Disclaimer: I own nothing but the general plot and OCs
eh I don't know how I feel about this chap, it's alright I guess. It's a little difficult to concentrate because I'm trying to sort shit out to move out by the end of next month
Anyway, next chap will probably also be Kakashi pov, putting some real thinking and planning into place and whatnot. If there's anything else you'd like to see from his pov in terms of scenes or what he thinks about specific stuff let me know, otherwise it's likely to be a short one... or one that goes wildly out of my control haha.
No editing in this one, sorry for mistakes
english spoken is underlined.
Thank you so much for awesome reviews, also for favs and follows! Let me know what works or doesn't work for you, as well as prompts for future scenes you'd like to see.
Chapter 24 - Every Little Thing Is Gonna Be Alright
Despite himself, Kakashi slept fitfully that night. He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and worried. He hadn't been prone to poking and prodding at potential problems like a sore tooth until he had had Sona in his life. With someone so dependent on him he found himself trying to prevent issues for them both before they even manifested, rather than dealing with them when the time came. He was responsible for the continued stability in their lives and it was daunting.
He was distracted from his thoughts by a little body sleepily dragging itself across his abdomen and draping itself there with a snuffly puff. He suppressed a sound of amusement at such a small person's ability to take up so much of the bed in one night. It had taken almost two weeks to get used to Sona's sudden need to move copiously during the night after her health had improved past a certain point. She'd gone from lying too still and silent all night, to flinging herself across the mattress and wriggling around or over him during her sleep.
The first few times it had happened he had been jolted from his sleep under the impression that it was an intruder. Without thinking, he'd grabbed her in a restraining hold, reaching for a kunai he always kept nearby, then almost had a heart attack when he realised who it was - Sona had sleepily cracked open an eyelid, made a grumpy whining sound, pawed weakly at his hand, turned over and gone back to sleep completely uncaring of the kunai aimed at her throat.
By now, although some part of him was vaguely aware whenever she moved, he slept right through all of her wriggling - regardless of her unconscious ability to always find where he lay and steal his body heat. He in turn seemed to have developed the habit in his sleep of tucking her right up next to him in an attempt to minimise her excessive movements.
"You're thinking too loudly," came the hoarse mumble.
"Aa, sorry I didn't mean to wake you," he kept his voice quiet.
"Stop worrying, go to sleep."
Kakashi said nothing, but carded his fingers through her hair and scraped his nails gently against her scalp.
"S'nice. But seriously, if you're gonna be stuck awake, think productive. Don't underestimate the people who'll fight for you, take stock of your resources, prepare yourself for worst case scenario, and be at peace with the hand you've got, knowing you'll do the best you possibly can with it.
"Don't isolate yourself. You, me, Gai. We're a team. I might not be much yet, but you have two formidable fighters in yourself and Gai. Wars have been won on less. And while I'm improving, you're not stuck with nothing to do but hope. You can always get better yourself. Whether that's physically or in other shinobi arts, or whatever.
"Trust us. Trust yourself. Whatever happens, it'll be an acceptable outcome as long as we're together. Keep the real goal simple and hidden, and anything we achieve that maintains that, will be a win for us."
He smiled in the dark, and thought a little on what she'd said, "maa, I guess you're right."
"Course I'm right, now shut up and go to sleep. I was dreaming of cake,"she grumbled, then squirmed, stretched, relaxed with a sigh, and fell asleep once more still draped across him.
Early the next morning, with about three hours of sleep, Kakashi rose from bed. Like usual, Sona had migrated to somewhere around his shoulder or neck by that point, and when she felt him rise, she automatically hooked her arms around the base of his neck and was lifted, dangling behind him as he stood. He reached behind him to give her some support from underneath so that she wasn't strangling him, and made his way to kitchen to make breakfast one handed.
Fairly soon, with her cheek rested against the curve by his neck, the smell of food reached Sona's nose, and she blearily dragged herself from sleep to open her eyes.
"What're we doin' t'day?" She slurred into his shoulder.
"Today," he replied, far more cheerily than her despite his lack of sleep, "we're having a chat with Gai. I'm sparring with him and doing a mission, you're bonding with the pack and practicing your writing, and finally you're teaching me to write English."
"M'kay."
They sat next to each other at the table when the food was served, Sona leaning against him to keep herself upright, her eyes still only half open.
"Why'm I still so tired," she complained drowsily. He put his arm round her, so that she could focus on eating rather than not falling into her food.
"Because yesterday was the first time you used chakra by activating your dōjutsu. It's a shock to the system as your body gets used to refilling your reserves, which are small enough already due to your physical age."
He didn't mention the fact that she was also probably recovering from her outpouring of emotions yesterday. He saw the remnants of her anguish the day before in the puffiness around her eyes, and the shadows underneath them.
Reminded of the cause once more, he felt the anger that he had pushed aside stir inside him again. He kept his expression carefully controlled, and continued to eat, as Sona grumbled incoherently to herself.
Truthfully, Sona wasn't wrong the day before, in that so many others had suffered what would be considered far greater losses. But from his experience, a child of great privilege may experience great suffering at being exposed to violence and cruel words, just as an underprivileged child who had been through great struggles could experience the same level of great suffering at seeing what little they had scraped together for themselves stripped cruelly from them and forced into acts that they arguably should never be exposed to at that age.
The human ability to adapt to weather the lives they had been given, Kakashi believed, allowed people to generally feel the same sort of sliding scale of worry, fear, stress, anxiety, grief, sorrow, joy and contentment in all sorts of different circumstances.
As such, it wasn't so much the actual event which angered him to such an extent, but the emotions that Sona associated with it. Strife and suffering was a common occurrence throughout the Elemental Nations, and sometimes he felt like he had seen all of its forms - sometimes the thought of all the pain out there barely moved him at all. But this wasn't a stranger, or a client, or a fellow shinobi who had signed up to their life and been hardened for it. This was his family.
This was his child. His sister. His best friend. He was undeniably protective of her, and he had taken on her mental well-being as his responsibility. To know that some cowardly bastard had hurt her before he was even around to be there for her infuriated him. He couldn't help but look at his little Su-chan and imagine her a little taller, a little less cautious, a little more brash, a lot more vulnerable and helpless, without the cool confidence she had in her own logic, and so much more exposed to casual cruelty. He couldn't help but seethe at his imagination of that girl having her mind twisted about by two malicious adults who were supposed to protect her.
He didn't wonder why anyone would want to hurt a little girl, or why anyone would want to beat an innocent dog. He had seen far too much to wonder those sorts of things anymore, but it didn't stop the desire to see the fear in their eyes and see the life drain from them, to ensure they never got near enough to hurt her again. What rankled the most, was the complete futility of these desires. The scumbags were a world and a lifetime away. The damage was done. He would never meet them and he would never get to show them how it felt to be at the mercy of someone stronger and smarter than they were.
"You're angry," the high, sweet voice pierced his thoughts, and his eye snapped toward Sona, who was regarding him with veiled concern.
He should have known better than to think she wouldn't be able to tell. If there was one thing she was good at it was picking up and understanding the most subtle changes in people's body language, expressions, intonation and wording. She was even better when it was him, with her consistent exposure.
"Aa," he replied simply.
"Was it something to do with my Kekkei Genkai and its related issues, what I told you last night, or something else entirely?"
He pondered for a moment, over whether to tell her or not, before admitting, "I'm frustrated at what your dad and step mother exposed you to, and the effect it had on you. I don't like that there's nothing I can do about it."
She hummed, like she had suspected as such, and gave him a comforting smile, which almost made him feel worse- was he not supposed to be comforting her?
"I can't tell you how to feel about it. You're allowed to feel whatever you like toward my dad and Anne, but remember, they weren't flat characters found in a book. They weren't villains. They hurt me, I won't deny that- and my dad at least, hurt others too- but there was a lot more to them than that. I think, that to deny their positive attributes is to do an injustice to some of the people who played a key part in influencing who I became. The memories still make me cry when I speak of them and I'm pulled back into that moment, but after a long time, I forgave both of them for what they did.
"It did me no good to hold onto my contempt and disgust and anger, it did me even less good to expect better of them than what they could give. I learnt to understand that they didn't just pop into existence making people unhappy around them, they learned and were taught to be insecure, and unhappy and most of all; afraid. I discovered, at least for my dad, that underneath it all he never stopped being the terrified little boy who was beaten and abused and psychologically bullied by both of his parents until he learnt to make everyone afraid of him so that they didn't hurt him first."
He frowned, feeling his lips curl down, "that doesn't justify the harm they did." To you went unsaid.
She shrugged, "no, I know. But it also doesn't cancel out the help that they did. My dad admitted to me once that he didn't like to be violent and scare the people he loved, but he felt like he couldn't help himself. He said he was scared that one day he'd get carried away and he'd kill someone and he'd get addicted to it. Discounting Bo, he was always very careful not to go that far. It was like this little comfort he kept telling himself- that at least he'd never killed anyone."
"He never ended another person's life?" He found himself asking curiously.
"He did. He killed one person. For me. Because I asked him to. He did it so that I didn't have to... he gave that piece of himself to me, and then he died."
He saw the strain around Sona's expression, and so dropped that line of conversation. He still didn't like Simeon, and he definitely didn't like Anne, he was still angry at what she had been through, and frustrated at his inability to do anything. However, Sona said she had forgiven both of them, and she was the one they hurt. He wasn't inclined to forgive them, but it wasn't about him.
He leaned down and pulled her into his lap, to give the top of her (fluffy soft) head a quick buss, before he lifted her onto his shoulder, and took the dirty dishes to the sink for later.
"Come on, a quick shower for us both I think, and then over to Gai's." He forced his tone back into the peppy cheer of earlier that morning, with an eye smile on his face, knowing there was a mutual desire to change the topic.
He knew Gai, for all his complete inability to be anything but blunt and honest, was still startlingly good at seeing underneath the underneath in his own way. Kakashi wouldn't need to explain beyond the basics for his best friend to understand the sort of problems they were facing in terms of Subaru's Kekkei Genkai. Sona had a great ability to simplify things he was stressed about, and create winning scenarios from them, but she wasn't a shinobi and she only currently had minimal understanding of specific politics and shadows that ran the shinobi world, both within Konoha, and the Elemental Nations. If he wanted a sounding board who would help him in this, he'd need Gai's help.
Additionally, he could really use a willing and tough opponent to try to beat into the ground right about now, to take the edge off.
Thankfully there weren't any real surprises for Kakashi that day, and it went just about how he expected it to. Gai responded to the news of Sona's Kekkei Genkai with the level of passion he had predicted, whilst at the same time acknowledging the risk she was under.
They put aside discussing plans for the time being, as explaining even subtextually the threat posed to Subaru's wellbeing had Kakashi feeling frustrated and stressed and antsy all over again. He left a mildly anxious Sona with some sweet things, books and his Ninken for both bonding and protection, after double checking the security around Gai's apartment, before they both made their way to a training ground.
He made sure to tell Gai not to hold back, and then spent the next three and a half hours exhausting both himself and Gai, by trying to beat the shit out of him, with a particular vicious edge to his fighting. Gai, of course, gave as good as he got, and they thoroughly destroyed the training ground. All the while, both of them made sure to evaluate each other's and their own abilities, their progress for the past few years and how they might hold up against other elite Jōnin.
To his dismay, he realised that Sona was right, in that he could improve. He was certainly no worse than when he left Anbu, having kept his skills up through frequent sparring sessions, but where his physical speed had improved marginally, his mental clarity and reflexes had dulled the slightest bit. Most frustratingly, was that overall he had stagnated.
To be truthful, he had in many ways stagnated since his became Anbu captain. He knew he had grown immensely spiritually and emotionally. He was more confident in himself as a shinobi and as a man. Having a team that depending on his leadership for survival under the harshest conditions had given him invaluable skills. He had gleaned a far greater understanding of the workings of the village he lived in, and just how to work the system to his own advantage wherever he could.
But purely as a fighter, he had gotten no better. His jutsus were as numerous as ever thanks to his sharingan, but he relied on it far too quickly and it tired him out too much in a fight. He hadn't realised he'd gotten complacent, until he was facing- in a worst case scenario -a fight on his hands against shinobi as skilled as he was, with information on his abilities, and a determination to get past him to kidnap his child.
He needed to be better. He needed to be faster, stronger, more wily, more slippery, more imaginative. He needed... a lot more practice that he didn't know if he had the time for whilst also focusing on improving Sona.
If it wasn't the innate trust that no matter what, Gai had his back, he'd have walked away from that feeling more despondent and annoyed with himself than he did. As it was those emotions would do him no good. He could only focus on his goals and do whatever was required of him to reach them.
As he and Gai dragged themselves back from their mutual battering, he idly wondered how Sona had gotten on with the pack. He hoped she at least managed to open up to Pakkun, who was the most talkative of them.
The scene they walked in on immediately had Gai reaching for the camera. Bundled on the floor in a pile was his pack, and protected in the middle of all of that fur, Sona was fast asleep, with Pakkun in her arms, looking relaxed and pleased with himself.
He couldn't prevent the smile from creeping across his face at the cute sight. Akino, who was closest to Kakashi and Gai, lifted his head from where it was rested against his front paws.
"She fell asleep about twenty minutes ago. Took a while to get her to warm up to us, but eventually we had her playing a game of tag to work off the sugar," he spoke quietly, and then shifted slightly guiltily, "we may have broken a few plates during an enthusiastic tackle. She read the books you left her and crashed shortly afterward."
Kakashi knew Gai wouldn't care about the broken plates, considering he broke multiple a week. He was just pleased that she had opened up to the pack so quickly.
"You've got a good pup," Pakkun's low voice commented. He didn't need the pug to tell him that, he already knew- but he appreciated the words all the same.
"I can rely on you give your all to keep her safe?"
There was a unanimous rumble of agreement from his Ninken, and Kakashi allowed the smile that had crept onto his face to reach his eyes.
"Good," he turned to Gai, "I'll take her home for some lunch. We'll need to discuss things in greater depth when she's more awake."
Gai kept quiet out of consideration for the sleeping Sona, who barely stirred when he lifted her into his arms and dismissed the Ninken, but he nodded his agreement and gave a shiny grin.
He felt the urge to sit down and strategise right away, but he was tired, and he needed some time to think things through properly after his exhausting spar. On top of that, he knew Sona would want to be present for most discussions so that she could learn from them both, and be included as an equal member.
He cast a fond glance at the girl who seemed to enjoy sleep as much as a Nara, and prepared himself for an evening ahead of trying to learn the baffling and illogical written language that was English.
Kakashi might find it to possibly be one of the most aggravating things he had had to teach himself, but he had to admit, he highly doubted anyone would be able to translate it without an extensive period of time studying a large quantity. Particular since Sona seemed adamant of teaching him both the 'official' written language and the 'modern' language, which from what he could tell was some sort of strange code that had been used by younger generations to completely confuse their parents when they wrote or spoke to each other about a vast range of topics.
He was fairly certain she wasn't teaching him so much for its guaranteed security if messages were intercepted, or conversations overheard, but because she found it strangely hilarious to hear him speak using the almost nonsensical code.
Now that he thought about it, it was likely he'd derive a fair amount of amusement watching Gai learn it, too, if only for the extensive and often bizarre explanations given for where some of the 'modern' words originated from and their various meanings.
Honestly, he mainly just wanted to see Gai's reaction, when it was explained to him the meaning behind Sona's name for Danzo after she'd been made aware of the conniving man's existence. She may have been the one to first call him 'Mr. Incel' but Kakashi had no objections about that one.
Kakashi occasionally slipping up there and calling her Subaru again in his head. He's merging the two together subconsciously.
a little lacklustre for Gai's presence here sorry, I had some difficulty concentrating, and the last 1000 words were like pulling teeth.
As for INCEL for those of you who don't know the definition, it technically means involuntarily celibate. But there are a bunch of other implications there that you'll find if you look the word up online. Kakashi finds Sona's explanation hilarious of what she considers to be the root cause (hehe) of what makes Danzo so Danzo.