A/N: Content warnings: Canon-typical eye horror, references to canon genocides/massacres, character getting repeatedly triggered due to Job Things

Content advertisement: I decided they get therapy.

ANBU missions don't tend to end in fire and ruin and chakra exhaustion in a hospital bed… but injuries of some degree are the norm.

"Eh? Kakashi-kun?"

Kakashi looks up from his broken arm, and waves with the hand that isn't going to scream in pain. "Yo."

Sakura huffs and comes over, hands already glowing green. "Honestly, this is the third time this month."

"Maa, I just can't resist coming to see my favorite medic," he tells her, reveling in the way she rolls her eyes. It's true, even; Kakashi doesn't know a whole lot of medics, and of all of them, Sakura seems to get the whole 'shit happens' aspect more than most.

She told him some wild story about cutting open her friend's ribs to stick her hand inside and manually pump his heart for him, which is admittedly pretty hardcore for a medic story.

(He'd asked her if she'd ever performed a battlefield eye transfer, thinking he could maybe turn it into the kind of joke that friends shared, given his own background, but she'd just stared at the wall and said that she had.)

(Kakashi doesn't make the joke.)

"What was it this time?" Sakura asks. "Kiri nin? Rogue samurai? An unpleasantly angry chipmunk?"

"Classified," he says, and grins when she pouts at him. "Not so fun when it's turned back on you, is it?"

"Oh, hush," she chides. "At least tell me it was a human, or human-level intelligence. If the great Hatake Kakashi broke his arm because he tripped down the stairs—"

"Aa, it was a human," Kakashi says. "No need to start any rumors, Sakura-chan."

She huffs a laugh, and grabs a splint. "I'm going to reset it and encourage some natural healing."

"But—"

"The Hokage already told me you're off duty for the next three weeks," she tells him. "Natural healing is to be used when possible. You know this. Too much medical jutsu makes you age faster. Be weaker. Do you want me kicking your ass even easier?"

"Yes."

She whaps him on the head with the roll of bandages. "Don't be a dumbass, Kakashi. If you decide to train with a broken arm, I will come and break your legs."

"I'm pretty sure that violates some—"

"I will do it. You know I will."

Kakashi tries pouting again. Sakura continues to look unimpressed. Well, it was worth a shot.

"I'm going to heal it a little just to make sure the bones start on the right path," Sakura warns him. "But I swear to all the kami out there, if you manage to break that because you think it's clever to take the splint off—"

"I hear you."

She glares harder at him. "You better."

#

Sakura apparently decides that there are two great ways to make sure Kakashi doesn't use his arm. One of them is to force him to babysit with her.

"It's not babysitting when they're my kids, Kakashi-kun. That's just being a good… guardian?"

"You were about to say mother."

"Shut up. No, don't say anything, shut up, you're the worst, sen—ugh."

"Were you about to call me senpai?"

"No! What? No. Shut up. I hate you. Oh my god. You're the worst."

"You were!"

"I was not!"

That isn't too bad, honestly. She lets him summon the pack, and pretty much all of them are game to entertain some under-tens for a bit.

The other, of course, is Kakashi playing referee as Sakura and Gai destroy a training ground together.

He never should have introduced them.

#

Kakashi has a lot of bad habits. Some of them are better than his past habits, at least; reading porn in public is probably better for his brain than obsessively taking so many missions he almost dies of burnout. A lot of people say it's a false equivalency, and that he easily could have chosen a less improper hobby, like gardening or crochet. To those people, Kakashi smiles and waves Icha Icha a little closer, and asks them if they've ever been ANBU or fought in a war at the tender age of thirteen.

They usually haven't, and Kakashi gets to go on his way with his nose hidden in a book.

There are other bad habits. Being late is probably in the 'not actually healthy' category that he should talk to a therapist about, but never will, since it's usually because he's at the Memorial Stone, but Kakashi values his guilt over his mental health, so that's not going to change any time soon. Regularly overextending himself on missions is probably considered a form of self-harm, even by shinobi psychologists, which he mostly knows because Kurenai insisted on sitting him down a few years ago to Talk About Things.

(Seriously, having the genjutsu specialists take psychology classes and do terms as shinobi therapists is the pits.)

Stalking Naruto on his off days is also probably in the unhealthy category.

In Kakashi's defense, he'd been on Naruto's ANBU guard when the kid was first growing up. He'd done this professionally for years. That counts as a valid reason to become a habit, right?

(No, Kurenai told him, eventually dragging in Genma. No, it doesn't.)

(Kurenai is a filthy liar who refuses to let him skip out on the mandatory therapy sessions, though, so her opinion doesn't count.)

So, yeah. Kakashi stalks Naruto sometimes. This includes hiding in trees above the academy in his ANBU uniform even when he's off-duty, and ignoring the judgmental stares from his coworkers whenever they catch sight of him.

It is, however, a 'hobby' that Kakashi can do without straining his broken arm, and is technically good for the village, so it's not like Sakura can bitch at him for it. She probably will anyway, but this is way better than trying to practice backflips or shunshin or something. He's just hiding in a tree. No jostling. Everything's cool.

ANBU Hare is sending palpable waves of disapproval in his direction. He ignores her.

The Academy lets out a few of the classes for lunch in the yard. Sakura-the-younger comes out before anyone else Kakashi recognizes, with a book and a bento, and busies herself at one of the picnic tables. There's a wistful glance at a Yamanaka that Kakashi is pretty sure is Inoichi's kid, and a dreamy one at Uchiha Sasuke. Kakashi's mind idly wonders if the Sakura he knows was ever like that, and figures it's best if he doesn't ask. A lot of kunoichi had fangirl phases, and most of them don't like to be reminded of that fact.[1]

Naruto comes running out a good thirty seconds after most of his class is outside, yelling his little head off and tackling an Inuzuka to the ground. They start roughhousing pretty much immediately, lunches forgotten, and a handful of classmates cheering them on.

It's the kind of dumb, childish fun that Kakashi never really got to engage in when he was their age, and it warms his heart to see it. The Inuzuka kid—Kiba?—seems to be exactly on Naruto's level as far as prioritizing shenanigans over classwork or decorum goes, so Kakashi decides this is a friendship that needs to be encouraged for future comedy if nothing else.

About five minutes into Naruto's lunch period, the next grade up gets let out, and Kakashi gets to see little Karin stop to check on the impromptu brawl and shout in Naruto's general direction about how he's doing a hold wrong. She only yells for a few seconds before apparently deciding that the conversation isn't worth her time and leaving, but it gets the boys to start arguing about holds until they run off to ask a teacher to mediate, which leads to them actually learning something, so that's… good? Yeah. That's good.

Kakashi only notices a few seconds later that Karin's managed to walk up to Uchiha Sasuke, who is sitting alone and trying to force away any possible company through waves of angsty energy. That probably isn't fair to Sasuke, but Kakashi was doing something very similar at that age, and reserves the right to use his own terminology for what he went through and did, especially since Sasuke is also taking the tack of 'don't actually talk or look at anyone, just make sure they see you're grumpy enough that they don't even try to get close.'

Karin is apparently very good at ignoring that angst-bubble, because she sits down right across from Sasuke, opens her bento, and starts eating.

Sasuke upgrades to glaring at her, but Karin's clearly been learning about how to look unimpressed from her sister, because the 'are you even trying?' expression is straight out of Kanna's playbook.

"What do you want?" Sasuke demands.

Karin finishes chewing her rice, swallows, and thinks for a moment. "I don't know enough about Konoha's curriculum to know if or when it falls into your schedule, but did your history classes cover Uzushiogakure yet?"

Sasuke doesn't manage to hide how bewildered he is, but he puts in a solid effort. "What the heck is Uzushio?"

Karin's face grows dark. "The reason every Konoha uniform has a red swirl on it. You don't even know—ugh."

She takes another bite of her bento, and it's aggressive in a manner that Kakashi doesn't quite pinpoint. He wonders if Karin is naturally like this or just hero-worshipping her older sister. Maybe a bit of both. Most people don't know how to eat aggressively. Resentfully, maybe, but not aggressively.

"Uzushiogakure was Konoha's most consistent ally until an… incident, about twenty years ago," Karin says. She grimaces. "It's up to you to look it up, but I want you to know that it might provide some… context."

"Context for what?"

Karin looks at him, measuring, and then shakes her head. "Nope. You're angry at me for even talking to you, so I'm just going to back out from this. Read up and figure out why I suggested it, or decide it doesn't matter. If I hold your hand through it, you're not going to even try to take it seriously, ya know?"

Sasuke looks ready to pick a fight, but Karin gets up with her lunch and walks away to go sit with some girls from her own grade. Two of them are discussing a Hyuuga boy in their class, and a third is trying to convince them that a clanless kid (Takashi, apparently) that ranks just behind him is totally a better crush, because he's almost as good as the Hyuuga but so much nicer, don't you think?

Kakashi does not miss this kind of talk from his own school days (which isn't really fair, because Kakashi was less than half the age of all his classmates and barely knew what kissing or dating even was), but Karin's decision to wrinkle her nose and tell them that both boys are jerks and neither one even knew how to recognize an explosive seal makes Kakashi want to laugh. It works on the fourth girl in the group, too, because she cackles at the top of her lungs and asks where Karin got her priorities from.

Karin stares her down emotionlessly and says, "the bottom of the ocean," which just has the girl in the panda buns laughing even harder.

Huh. All two of the children Kakashi actually cares about are doing well at school and making friends. That's nice.

Sasuke rushes past Kakashi's tree, murder on his face, and when Kakashi sees the boy's face again, he's entering the library.

#

Kakashi waits until the kids are done with their lunch, and then meanders off to grab his own bite to eat. He wanders about town for a bit, thinking about what Karin said, and wondering if the goal is what he expects it to be. Kanna hasn't talked about Uzushiogakure, but what he knows does suggest that she could have been one of the survivors. She'd have been four? Maybe? So the memories wouldn't be great, but…

Well, as much as Kanna hasn't talked about Uzushiogakure, she did share a story of something that happened when she was fourteen that was very, very similar. A smaller village, somewhere she'd been doing medical work as a genin-style task despite not technically belonging to a village, and nobody listening to her when she told them she could sense an army coming.[2]

She was the only survivor, that time.

So yeah, whatever Kanna's experiences were, Kakashi's pretty sure there's something there that someone in the house decided would help with connecting to Sasuke. Kakashi's mostly curious about whether Karin decided to do this herself or was acting on instructions from her sister, or Sakura. The latter's more likely, honestly, but Kakashi's a little biased. Sakura's just been a hell of a lot less abrasive than Kanna, and seems to care more about 'kids in general' as opposed to 'kids that are mine,' so Kakashi can see that a lot more easily. That said, he hasn't made a habit of prying into their traumas. He's not paid enough for that shit.

By the time he makes it back to the Academy, the kids are about five minutes away from being sent home en masse. He hops onto the wall, closes his eyes, and enjoys the sun. It's a warm day, and while that's pretty normal for Konoha, it's also just a nice thing to experience. He hears the kids leave the building, and then someone is shouting his name.

At the third "Kakashi-nii-san!" he sighs and sits up, and looks down at Karin. She is very short, especially from his current vantage point. She's also looking very grumpy, which is not great. Kakashi's not supposed to upset the kids. That's what leads him to more hospital time, courtesy of an Uzumaki wife.

(Well, probably. They haven't actually hurt him directly yet, not beyond the standard spars and the jackknife of emotions from the whole thing with Root, but still. A protective mother is a scary thing, and Kakashi's man enough to admit that these women somewhat scare him.)

"Can I help you, tiny one?" he asks, because he's still kind of a jackass, and he knows it.

Karin glares up at him, hands on her hips. "You were spying on us at lunch!"

What the fuck.

Kakashi hadn't been trying that hard to hide himself, granted, but it should have taken at minimum a chuunin to know he was there. Or a Hyuuga.

"Who told you that?" he asks.

"I could feel you," she says. "Your chakra is really big, Nii-san."

What.

Were nine-year-olds allowed to be that chakra sensitive? Kakashi knew that Karin and Kanna were both apparently 'near-prodigious' sensors, but Kakashi was ANBU. He was not supposed to get called out by Academy students.

"That's impressive," he says, instead of betraying any of his thoughts on how completely unfair it was that he was going to have start completely silencing his chakra when he did this. He'd probably have to tell the person in charge of Naruto's ANBU guard, just in case the ANBU commander wanted to make sure nobody got called out by a nine-year-old.

Karin goes from 'hands on hips' to 'arms crossed' and keeps glaring at him. "So, what were you doing?"

"Making sure my favorite brats are safe!" Kakashi does his level best to smile through the mask. Hopefully, the curve of his eye is doing its job. "And you are! I saw you even made friends!"

Karin keeps glaring at him. It would be cute, if he wasn't already pretty sure she'd be as scary as the rest of her family in ten years.

"And here comes one of them now!" Kakashi says, still as brightly as he can get away with, and then uses a shunshin—a careful one, so he doesn't jostle the arm—and ends up right in front of Naruto. He's not running away from Karin, exactly, but he doesn't want to intrude on the undoubtedly awkward conversation she's about to have.

Kakashi's hearing is sharp, more so than even most of the Inuzuka, so he eavesdrops while Naruto tries to tell a story about what happened in math class. It's a little difficult, but mostly because Naruto is such a disjointed storyteller that it takes far more brainpower than it should to actually follow along. Kakashi's… pretty sure that's just an age thing? But drunk Kushina had been just as bad at telling stories with any sense of narrative consistency, or putting things in order, that Kakashi thinks it might just be a Naruto thing.

Still. He's a professional. He can totally eavesdrop on some teenyboppers on the other side of the Academy courtyard.

"I looked up Uzushiogakure."

"Yeah?"

"It fell twenty years ago. Destroyed. In the second war."

"Yeah."

"The book mentioned the Uzumaki clan, and how they were… mostly wiped out."

"Uh-huh."

"It doesn't make us the same."

"No duh."

"You weren't even alive when that happened!"

"My sister is twenty-four."

Silence.

"It's not the same. You're right about that. But if you want to know someone that understands even part of what you went through, then Kanna-aneki is… yeah."

More silence.

"Ugh, whatever, I don't know why I thought you'd listen anyway. Bye, Uchiha."

Sasuke doesn't stop her from leaving.

Kakashi isn't at all sure what to think about the whole thing, and he honestly isn't sure he wants to.

This really does sound like it's Kanna's problem.

Kakashi just goes back to listening to Naruto's story, which has now grown to encompass about half of his class, and a significant portion of Shino's bugs, though not Shino himself.

#

Kakashi gets pulled into more ANBU missions as soon as his arm is done healing. Fortunately, most of those missions are in-house, so to speak. Unfortunately, this is because the Hokage is finally moving against Danzō in a way that is decisive instead of cautious.

There are no illusions: taking Danzō out of the picture will kill some of Konoha's best. Kakashi's gotten the rundown on what to expect, and most of it is pretty much what he'd have thought of himself, except then the Hokage turns to Kakashi and tells him that he's needed on point, because there's a solid chance that Danzō has a solid Sharingan under those bandages on his face, and a lesser but still definitely not negligible chance that he's hiding a dozen more under those bandages on his arm.

Kakashi looks around the room in vain hopes that someone will admit that he's being fucked with, but no. He's not that lucky.

Sakura and Kanna are on the same team as Kakashi, and apparently that specific team is being headed by the Hokage himself, so it's all boiling down to a desperately overpowered team to battle a bastard that stole other people's power-ups. He gets a pat on the shoulder and a commiserating grimace from Sakura, which is nice. He gets punched in the shoulder and told to buck up before the mission starts or she's going to leave his ass to rot from Kanna, which he's pretty sure is her way of telling him to be careful out there because she somewhat appreciates him as a person and doesn't want him to die. So that's also? Nice? Maybe? He's not sure. He's going to take it as a win, though.

For all that the Sharingan affords him perfect recall and preternatural clarity, the actual night is something of a blur. There's a hell of a lot of fighting, and at one point they get a message from Inoichi stating that his team found an entire bunker of traumatized and emotionally abused orphans, which is just. Great. It's just great. Kakashi hates this entire place and everything about it and wants to go home. Root was a terrible part of his life and he has rarely ever stopped being grateful for the fact that he was a big enough name that Danzō couldn't just disappear him. He's like ninety percent sure he's going to have nightmares for at least a week or two, and the Hokage is probably going to make him go talk to Kurenai again, and then Kakashi's going to end up snapping because she makes him talk about his feelings instead of just drinking away the pain, and that almost always ends up with Kakashi either going emotionally catatonic for a few days or, on a handful of memorable occasions that Kurenai is never, ever, ever allowed to talk about, having a total breakdown and sobbing onto her shoulder for three and a half hours.

The only other person that gets to see 'Kakashi, but having emotions and crying about them' these days is Gai, and Gai has made a promise to never tell a soul unless he has good reason to believe Kakashi's going to hurt himself or someone else. Gai's promises are as good as Kurenai's confidentiality contracts, on that count. Better, even, because Kurenai is occasionally obligated to report her findings to the Hokage when their sessions are part of a mandatory psych eval, while Gai is just doing his best to be a good friend, and when Gai does his best at something, he's damn good at it.

Anyway.

Danzō goes down, and they're lucky enough that nobody dies. It's a pain in the ass, because the Hokage wants Danzō taken in alive if at all possible, since they're going to need information if they want to even start taking apart the mess he's made of Konoha, but they manage it. Kakashi's pretty sure that the reveal of Kanna's chakra chains is going to feature in his nightmares, actually, because apparently they're the kind of trigger that brings back latent guilt about Kushina's death, and… maybe the Hokage is right about Kakashi needing a few more months of therapy. Or years. Probably years.

(Yes, okay, Kakashi technically already knew about the chains being a thing, but there's a difference between 'am aware of' and 'am currently watching.')

Thankfully, Kakashi has no guilt, or even surprise, about Sakura's strength being on par with Tsunade. He already knew it, technically, it's just that he's now getting evidence, and despite everything, cave-ins and collapsing aren't actually a trigger for him. Too much experience with doton jutsu for it to hit him, really.

They manage to get Danzō, at any rate, and while the Sandaime is the one to land the deciding blow, Kanna is the one that layers down the seals to make it possible to transport the bastard, and Sakura is the one to cut off the arm with the eyes and remove the one in his head. The process is literally vomit-inducing and it takes a few solid minutes for Kakashi to stop feeling the phantom sensation of the transplant he underwent at the tender age of fourteen.

Today is a very bad day. Good things are sure to come of it, but also. It's a bad day.

Just. Just the fucking worst day Kakashi could have without someone he cares about actively dying.

"Kanna-san," he says at the end of it all, when there are people who are not Kakashi handling the process of unsealing Root members and processing prisoners and ensuring people don't try to free Danzō. "Kanna-san, I am going to blame you for everything."

"The fuck are you talking about?"

"Today has been a very bad day. I think you know that. I am going to sleep poorly and probably get dragged into a psych eval, and since this all started with you wanting to look at my Root seal, I'm blaming you."

Her answer is short, and eloquent, and very her. "Get fucked, Hatake."

"Make me."

#

Kakashi gets tapped for a few of the 'fix Root's messes' missions. There's quite a few of them, and the only bright spot is that he gets to talk to Jiraiya a few times. The man is in town for a hot second, and a lot of the information-gathering missions come back to get processed through him. Kakashi lucks out enough to go out for drinks and reminisce about Minato-sensei one night, and it's calming in a way few things have been since this whole mess started.

Jiraiya mentions that they can see each other at the Uzumaki house, since Kanna's enough of a seal master that there's a good excuse for them to visit. She's not as good as Jiraiya himself yet, or as good as Minato-sensei or Kushina-nee, but she's also only twenty-four. There's room for growth, definitely, and Jiraiya seems pretty happy with both the fact that there is an excuse that lets him check in on Naruto in person, and with the fact that said excuse is legit enough that he can talk about seals with someone who gets it in a way few people these days do. Kakashi's happy for him, genuinely, and the night of drinks turns into a trip to the Uzumaki house the next day.

"Sakura-hime!" Jiraiya booms as he steps into the house.

Sakura, who is midway through pulling what looks like half a roast pig out of the oven, is frozen and staring at them. Her eyes are so wide that Kakashi momentarily finds himself imagining that they're about to fall out of her head. He shoves that thought aside into a little box and tries to think about something unrelated, like the way Pakkun was so busy talking about how nice his new shampoo was that he walked into a wall the other day.

'The way to deal with intrusive thoughts varies from person to person, but replacing the thought with something else that's harmless is a good option. Just telling yourself to not think about it rarely works, but having a thought that can grab your attention as easily and is healthier to focus on can train your mind to stop following those intrusive thoughts to dangerous places,' Kurenai had told him. It's not the first time he's had some disturbing thoughts about eyes since the Danzō situation happened, and he's trying very hard not to let himself get dragged down into worse places about it.

"Why are you calling nee-chan a princess?" Little Karin demands, glaring at Jiraiya like he's the villain of a light novel. The way she's gripping the fork is definitely meant to be a threat. It's adorable.

"Because he first met me while I was with Tsunade," Sakura says, finally standing up with the roast. "Remember how Shishou said I was her spiritual successor or something? Jiraiya decided that since Tsunade is the Senju princess, I'm a princess too."

"But you're not," Karin insists.

"Yes, but Jiraiya's a very silly man who likes to make very silly jokes," Sakura tells her. "Finish your spinach. You need the iron."

"But it's gross."

"Karin. Finish your spinach."

"But—"

"I will tell Kanna. Do not test me."

"…okay, nee-chan."

Kakashi tries not to laugh. "Great parenting, there."

"I can break you using one pinky finger, Hatake," Sakura tells him, voice dry. "I don't suppose you boys want some tea?"

"Maa, tea's good," Kakashi acquiesces. "Jiraiya-sama?"

"Anything from a lady as lovely as your—gah!"

Kakashi looks down at where Jiraiya has been laid low by a thrown cutting board.

Sakura sniffs. "Three cups of tea, then."

"Four," Karin corrects. "Um, please?"

"Four it is," Sakura agrees. "You can all go wait in the living room. Jiraiya, you know the rules."

"Aa," Jiraiya sighs. "The wife is home, then?"

"And sleep-deprived," Sakura tells him. "So be nice."

Kakashi ambles along behind Jiraiya, and quietly asks, "There's rules?"

Jiraiya shakes his head. "Don't worry about it."

The next hour or two pass more or less normally. Sakura's roast isn't the best Kakashi's ever had, but it's palatable enough, and Jiraiya shares a few anecdotes about adventures with Tsunade that have Sakura almost falling out of her seat with laughter. Karin sits with them, tea in her hands, trying to look as serious and as grown up as possible. Kakashi manages to get her to open up about what she's learning at school, and the more specific lessons her sister is giving her at home about sealing and sensing. The excitement on her face is honestly a relief to see. Karin's too young to be that grumpy about people. The way she goes off about fuuinjutsu is almost as intense as Naruto going off about being Hokage, and with Jiraiya goading the girl in regards to specifics, it's just…

It's calming. It's nice. Kakashi was never a normal kid, and never really hung out with normal kids that weren't at least genin. Even Rin and Obito and Gai had been blooded in battle pretty soon after he met them. Seeing kids get to be kids is like a really weird balm to his soul that he didn't consider before. Karin and Naruto have both been through some shit, but they get to be kids now, while they still are kids, and Kakashi isn't so poisoned by the system to think that their innocence is worth throwing away in favor of younger, stronger soldiers.

He's evidence of why that doesn't work, and if anyone tries to argue with him about it, he'll just point to Uchiha Itachi.

When Naruto comes careening in, he's like a human comet. He yells at Sakura for a few moments about how he actually passed a history exam—a rare occurrence before, but he's averaging a C right now, and very proud of that fact—and finally notices Jiraiya and Kakashi.

"Ah!" he yells, pointing right at Jiraiya. "Ero-sennin!"

Kakashi snorts. He doubts Jiraiya's insulted. It's genuinely funny.

"Naruto," Sakura scolds. "Don't call him that."

"But he is!"

"You're eight, you shouldn't be talking about ero-anything," Sakura tells him. "Also…"

Naruto fidgets when Sakura squints at him. "What?"

"Did you forget your afternoon medication, or is it just a bad day?"

Naruto blinks, and screws up his face in concentration, and lets out an "Um…" noise that is in no way reassuring.

Sakura's hands glow green for a moment, and then she sighs. "It's not too late for the afternoon dose. Karin, can you—"

"Sure."

Kakashi watches them go, wondering what he missed, and when. Jiraiya asks the question on both their minds.

"Medication?"

Sakura shrugs. "We did some tests, talked to a Yamanaka… there are a few different factors, including both genetic and chakra-related complications, but Naruto's gotten an ADHD diagnosis. The medication he's on right now doesn't really get him to a point people would consider 'normal,' but he's more… level."

Kakashi thinks back to how Naruto's been doing his homework more consistently when he's there, and while Kakashi had previously attributed that to finally having a sturdy support network and stable home life, medication for undiagnosed neurodivergence makes sense too.

Jiraiya asks a few more questions about the medical side of things, questions that, with context, Kakashi knows are about the Kyuubi and how it affects the situation. If the kids overhear anything, though, it'll probably just come across as being about how Uzumaki chakra levels are high enough to impact something like this. Kakashi loses the thread of the conversation after about five minutes, because he never studied medicine, while Jiraiya is very well-versed in Jinchuuriki side effects in medicine and Sakura is… Sakura.

Kanna exits the master bedroom partway through the conversation, hair mussed and eyes bleary. "There better be coffee."

"We have tea," Sakura offers. "And I know how much caffeine you've had today, so that's the best you're getting."

"Coffee."

"No."

The two women glare at each other for a moment, and then Kanna collapses onto the couch next to Sakura and leans into her shoulder with a groan.

"Long day?" Kakashi asks.

Kanna groans again, louder this time.

"I saw the work you did on the Root seals," Jiraiya says. "Impressive as hell, that."

"…thanks," Kanna says. She sits up, rubbing at her forehead. "It's been a rough month."

Kakashi blinks. "Wait, month?"

"You know we're still working on the Danzō situation," Kanna grumbles at him. Sakura squeezes her shoulder. "Guess who has to deal with sorting through all his collaborations with Orochimaru?"

Jiraiya chokes on his tea.

"Don't stain the carpet," Sakura says mildly.

Jiraiya coughs for a few moments, and then weakly says, "Sensei didn't mention that."

"Needed you elsewhere, probably," Kanna says. "The Orochimaru stuff doesn't have a whole lot of information you could use to find him; it's mostly just records of medical experimentation."

Kakashi's stomach turns. It's about the eyes. He's sure of it.

"Ah," Jiraiya says, and then visibly releases the tension in his muscles. "You would know how to decode those best. I almost forgot."

Kakashi looks between them for a moment, and then meets Sakura's eyes.

"Classified," she tells him. She shoots Jiraiya a look. "The kind that we shouldn't be hinting at in front of people."

He looks appropriately chagrined.

"I won't ask," Kakashi tells them. "I genuinely do not want to know, especially because you've already dragged me into some weird bullshit, and I'm not in the mood to get pulled into more."

"Coward," Sakura teases. "We're just helping, Kakashi-kun."

"Don't believe you, Sakura-kohai."

The look on her face is so affronted that he pulls out a book to hide behind. The kids are in a different room. It's fine. He's not going to get his ass kicked.

"Oh hey, that's one of mine," Jiraiya says.

Near simultaneous is Kanna's incredulous, "Kohai?"

"She almost called me senpai the other day," Kakashi explains, with a shit-eating grin behind his mask. "It was cute."

Kanna looks deeply annoyed. "Sakura, really?"

"It was an accident," Sakura complains. "He just won't let it go."

"Maybe he should be calling you sensei," Jiraiya suggests. "Since you're a fully-licensed medic. Civilians call their doctors 'sensei,' so…"

Sakura eyes Kakashi. "I would love to have you call me sensei, Kakashi-kun."

"No thanks," Kakashi says. "I'm just going to keep calling you kohai."

She pouts at him.

"Oh, that reminds me," Jiraya says, digging for a scroll. "Well, no, Naruto reminded me, but I did bring some things back for the brats."

Kanna cracks an eye open from where she's still leaning into Sakura's shoulder. "Both of them, right?"

Jiraiya snorts. "I know better than to play favorites in this house."

"Good," Kanna hisses, and the turns and presses her face back into Sakura's neck. "Someone get the kids."

Sakura pats her absentmindedly. "Kakashi, do you mind?"

"Not at all."

When he gets the kids and comes back, there's a little frog-themed wallet for Naruto, something Jiraiya declares as being Super Cool as a Major Step Towards Adulthood, and when Naruto points out that he's been buying things with his own money for years, Jiraiya just reemphasizes that toads are Super Cool.

Naruto is mollified by this, because Naruto is his father's son and absolutely believes that frogs and toads are incredibly awesome. There is a matching sleep cap. Naruto is delighted with it.

Karin is given a fan, which she seems to find underwhelming, but attempts to be polite about. Jiraiya just grins and tells her to channel some chakra into it. The fan sprouts small blades from the end of each rib, and Karin's eyes go wide and shiny. She is enamored. Kakashi is a little scared for the future of the furniture.

"Do we… know anyone who could teach her to use that?" Kanna asks.

"Not in Konoha," Sakura says, "So no."

"I can ask around," Kakashi offers. If nothing else, Anko can probably point him in the right direction. She seems to know almost everyone weapon-user in Konoha. "But I'll say right now that she probably shouldn't bring that to school."

"What?" Karin demands, turning to look at him in horror. "Why not?!"

"Academy teachers discourage non-standard weapons and styles on the basis that they can't interfere if they see a student doing something wrong," Kakashi says. "It's… there have been incidents, before, which resulted in enough injuries that they just banned it flat-out unless there was a teacher or guest instructor in attendance that knew the specific style in question."

Kakashi may or may not have been behind one of those incidents. In his defense, he was four.

"But I wanna show TenTen!"

"So invite her over," Sakura says. "She's a nice girl, I definitely don't mind."

Karin turns to Kanna. "Aneki—"

"You can show her in the courtyard before or after class, and then I'll take it home," Kanna cuts her off. "Or you can bring her over here. You will not bring it to class, because I've already gotten one report of you getting into a fight and that shit ain't good for my blood pressure."

"Kanna!" Sakura snaps. "Language!"

"Meh, I heard worse at that age," Kanna dismisses. "The kids are fine."

"Okay, but still."

It's a good day, Kakashi thinks.

'Progress,' even.

[1] Apparently this aspect of the manga is actually based on a real-life phenomenon in Japanese schools, one that stems from Japanese cultural norms, and I really wish I could find the post that explained it, because it was a fascinating look into how different the high-school romance scene is in other countries.

[2] It's heavily implied that the army was Orochimaru's doing, specifically to poach Karin, in the databook that gives us this information. Obviously, Kanna can't tell Kakashi the specifics, because some things can't be explained with time travel, but… well. It's one of the reasons Taka didn't get on Sasuke's nerves as much as they could have; literally every member had lost their clan or village in a horrifying tragedy, and understood the whole Uchiha Massacre situation from the survivor's perspective. Like, Suigetsu and Karin were obviously annoying as hell, much as I love them, but they got the whole 'lone survivor' thing. (Juugo was a nice boy with severe mental health issues that needed some help.)

Point is, while canon Karin didn't actually go through the destruction of Uzushiogakure, her lived experiences are similar enough that Kanna can use it as an explanation. Also on that list of things is that, while losing your clan before you're born is nowhere near what Sasuke went through, the aspect of "there's so much of my family history that is now lost to us forever because all the people that would have passed it on are dead" is there, and… yeah, no, I have a lot of feelings on this subject and while I'd normally let the fic speak for itself, so many people don't know Karin's canon background as a (village) massacre survivor in her own right, and that means footnotes.

A/N: We don't know EXACTLY when Uzushiogakure fell, but "when Kakashi was a toddler and Kushina was in her teens" is the most convenient for me, so that's what I'm going with.