi watched as they looked at him in awe and had to fight a scowl. "I don't think I can take anymore of Tenzo's singing."
"Rude…" Tenzo muttered with narrowed eyes.
They went immediately towards the changing room and when they took off their masks, Kakashi could see that his cheeks were flushed. He chuckled.
"Maa maa, no teasing my kouhai, Kouhai-chan."
This made both their faces redden like he knew it would and Yugao squeaked. Kakashi chuckled again as they divested themselves of their clothes, they were so easy to tease.
When he was younger, their hero worship of him was something that always made his head bigger than it had any right being even if sometimes he found it annoying. As they grew up—fought together, bled together, lost together—that hero worship had morphed into deeper respect and camaraderie. Still, years after and it was just as easy to get them flustered like this.
The three of them made their way to the showers, Kakashi in the middle with Yugao to his left and Tenzo to his right. It wasn't anything close to erotic or even something to be embarrassed about. There was no space for such things in ANBU.
When he was younger, Yugao had often graced his bed but it had been years since she had fallen for Hayate and there hadn't been a fallout between them of any kind. She was his teammate, he would die for her and she would die for him. The sex had been purely a way to release stress after missions and as easy as it had been to take that extra step it'd been easy to take that step back.
Seeing their teammates naked wasn't exactly anything new or exciting and it was good to use this time to unwind. They joked about him needing to be rescued from a solo mission as the steam rose around them and Kakashi found himself relaxing.
Yugao and Tenzo finished first and left for the changing rooms but Kakashi stayed behind. The hot water felt amazing on his stiff and overused muscles. He closed his eyes, braced his arms against the wall and let his head fall between them.
He missed home.
Usually when a shinobi went away for longer than a month they had mandatory leave for at least a week unless an emergency came up. Ever since the Konoha Crush he couldn't remember being in the village for longer than two or three days at a time. As soon as he touched ground and managed to throw out the contents of his fridge and buy new ones, he had to leave again. An urgent mission needed his skill set or his expertise or maybe he was needed to boost morale.
Kakashi sighed and turned the water off.
He wouldn't complain. If what his village needed was for him to go out on a string of seemingly never ending missions, it's what he would do. If he died along the way then that was fine, it was a shinobi's death, a worthy one. He would do what was needed of him.
Kakashi grabbed a towel and dried himself up as the steam in the room began to clear out. He frowned at his hands wrapping the towel around his waist.
That had been what he'd always thought ever since his father killed himself. The way for a shinobi to go wasn't with his own weapon. It was on the battlefield, fighting and protecting his village.
The same drive that he had a few years before to always go above and beyond during missions was still there but now… Now, he didn't feel like he was as okay with the thought of dying as he had been before.
There were still some things he had to do before he could go. He had to see Naruto return, had to make sure he could make up for the terrible upbringing his sensei's son had. He had to take care of Sasuke—whether that meant getting him back to Konoha or not. He had to win another challenge with Gai and make sure the village was safe after the hit they took.
He missed Konoha.
Kakashi shook the troubling thoughts from his head and moved to the changing room. Yugao and Tenzo were already wearing their jounin uniforms and were both talking to the ANBU Commander.
The man's lazy brown eyes met his and a cheery smile spread across his face.
"Late as always, huh?" He shook his head with a laugh and turned back towards the rest of Kakashi's team. "You guys can go on ahead, I'll give you a few days to write the report so you can relax for the rest of the night."
The pair turned towards Kakashi and he dismissed them with a cheery smile of his own, saying he would catch up in a minute. The flush on both their cheeks was as cute as always, they had never quite gotten used to his bare face.
Usui sighed.
"You know, I really didn't expect you to have any problems with that mission." His face was uncharacteristically serious as he looked at Kakashi and he fought the urge to fidget. "If I had even the slightest idea that you would need backup I would have stationed a team nearby."
Kakashi looked at Usui. He could see that the look on his face hid just how worried he'd been. He knew this man better than probably anyone else in the village even if he made it a point to always call him by his last name.
When the last person in the village that he had any emotional connection died, Kakashi had been lost, his grief all consuming. Usui Toshio had taken him under his wing when his sensei died, he'd taught him how to hide his feelings behind a cheery mask, taught him the way of ANBU.
A blank face reveals too much, Kashi-kun, it's always better to hide behind a smile.
At first, he'd been resentful, refusing to create another bond with an authoritative figure because all of those had left him. When the Commander had said that he could call him by his name, Kakashi in all his teenage angst had refused to call him anything but his family name. It was stupid and childish but it stuck.
After the Kyuubi attack, Usui had been the one to help him find an apartment, the one to take him out of his father's mausoleum of a house. He had been a guide to many of the orphans from that time. Kakashi, Genma and many other lost kids that had found themselves falling into ANBU.
Usui had been the one to make sure he'd gotten all the best missions, the one to make sure he grew up right. Or as right as someone in the shadow ranks could. Kakashi had shaped his very personality around the teachings of this man.
Smile to hide how dead his eyes looked. Be aloof and cool so that people would never realise that he dissociated on a frequent basis. Pull out a smutty book so people would think he was eccentric and not notice that he hadn't slept for the past two days because of his nightmares.
Kakashi would have been long dead if it wasn't for Usui Toshio. He still wasn't used to seeing the man demonstrate any kind of concern towards him.
"Ah." He scratched the back of his head awkwardly and raised a shoulder in a half-shrug. "I think it was an oversight on both our parts. Don't worry about it, my old team took care of me just fine."
Usui frowned slightly when Kakashi moved past him to reach his locker but he pretended he didn't see it. He started pulling on his jounin uniform.
"Speaking of, it seems like Team Ro was a member short." Kakashi chanced a look at Usui while he's fastening his pants. The man had sat down on the single bench that ran between the lockers and was lazily sprawled along the length of it. It looked like he was going to wait for Kakashi.
"Ah, yeah. Actually, Keiichi is not a member of Team Ro," Usui explained. "I put Genma on the team when you left to play pretend dad with a bunch of genin but he asked for the week off because of the Jounin Exams."
Kakashi scoffed. Pretend dad. He wasn't old enough to be their dad and their relationship had never been like that. Gai and Kurenai easily fell into the role of almost parent-like figure to their students. Asuma could maybe have passed off as a fun uncle but Kakashi had always figured his relationship with Team 7 was that of an absentee older brother at best.
"I didn't leave, I was forcibly retired from the forces." Kakashi rolled his eye at his mentor while he tied his hitai-ate. He leaned back against the locker and faced Usui. "That still leaves Team Ro short a member."
"There's a newbie." Usui looked at him with a slight grin and a particular glint to his eyes that Kakashi had no idea what to make of.
"A newbie?" From what he gathered, only three new operatives passed the ANBU exams last year, two of which he had worked with already and one that had only been stationed inside the village so far.
"Yep." Usui shrugged and Kakashi crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Only fifteen years old and already a medic nin."
"A recruit then." The minimum age for anyone taking the ANBU entrance exams was sixteen, anyone younger than that had to be personally recruited to join. Kakashi nodded to himself and frowned. "Unusual for a medic nin to be considered, isn't it?"
Usui huffed a laugh and leaned back on his hands.
"Yeah, she's truly exceptional, Kashi-kun." Usui gave him an impish grin and an unapologetic shrug when Kakashi glared at him for the nickname. "I had to do some careful maneuvering to get her to join Team Ro, to be honest. It was worth it, though. Anything to make sure my shadows are as safe as possible."
Usui treated each member of ANBU as if they were his own family. A very competitive and deadly family, sure, but everyone was important to him all the same. Getting a medic to join the ranks was a good idea, Kakashi was sure he'd be giving the kid extra work soon enough.
"I'm glad Team Ro has a capable medic," Kakashi said softly, his hands running through his damp hair. "Why didn't you send her instead of Keiichi?"
"Uhei came with your extraction request the night before her Jounin Exams, I couldn't pull her away." Usui got up and stretched a bit, an amusedly fond look on his face as he continued. "That's also the reason Genma stayed behind. He asked for the week off to be there for her." Usui snickered. "The two of them are really close, it's adorable."
So this girl was not only a medic when she had been recruited, she was a chunin medic. That was insane, Kakashi thought, he could only wonder how capable this kunoichi was for Usui to have scouted her.
Usui clapped him hard on the shoulder and pushed him towards the exit, saying he didn't want to make those two wait too much. Kakashi followed his lead to leave headquarters and once the cool night air ruffled his hair, he stopped and looked at the clear sky.
He briefly considered just going home, he was so tired. He watched Usui slowly walk towards the treeline in the direction of his house as Kakashi considered his options. In the end, the thought of his cold, empty apartment propelled his legs towards the Rusty Kunai.
He took his time walking through the empty streets once he left the training grounds, appreciating how peaceful the village was at night. As he made his way inside the busy bar, though, he was greeted with the complete opposite.
Every single booth was occupied to their maximum capacity and beyond and the few tables in the bar had been taken away to accommodate even more shinobi on their feet with drinks and cigarettes in their hands.
Kakashi looked towards the clock behind the bar as he pushed his way towards the booth furthest on the back where he knew his friends would be. It was already three in the morning, why did the whole village feel the need to convene on the bar?
He finally managed to sit down across from Tenzo and Yugao, noticing in the back of his mind that he had never seen the two of them sit so closely together like that.
"Why is it so fucking crowded in here?" Kakashi grunted mostly to himself, he'd been hoping for something more peaceful after over two months away. He spared a smile for Tenzo when the man poured a cup of sake for him.
"Oh, yeah." Yugao blinked widened eyes at him. "You don't really know do you?"
"Know what?" Kakashi frowned at them.
"Sakura made jounin! We didn't know the good news ourselves before we came here but this is her party." It was Tenzo that answered, a proud grin on his face. "The only ones who passed the exam were her, that Hyuga kid and a guy from TI. You know, the one Anko took under her wing?"
He hadn't known Anko had taken anyone under her wing. Nor that Sakura had been recommended for the exams or even that she had been capable enough to make it.
As soon as the thought crossed his mind, he immediately felt his stomach drop. That was unfair of him to think. Sakura had always been extremely driven and hardworking even if her motivation had been skewed at first. This shouldn't come as a surprise to him.
It takes him a few seconds to realise Yugao had been giving him this little smile that looked equal parts confused and amused. Kakashi downed his sake.
"She's the newest addition to Team Ro," she said, voice gentle and proud. "Our own little Wolfie-chan."
Sakura was in Team Ro. The newbie Usui had told him about, a medic nin with great skills. Wolfie-chan.
Kakashi leaned back on his seat and took his cup to his lips absentmindedly when Yugao filled it back up. He felt blindsighted but undeniably proud of her. Even though he hadn't been able to do much for her when she was younger and they had never been particularly close, Sakura was still Team 7 in the end.
More than that, between the two of them was a bond that he didn't have with Naruto and Sasuke. The boys had left Konoha and even though it was for different reasons, neither had the same amount of loyalty and dedication to the village that Kakashi and Sakura had.
The two of them would forever be the ones left behind and shared the fate of holding the same guilt in their hearts for letting Sasuke defect and the hurt from Naruto leaving the village.
Even though their last encounter hadn't been pleasant for either of them, Kakashi still felt proud as fuck and maybe just a bit scared for her. He'd never paid attention to all the raw potential she had but he was glad someone else had and also a little terrified because he had taken that same too fast escalation in his career and it had left him very vulnerable.
It left him with a mark on his back outside the village… and inside as well.
Kakashi nursed his sake silently and tried to reassure himself that Sakura was going to be fine because she had a lot of people surrounding her and caring for her. She wasn't alone.
Even as he thought that, his eyes scanned the bar to find her. It seemed all her hard work had been at the cost of her social life.
Sakura was standing between Tenten and Ino and she seemed happy and carefree for appearance's sake but as soon as she was forced into a larger group of the rookies, things changed.
She looked participative, sure, but Kakashi himself was a master at faking things like that. Everybody else probably didn't realise it but he could see she was actually always on the sidelines, not really committing to any of the conversations going on around her while keeping a smile on her pretty face.
He worried for her because while he had distanced himself from his friends—pushed them away, really—like she had, he had always had his pack with him. Faithful companions that knew where he was at all times and that at the tiniest sign of danger, both outside and inside the village, would alert someone.
His ANBU team had also been a kind of family for him and he was glad that she at least had been placed with the people he trusted most in the village. They would have her back.
"I should go congratulate her," Kakashi said into his cup, not really intending to.
"You really should," a familiar voice said to his side.
Kakashi turned and was surprised to see Genma sliding in next to him in the booth. The man that had been one of his best friends ever since he joined ANBU put a heavy arm around his shoulders and grinned at him, the familiar senbon bobbing between his teeth.
"You old bastard, I haven't seen you in ages." Genma shook him a bit by the shoulders and immediately slid the glass of whisky he'd been drinking towards him. "Here you go, catch up."
"You're older than me…" Kakashi sighed but accepted the alcohol all the same. One of his number one rules was to never turn down food or drinks when they were for free. He was pretty sure that was in the Shinobi Handbook somewhere.
The four of them easily fell into their usual banter and Kakashi immediately felt like he was a teenager. Sitting with his old team, drinking and talking shit. If he ignored the complaints from his body he could easily pretend he was eighteen again.
He missed them.
Genma's behaviour that night, however, was odd. Not odd as in bad but more like Kakashi couldn't really figure out what he was thinking. He seemed his usual carefree self in one moment and then suddenly he would make a quip at Kakashi that held just the tiniest bit of excessive aggression to be considered joking.
It was almost like he was mad at Kakashi but he never broached any particularly troubling subject and in the next second he was back to being goofy and flirty.
A flash of pink caught his attention suddenly.
Sakura had managed to slip away from the worst of the crowd and was leaning against the counter talking to the bartender. Kakashi pushed Genma until he slid off the booth so he could get up and start making his way towards her.
Kakashi dodged a few elbows and a drunk kunoichi he didn't recognise all the while keeping Sakura in his sights. She was wearing the full jounin uniform like he was, her hair much longer than the last time he'd seen her but still in the same braid as before.
Without a second thought, Kakashi leaned against the counter next to her and interrupted whatever the bartender was saying to order another whisky.
They both looked at him in surprise and it only took Kakashi a few seconds to see the blush on both their cheeks and realise he interrupted something. The man behind the bar was maybe a few years younger than him and moderately handsome, and Sakura was the star of the night. It shouldn't come as much of a surprise for him as it did.
Kakashi cleared his throat and scratched the back of his head.
"Sorry," he murmured just for her ears.
For a second, they just looked at each other and Kakashi wondered if she knew all that he was apologising for. By the look on her face, she probably did.
He had been a dick to her the last time they had seen each other. She had caught him off guard, breaking down in the safety of his apartment and he had all but ordered her to leave. He didn't know how to properly address that, how to explain to her what had been going on inside his head that night.
Sakura was looking at him with a firm expression on her face. Her green eyes were calmly regarding him like they could see inside his very soul, like she knew just what he was thinking. Kakashi unconsciously held his breath.
She looked at him for a beat longer, a frown appearing on her otherwise smooth face. He was vaguely intrigued by the small scar bisecting her eyebrow, he wondered distantly how she had gotten it. Had it been an enemy's sword or maybe an accident during a spar? Why didn't she heal it herself—
"It's okay."
His thoughts were interrupted by her voice. It was light and didn't hold any particularly heavy notes to it but he knew, he just knew that she was saying that in answer to his own thoughts. It was like the two of them had silently agreed to move past it.
Kakashi exhaled.
The bartender placed their drinks in front of them and Kakashi was surprised to see she had ordered whisky to herself as well. They both broke their staring contest and took equally long sips of their drinks.
"I'm glad everything went okay on your mission," Sakura said quietly.
Kakashi took another sip of his drink when he realised that her shoulders were relaxing a bit. It jarred him, honestly, the notion that not only she had been aware of his mission but also worried about him.
It was enough that his reply came out completely honest, and not coated in the fake sugary smile he'd learned to give everybody else.
"It was a fucking disaster."
And then he found himself telling her about the mission.
He told her he had been tasked with infiltrating a minor lord's court in the border with Kiri. The merchant kept trade with both Konoha and Kiri and Kakashi had been sent to evaluate the situation and see what needed to be done so that the lord didn't stop trading with Konoha and dropped the other village if possible.
Kakashi had discovered that Shunichiro, the lord's firstborn, had been preparing to campaign for his father to drop Konoha because he'd been in love with a Kiri girl. Kakashi killed the man easily, without giving himself away, but the problem had come when the girl Shunichiro had been in love with came to the compound with an entourage of shinobi to investigate her lover's death.
The lord's youngest daughter had apparently fallen in love with him and just wouldn't leave his side for a second so Kakashi didn't have any ways of escaping without anyone noticing and he wasn't sure he could fight all the shinobi and still run without giving Konoha away.
He managed to summon Uhei, his fastest hound, while he was in the bathroom and got the distress call out.
Kakashi was almost having an out of body experience as he told Sakura everything, his mouth moving without his consent. He barely managed to keep the details out of his story and it was with horror that he realised he had almost told her everything as if she was Genma or Tenzo.
Because the truth was that the lord's daughter, Himiko, had fancied herself in love with him because for the past two months he had thoroughly indulged himself in her. Not only that, but through her, he had gathered a lot of information on her father that Konoha could use to blackmail him later on.
He thanked fuck he managed to keep his tongue inside his mouth at least concerning these particular details of the story because what the fuck, he didn't even know why he was telling Sakura all of this.
Kakashi downed the rest of his whisky and briefly wondered if he was drunk. Sakura was looking at him with a small smirk so he cleared his throat.
"Congratulations, by the way."
He fought a wince. After all that talking he had finally managed to tell her that.
"Thank you." Sakura's smirk grew into a smile and she clinked her glass with his empty one before finishing hers.
"It's only natural that you'd be the first to make jounin," Kakashi said. He saw her surprise and beneath that, he could practically see her pushing away the unwanted sadness that came with any mention of their team. He could see it because he was doing the same thing. "You had always been the most dedicated, the most hardworking… I'm sorry I couldn't see that as clearly before."
The words tumbled out of his mouth easily because they were the most simple truth. He was sorry. Sakura was speechless besides him for long enough that he turned to look at her.
There seemed to be something she was struggling to say but the words didn't come out of her mouth so he decided to save her from coming up with a reply. Kakashi cleared his throat.
"Yeah, uh, congratulations again, Sakura." He gave her a cheery smile that wasn't as fake as it usually was, his tone of voice sheepish. "I'm sorry I don't have a present for you now but I definitely will soon."
Sakura nodded slightly, her tongue coming to wet her lower lip. Her eyes searched his face for something that he wasn't quite sure what it was and then a slow smile spread across her lips. Her hand left her side and landed softly on the exposed skin of his forearm.
"It's okay, Kakashi." They both knew she was saying that for more than just his excuses for not having a gift for her promotion.
Kakashi looked at her small, deceptively delicate hand. He remembered when her hands had been uncalloused and ill prepared for fighting. A few years had passed and now the hand resting against his arm was anything but that. He could feel the strength behind her grip, the bumps of her calluses and even though the skin was fair and didn't have any scars, he knew that these were the hands of a seasoned kunoichi.
He slowly brought his gaze back to her face and smiled slightly back at her. Things felt okaier than they'd had for some time.
Sakura retracted her hand to accept the new glass of whisky from the bartender. She smiled coyly at Kakashi from behind her glass.
"You know, you could always show me your face as a gift." She jokingly raised her eyebrows at him, making him chuckle.
"I think a gift for making jounin has to be more valuable than that, don't you?" Kakashi took a sip from his own freshly poured whisky and moved closer to her when an intoxicated shinobi poked his elbow in the middle of his back accidentally.
"I dunno." Sakura stared unfocused into the distance, a finger pressed to her chin in thought. "With the bet I had going on with the boys I might get enough cash to buy a nice gift for Shishou's birthday."
"What?" Kakashi asked, surprised. "You guys betted on it?"
Sakura gave him a deadpanned look.
"Of course we did." She raised an eyebrow at him. "At first it was to see who could guess what you were hiding beneath that mask and then to see who could find out first and then we had all these stipulations for increasing the amount of money every few weeks that went by that we didn't manage to catch you without it…" She looked amused as she shook her head slightly. "It got out of hand pretty fast."
Kakashi chuckled incredulously.
For half a second he considered telling her that she'd already seen it but ultimately decided to refrain from doing so. He wanted to keep his Sukea identity safe and Sakura had surprised him so much already he didn't even think of the possibility that she wouldn't figure it out if he gave her the slightest of hints.
"Well, I'll swing by your house when I find an appropriate gift, if that's okay with you." Kakashi pushed himself away from the counter, ready to let her go back to her friends. "Second street after the civilian market, right?"
"Oh, uhm," Sakura trailed off awkwardly. She scratched her scar and Kakashi wondered if that was one of her unconscious habits. "I kinda… don't live there anymore."
Kakashi frowned at her. He knew the Haruno clan was a fairly important civilian clan and it was uncommon for the civilian children to leave their parent's home before marrying. Then again, the girl standing before him was hardly a child anymore.
It felt odd to think that he didn't really know her. He had almost made a point of keeping himself away from anything concerning his sole female student's private life. At first it was because he didn't really think the four of them would develop any form of bond like he had with his team and then it was because he didn't know how to deal with a little girl that had been as sheltered as Sakura.
With Naruto it was easy. The boy was living alone and had no parents, he could barely take care of himself. So Kakashi made sure to stock his fridge and swing by with plenty of vegetables and to gently guide him to the local laundromat.
Sasuke had been a bit trickier because he had been as meticulous and organised as Kakashi had been at that age, always liking things to be as orderly as possible. He didn't need help with his cooking or cleaning but Kakashi still made a point to plant some tomato filled onigiri on his kitchen table from time to time, unseen.
Sakura didn't need any of that. She had always been well taken care of by her parents and self sufficient in all other matters. At the time she hadn't been as interested in apprimorating her skills as she clearly was now, but even the pathetic attempts at teaching Kakashi had tried didn't need much from his part. She had learned tree walking faster than he'd seen anyone else do and most of the questions she had she took to the library.
His chest hurt when he thought that something had happened for her to break away from her parents like that and he wasn't there for her. The image that came to mind was of her during her first chunin mission, a girl looking older than her almost fourteen years in just her wrappings and blood covering almost every inch of her.
Kakashi knew there wasn't a space left for him in her life. They were both bound by their duties and loyalties to Team 7 but she didn't need him to be her jounin sensei anymore. She probably didn't need him to even be a distant mentor, he was sure Usui and his old team already filled that role.
He wished he could offer her something but he didn't have anything more to give.
"I live at the Senju estate now," Sakura said when he stayed quiet for a few seconds too long. "Huh, I guess you can even find me at the jounin headquarters now!"
The way she said it, like she couldn't quite believe it herself made a tendril of anger settle on his stomach. He had contributed to her self doubts, he was sure, and he didn't know how to make up for it.
"Sakura!" A girl's voice called from the other side of the bar. Kakashi wasn't sure if it had been Tenten or Ino but both girls were waving enthusiastically, their clumsy movements betraying just how drunk they were.
"I'll leave you to your friends," Kakashi said with a small nod. He was already stepping away from the bar when she called him back. She looked like she was carefully considering her next words, her face an expressionless mask.
He didn't know what she would have said but she got interrupted before he could encourage her to speak. Ino pulled roughly on her arm, exclaiming that she wouldn't be able to get out of their next drinking game. Sakura shot him a calculating look before letting herself be pulled away.
It was only when Gai came crashing into him and put his arms around his shoulders that Kakashi realised she had left him with the bill for their drinks.
"Put this in Shiranui Genma's tab, would you?" He managed to say to the bartender before Gai was pulling him into another challenge.
Kakashi let himself become absorbed by his friend's antics, his body soft and pliant from exhaustion and all the whisky. He was placed on a table with many of his friends and forced to participate in an arm wrestle with Gai.
Time passed with everyone on the table talking about Sakura and Neji, how they had performed on the exams and what had happened. Kakashi got a play by play on Sakura's taijutsu skills by Gai, the man proudly exclaiming that Lee had helped her with her training and that she was currently wearing the last set of his weights.
"The girl's fucking scary with her genjutsu, man. Kurenai would've been impressed if she'd been around to see her in action," Asuma told him at one point, smoke escaping from his lips. "A real assassin type if I've ever seen one."
Kakashi sat and drank and listened to his friends telling him about what had been going on in the village. At one point, he looked towards the booth on the back where Sakura was seated on Genma's lap, hugging Yugao towards her. They were all drinking and singing loudly and Kakashi suddenly felt like an outsider.
With that depressing thought, he made his excuses to leave.
His friends didn't try to keep him there and he was glad. He was just too drunk and too tired to be in a crowd. Even though it was way past four in the morning, the shinobi inside the Rusty Kunai showed no signs of stopping.
So Kakashi left almost unnoticed and let his feet carry him towards his apartment. The cool early morning air was sobering somewhat but as soon as he went past his traps, he regretted having drank so much.
He couldn't stand the stale musty smell of the place after it'd been locked up for so long. He'd left two months ago without any prior notice and he couldn't find anyone to take care of the place.
With a weary sigh, Kakashi grabbed the only bottle of sake he kept around, took off his flak jacket and left. He left his feet guide him again and found himself standing in front of the cenotaph.
Being there had always served as a type of punishment and salvation all wrapped up into one mind numbing activity. Looking at the shiny stone with his loved one's names carved into it had always made him feel better and worse at the same time.
That night, he didn't stay long. He didn't know what to say to Obito. He imagined that he was looking down on him with exasperation on his face. He imagined Rin with that gently admonishing face only she could pull out.
Kakashi snorted at the empty air around him and left without a backwards glance.
This time he knew where he was going, but he felt immensely more unsettled by the track he had to take. He trudged past the training grounds towards the outskirts of the village where some of the clans housed.
The entrance to the Nara compound was to his right and he kept going further until a small broken gate led him towards a path through the dark woods. He felt scared in a way he hadn't felt in a long, long time but still, determination burned inside his gut. He had to do this.
Kakashi followed the path through the trees until he reached a clearing. He went past an overgrown garden—vegetable patch, local flowers, spices, medicinal plants—towards an old, decrepit house. Technically all of this was his.
A portion of the land around Konoha that melted into the Nara forest. Both their clans had an agreement some generations before him that the forest would be in possession of the Nara but the Hatake wolves would be free to roam and hunt in the woods.
The Hatake clan was most commonly associated with wolves. His grandfather had come from Kumo during the first war from a clan as big as the Inuzuka that had the same relationship with wolves as they had with dogs. A large migration had happened at that time all around the world, many clans were found missing a few members as people deserted in search of better conditions.
When his father was born, the Hatakes inside Konoha had been reduced to just Sakumo and a cousin that had died before Kakashi had even been born. The clan got a noble status for their help during the war and had been officially instituted as a Konoha Noble Clan after it was over.
Then his father had taken a tanto to his gut and ended his life.
Kakashi broke out of the memories being back there brought him and went about disarming the various traps and seals he'd put up around the place. He tried to immerse himself in happier memories of spending most of his childhood training in the backyard and how he used to spend his days off cleaning up the place, perfecting his favourite dishes from cooking books he bought at the bookstore, teaching himself how to fish and hunt and generally take care of himself.
He went inside and tried to remember why he was there at all. Feeling particularly sad and drunk, Kakashi downed half the bottle in one go before he took a deep breath and faced the room he had come for.
His father's study. The place he had found him in a pool of his own blood.
Kakashi had been there about four times after his father killed himself and never alone. He came back the first time, right after the funeral because he was still in shock and his young mind couldn't let go of the fact that his father had always liked the house clean and this room was dirty and he needed to scrub the floor from his father's blood.
Minato had found him on his hands and knees, scrubbing at the floor with tears running down his face.
His sensei had stayed there with him and helped him clean every corner of the house until it was cleaner than it had ever been before. Then Minato cleaned his puke when Kakashi heaved and passed out.
He had sealed the room shut and not even looked at its door when he passed by.
The next time he'd gone inside was to get his father's sabre when he made chunin, sensei at his side like he'd always tried to be back then. He sealed the room once again and came back years later, this time already in team 7.
He remembered that day to be one of his favourites from his farce of a childhood.
Rin and Obito had followed him because he'd never disclosed where he lived before and had happened upon one of his days off where he cleaned and cooked and took care of the garden. Some of it had gone wild during his father's absence because he didn't have the time to do it all by himself but he had managed to keep the vegetable patch mostly alive.
Rin had been the one to question why he didn't clean a room and Obito the one to grab his arm and pull him there when he disclosed the story in half complete sentences. They cleaned the room and the rest of the house together then Kakashi made them all their favourite dishes.
The next time he'd gone inside the room was to put the sabre back. He was missing an eye and carrying a gift from his best friend that felt too heavy to hold.
For all of two minutes he considered it.
He held the sabre in his hands and kneeled where his father had kneeled before and really, really considered ending his life like his father had. Then Rin had burst inside the room, tears on her cheeks and scoldings on her lips and she held him as he shook in her arms and cried and howled at how unfair it all was.
She had held him through it all and had quieted his breakdown with a single kiss to his lips.
That had been the beginning of one of the worst mistakes of his life. He had tried to love her like Obito had, tried to honour his last wishes and make her happy but he just couldn't. In the end, Rin had deserved someone pure and bright like Obito and Kakashi was… Kakashi.
He hadn't been able to love her like Obito would have and he had ultimately pushed her away before that fateful day with the Kiri ninja.
The room had been sealed since then. He had moved out of the house soon after the Kyuubi attack, Usui's gentle hands on his and Genma's shoulders when he pointed them both towards buying the plants for the new apartment complex.
Kakashi entered the room, this time alone, and waited for the panic to set in.
It didn't, surprisingly. Sure, he vaguely felt nauseated by the smell of the room—a thousand times worse than his apartment and even the rest of the house smelled—and he was sweating from the stress but it felt like it was something he could handle. Still, his eyes pointedly looked anywhere but at the spot that he had found his father.
He moved stiffly until he was behind the desk and kneeled on the floor, pushing away all the images it brought to his head. His eyes caught on a flash of white.
It was a picture of his father and mother, Kakashi himself barely a year old in her arms. She had a bright smile on her face and Sakumo was holding her from behind with his nose buried on the skin beneath her jaw.
He knew his father was feeling her scent, memorising it, marking it in his head as his. He wondered if his father had remembered her smell even after she died. Kakashi wished he could have remembered her scent, the way she laughed, if she ever sang him lullabies.
Hatake Midori had died a few months after that picture was taken during a mission. She was a chunin, good and efficient in her job but not with enough connections to make it to jounin and Kakashi had come along before she could make it to tokujo.
Kakashi didn't remember her but he had heroworshiped her when he was a child. He grew up with his father telling him stories of her, how she was a stellar shinobi who was extremely intelligent and took the rules seriously. So seriously that during missions, she would even wear a mask.
Kakashi had taken up the mask before he even entered the Academy and refused to take it off. At first it had been because of his mother, then because he just never took his uniform off, not even inside Konoha—it had been one of the recommendations during the war and many shinobi from his time couldn't quite shake off the habit of it—then because it just felt weird to go outside the house without it.
It had also been useful during those first years without his father where everywhere he went, someone seemed to recognise him as the White Fang's son.
One other thing he had taken from his mother was her summoning scroll. While she hadn't come from a prominent clan, she had been faintly related to a branch of the Inuzuka and wildly liked by everyone around her. That distant relative had given her the ability to summon a pack of dogs and Kakashi had taken over it as soon as he had enough chakra to do so.
He'd just become a chunin and his far from developed chakra reserves were just enough so he could summon a small pug and promptly pass out. He woke up the next morning expecting to be alone only to see the tiny dog munching on the dinner he had left on the table. That first day all the pug had done was whine and eat so Kakashi didn't have any problems with naming him Pakkun.
Kakashi sighed, coughed at the mothball that met his mask when he did and placed the sake bottle next to the picture. He needed to get out of there.
With quick fingers, he activated the seal on one of the tatami blocks behind the desk. It glowed blue before emitting a faint hiss and opening at the middle. Inside was a chest and the reason he had gone there.
Kakashi picked it up and didn't bother taking what he wanted from inside. He closed the hidden compartment again and stood up with the chest braced against one hip. He swayed where he stood.
Maybe he was drunker than he'd thought he was.
With a shaky hand, he reached for the bottle but at the last second stopped. His fingers closed around the portrait frame instead.
Kakashi sealed the room quickly and left the house. The cool spring evening air was a relief to his senses and he brought the hand holding the portrait up to lower his mask beneath his chin. It was suddenly too hard to breathe.
Kakashi had only enough time to put the things on the ground next to him before he leaned over the porch and threw up over the railing.
.
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Don't say I never do nice things for you guys! I hope you enjoyed your Kakashi chapter and my personal headcanons hehe I have just a few notes to make on this chapter.
First, my spellcheck really hated that Kakashi only had one eye to roll, it vehemently wanted to change it to 'rolled his eyes'. Also, it was particularly offended that I meant Genma's lap and not Grandma's lap.
I based Kakashi's feelings on how a shinobi's death should be off the bushido notion that during the times of war and fighting, it was better for a samurai to give his life in battle than take his own life with the sword if they wanted to regain their honour.
Also, I love how Kakashi makes people blush.
This isn't official, I think, but pakupaku (ぱくぱく) is the onomatopoeia used to represent the action of eating quickly so I figured that's why Kakashi named Pakkun like that. I kinda like this idea and how the other names he chose for his ninken are equally as cute.
If you guys have been following me on tumblr, you know that I haven't been feeling so good these past few weeks so I just really wanted to take the time to thank you guys for all the wonderful reviews you've left me so far. Writing this and seeing you like this as much as I do really makes me happy 3
On that note! The amazing Waytoo and Calliartss drew some fanart for this fic! I cannot express how fucking ecstatic that made me xD ffn doesn't let me post links in here tho :( so I have no idea how to properly credit them... But still! Those are their names on Tumblr, if you guys could check them out and give them some love...
For future reference, any type of art this story inspires you to do is HIGHLY appreciated. Be it a drawing or a drabble or a fic or even a long review. I love the idea of my art inspiring others to work on their art as well.
Let me know what you think,
J