A/N: WARNINGS: this chapter contains several scenes of a character undergoing a panic attack and extended period of dissociation after being triggered, canon deaths and torture, an adoptee temporarily panicking that they're going to get thrown out due to misinterpreting a guardian's worry as anger directed at the adoptee, and idle thoughts on the nature of mortality.
Kakashi is not the first person outside. That's actually Kuromaru, who was closest to the door, followed pretty quickly by Shikaku, who was right next to him. Even then, Kakashi isn't outside, because a spike of familiar chakra blankets everything for a hot, stifling moment that… that feels like the night the Kyuubi attacked.
Kakashi hesitates for only a moment, and then follows her outside. He's behind Sakura and Tsume, and ahead of everyone else that wasn't already out the door when the chakra hit.
If the Kyuubi—if Naruto's seal—
"—away from the seal, now."
Kanna's already lecturing.
The kids are in a half-moon, and at least a few of them look like they're worried they're going to get in trouble for, uh, whatever the hell happened.
"I didn't mean to…" Naruto mutters, digging one toe into the dirt.
Kanna glares at him, uncaring of the fact that he's not looking at her. "Fucking around with fuuinjutsu is dangerous as hell and you know space-time is off-limits for said fuckery. Someone explain to me what the seal is doing, stat."
Nobody wants to say anything, so Shin steps forward. "Physical diffraction, I think. At least from one side."
"It was just supposed to be a barrier seal," Naruto insists. "And Sasuke said I couldn't make it bounce attacks back instead of getting damaged, and I remembered—"
"Show us," Sakura says. Her voice is soft. Her expression is empty. Her stance is loose.
It's just as scary as Kanna's worried anger.
"Use a clone," Kanna orders.
"Um…" Naruto makes two clones, one of which steps forward and picks up a stick. Naru-clone One walks up to the seal, which seems relatively harmless, and presses a hand to it. The chakra channels in, and a V-shaped green light emanates from it, fading out a foot and a half up.
Naru-clone One frowns for a moment, and then nods sharply and pokes the stick halfway through the green light.
It splits.
Kakashi lifts up his Sharingan, praying that it's a genjutsu, but it's not. The stick splits at the point of contact, and instead of one stick coming out the other side, there are two. Naru-clone One twists the stick in place and wiggles it around a bit to show that the split goes to left and right, parallel to the paper of the seal, and no other direction.
Naru-clone Two gets to the other side of the seal and drops a bunch of dirt on the two prongs.
Both are solid.
"What in the Sage's name…" Natsumi breathes out. The other parents make similar comments.
Sakura has a hand over her mouth, staring like she has no idea what to do with that.
Naru-clone One passes through an entire second stick, which also prongs and splits and… when Naru-clone Two catches one stick, the other floats, a perfect replica, just angled thirty degrees off.
"And if I cut chakra," Naru-clone One says, doing so, which leaves one stick in the clone's hand, which ends at the barrier, and the two prongs crumbling to dust.
The floating stick and the one in Naru-clone Two's hands also both crumble to dust.
"Did anyone put a body part through this at any point?" Kanna barks.
The kids all rapidly shake their heads no.
"I wouldn't let Naruto be that dumb," Karin scoffs.
"Oh, you're in trouble, too," Sakura tells her.
"I was on the other side of the yard!"
"The entire time?" Sakura asks.
Karin flushes.
"There's, um, more?" Naruto says, and everyone's heads snap to them.
Sakura buries her face in her hands.
"Show us," Kakashi says, because Kanna looks… not okay. Definitely not okay. Panicky, maybe. "Still clones, we don't want any risks going up."
Naruto nods, and then Naru-clone Two picks up a new stick, and activates the seal again. The new stick passes through the 'split' side of the barrier… and then pokes right back out, on the same side, ten centimeters down and to the left.
"How the fuck," Kanna groans. "Why didn't you come get an adult before you started messing around with seals?"
"I got carried away?" Naruto offers, scratching the back of their hair and not meeting anyone's eyes. "It, um, pokes out of a different part every time."
Naru-clone Two demonstrated, pulling the stick in and out a few times to show it just popping back in and out. They passed the stick through entirely, turned the seal off to demonstrate that it didn't turn into dust, and then turned it on, passed it halfway through, and turned it off. Two cleanly-cleaved halves fell to the ground.
Kakashi looked around, and while half of the parents looked horrified, the other half looked… resigned. Amused, but resigned.
"Right, okay, I am confiscating this," Kanna says, striding forward and picking the seal up. "We'll figure out punishments in the morning. Shin, thank you for coming to get me, write me up a summary of who was doing what when this all started so I know who needs to be grounded."
Naruto flinches, and starts tearing up.
Ah shit.
"Okay!" Kakashi says brightly, turning on the spot and clapping his hands. "Everyone back inside! Show's over."
Naruto sniffles, and Kanna swears under her breath and goes to convince the kid that she's made because she's worried, and that they're still family and she's not going to kick them out just for doing something that was, admittedly, incredibly stupid.
"Uh, seriously, getting personal," Kakashi insists. "Let's just get back inside. Please?"
Somehow, he manages it.
The party gets moving again, eventually. It's subdued, but it's also late enough that it makes sense. The kids are allowed to keep playing outside, but Kurama comes down from whatever nap he was taking to keep an eye on them. He steals an entire platter of desserts as 'payment.'
Nobody stops him.
"Is that… normal?" Baki asks, once they're back inside. There aren't any actually inhabitants of the house there, but apparently Kakashi is a decent substitute.
"The seals?" Kakashi asks. "Ah… things happen."
Baki eyes him, but it's Rasa that speaks, eyes on a sensibly short glass of whiskey, rotating it to watch the ice slide 'round the bottom.
"I never had the fortune to fight alongside an Uzumaki, nor the misfortune to fight against one," he says, and Kakashi feels a pinch at his spine, a phantom tension. "But I remember the stories. To come up with something that strange by accident is… but a parlor trick, if I remember them correctly."
Anything is possible with fuuinjutsu, but it doesn't mean that it should be.
Suna is an ally, Kakashi reminds himself, but it rings hollow. Allies can turn.
Naruto hasn't even graduated yet, and Suna knows about their skills. Not all of them, not the Jinchuuriki thing or that the clones Naruto used were Kage Bunshin, not about those secret trainings with Kanna and Karin where they learned the stories of their blood and just what monsters lurked within the Uzumaki Mask Shrines.
But it's still more information than they should have in their hands.
It's not Naruto that their eyes follow, though. Not later, when bows are made and hands are shaken and goodbye-for-nows said.
No. The person they watch is Kanna.
Kakashi helps clean up. So do the kids, this time with clones banned as part of the punishment for mucking around with space-time. Juugo and Shin get off scot-free, though they still help clean. Kakashi isn't sure about the other kids, but it all seems very… anxious.
He waits.
Everyone is on top of each other while they clean, and the kids are eventually sent off to bed, and it's just three Uzumaki adults and Kakashi in the living room.
They sit in silence for a few minutes. Sakura has her head in her hands, and Kanna glares at a wall. Kurama watches them with half-lidded eyes, and Kakashi… he waits.
Sakura sighs after a while. "It's not the end of the world. The identity of their Jinchuuriki is known to Konoha, and now they know that one of our kids is good with seals to the point of potential self-destruction. We still have the upper hand, if it comes to that."
"Sakura—"
"It's not ideal, but we can work with it," Sakura says, eyes meeting Kanna's and holding steady. "We've had worse."
"I don't know how to tell him that the problem is someone connecting him to his parents," Kanna says. "Not without telling him…"
Kakashi darts a glare to Kurama, chest tightening because no one is supposed to know, but Kurama looks just as bored as he did five minutes ago.
Maybe Kushina had had a brother she never mentioned, who knew she'd intended to have a child this age.
Maybe Kurama connected the dots.
Maybe someone had just told him.
Whatever the case…
"Kanna," Kakashi says, just loud enough to draw attention to himself. "Do you… do you know how to check Naruto's seal for damage?"
"…yes," Kanna says, eyeing him in concern. "Why do you ask?"
"I…" Kakashi trails off, aware that for the first time since they sat down, Kurama looks awake. "None of you—none of you were here for the Kyuubi attack. When Naruto was born."
Shaking heads from the girls. Kurama just watches, silent.
Kakashi tears his eyes away from the man. "When Shin told us what happened, there was—it wasn't immediate, but it felt like the Kyuubi's chakra. I remember it, everyone does, if they were in the village and able to form memories. I know what other bijuu chakra feels like, I know what Gaara's feels like, and this wasn't Shukaku. I just—can you check? Can you look at Naruto's seal and make sure it was just a fluke of…"
He trails off, because Kanna is frozen and Sakura is horrified.
Kurama is sitting back on the couch, head tipped over the rear cushion, a hand over his eyes.
"Who else… who else felt it?" Sakura whispers.
"I don't know," Kakashi admits. "Not as many people as should have, maybe, or someone would have said something."
"Shit," Kanna says. She stares at him. "Shit, shit, shit—"
Kakashi's fingers dig into his knees. "Kanna, please tell me Naruto's not about to lose control of the Kyuubi."
"He's not," Kurama grunts. The hand flops out across the couch, but he doesn't lift his head, just stares at the ceiling. "The seal is airtight, and even if it wasn't, the Kyuubi doesn't need controlling."
"But… that chakra…" Kakashi says. "I know what I felt, and it—"
"It wasn't Naruto's Kyuubi," Kanna says, and she sounds utterly miserable. "It was mine."
Kakashi's heart skips a beat.
They all stare at him. Sakura looks away first, but Kanna just looks harried. Kurama is… unreadable.
"Explain," Kakashi finally manages. "Please."
Kanna removes her glasses, rubs at her eyes. She seems so tired, so much older than she is, but… that's true of any of them, isn't it?
"A newborn can't handle the full Kyuubi," Kanna says. "Some of the lesser Bijuu, but not the Kyuubi, not even an Uzumaki can. Minato tore it in half, and sealed the Yang half in Naruto. The Yin half… he fed to the Shinigami, along with himself."
She sucks in a breath, heavy and harsh in her throat. "But there are people who know how to access that, and at least one of them is an enemy of Konoha. It's difficult, but… you just get the mask. You go to the shrine, you wear the Shinigami's mask, and you cut your own belly open."
"Not many can survive it," Sakura says. "But Orochimaru…"
She winces.
Enemy of Konoha, indeed. The thought flutters through Kakashi's head, and he quashes it. His fingers are laced tightly together, knuckles white as paper, and he can't remember when he moved them to do that.
"So the options were to leave it there, or to take it," Kanna says. "And I'm an Uzumaki. I have the chakra chains, and I know fuuinjutsu, and I studied the various Jinchuuriki seals for so, so long before I did this. And I can survive a gut wound. It's easy, even."
She unbuttons her blouse, and Kakashi watches the ink bleed black across the stomach.
"It looks like Kushina's," Kakashi whispers.
It does. There's an odd little addendum, though, a circle up and to the side connected by a squiggle of ink. The back of his mind likens it to a balloon.
"What is that?" Kakashi asks, eyes fixed on the added piece.
"I don't fuck with Naruto's seal, but I do… mess around with mine," Kanna admits. "Sometimes."
"What is it?" Kakashi asks, because his mind is racing and bile is building and he doesn't know what it is, not at all, but there's a horror in him.
"An externalization seal," Kanna says, slow and careful. "Manifestation, really."
Kakashi processes that. He tries to put the pieces together, puzzle pieces flying apart and together, square pegs in round holes, loops of wire that just won't untangle.
It comes, eventually.
Kanna smiles at him, sad and apologetic, like she can tell what he just realized.
Of course she can.
Kakashi looks to Kurama. "You…"
Kurama quirks a brow. "Me."
"You killed Minato and Kushina."
Kurama pulls a face, grimaces, scoffs. "Mind-controlled."
Kakashi's on his feet and with lighting around his fist before he thinks, and it's only the chains around him that stop him.
He twists in the hold, stares in confusion at Kanna because why.
"Stand down," she says. "He can't die, for one thing. The only thing you're going to achieve is damaging the couch."
She lets go of the chains, and he drops back into his chair.
He feels empty.
"You just… let the Kyuubi walk around," Kakashi hears himself say. "Around your kids. Around Naruto."
"I'm not a danger to Naruto," Kurama grumbles, and Kakashi idly notes that Sakura's glaring at the man. The bijuu. "Or any of the kids. Hell, I'm not even a danger to the assholes who put me under mind-control genjutsu, because one's dead and the other's off-limits."
"Because the off-limits one is under a goddamn slave seal," Sakura hisses, and chakra crackles across the skin of one bare arm.
Kakashi should be more worried about that than he is.
Kurama palms his face, and then turns to Kakashi. Half his face is still covered by one hand, and the other is inhuman. It always was. Kurama's face stole Kushina's features, but plastered them over with Kyuubi-red hair, with fangs and slit eyes and a disposition that Kakashi had joked was feral so often that it feels like he should have known.
"I don't hate humans," Kurama says. It's a lie. It has to be. "Not all of them. The part where they try to enslave me, regularly, that pisses me off, but random humans? I used to get worshipped in some areas. Mostly civilians, but… I only started to hate, truly hate, when Uchiha Madara used that damned eye of his to make me attack your Shodai."
No. No, that can't be it. It can't be.
The Kyuubi can't be a good person because then Kakashi's grief is all his own.
Obito was his fault and Rin was his fault and until now he could at least blame the deaths of his teacher and surrogate sister on a mindless, furry ball of hate, but if he can't even do that, then it's just him. It's just coming back to Kakashi being responsible. Somehow. It's all somehow his fault, he knows it.
"Madara was also behind the attack the night Naruto was born," Kurama says.
Kakashi's head snaps up, and he fixes his sole eye on the fox in human form.
"Not directly," Kurama says, watching Kakashi like he's a rabid animal. "But on his orders. It was… shit."
Kurama rubs a hand down his face. "We need the privacy seals."
"Why?" Kanna asks, thought she's already getting up out of her seat and going to the wall.
"Because I need to explain the family drama," Kurama says. Sakura winces, but Kurama turns to Kakashi. He gestures to the girls. "I can't tell you everything, even if I wanted to, because these monsters still hold the reins. Madara's pawn is… complicated, but I can tell you about Madara, and before him Zetsu, and before him, Kaguya."
Kakashi stares at him.
"Right," Kurama says. He grimaces. "Let's start with the granny from hell."
Kakashi needs therapy.
Sakura gives him a hug, and puts a hand to his cheek, and tells him to talk to Inoichi, because Inoichi knows.
The Hokage, and Inoichi, and Jiraiya. They know. So do a few other people. It's…
Kakashi can't think.
He goes to Inoichi.
Kurenai would be so proud, if she knew.
He hunts down Gai.
It's not a difficult choice. For all that Kakashi's made friends in recent years, there are few that he'd really go to for something like this. Gai, maybe Genma. They understand him as a person, for all that others try.
The wind that crosses the top of the Hokage monument is cold. Fresh. Invigorating, maybe, for all that Kakashi feels like an empty vessel.
"What would you do," Kakashi asks, looking out across the village, "If you found out someone had kept a secret from you, something that changes your very understanding of the world? And it was under the orders of the Hokage, but you still resent them?"
"I take it that it's best to not approach this as a hypothetical, then," Gai says. He presses his shoulder to Kakashi's, and it would be a comfort, would be grounding, if Kakashi actually felt like he fit inside his own skin.
"Mm," he says, and his eyes won't focus on the clouds before him. "It's… ah. Let's say you had a friend, Waru, and Waru had a friend you didn't know as well, Kimi. And you talked to Kimi, and they seemed nice and you thought you had something of a friendship building, and then you found out that Kimi had killed someone very close to you a few years ago. And when you got angry about it, Waru told you that Kimi being who they are was an S-rank secret, and that Kimi had been controlled to kill your friend all those years ago, and hadn't done it of their own free will, but might have anyway."
"And now you resent Kimi, but you feel betrayed by Waru for encouraging you to befriend Kimi despite knowing what they did, because they probably could have guessed that you'd react poorly to Kimi's real identity," Kakashi finishes. "So… what do you do?"
Gai is silent, thoughtful in a way few people get to witness. Kakashi lets that silence rest in what space is between them. Sound might even be too much right now. He's all fuzzy at the edges, with a breath that isn't his and a weight to every piece of fabric that he'd normally never notice.
It feels like nothing is real right now.
"I would talk to Kimi, I think," Gai says, finally. "For if they too were a victim, then hate may not be deserved, and if you were already on the path to becoming friends, then maybe they thought that it shouldn't matter, for they were not in control of their actions. Perhaps you would have been friends had the deaths not happened, and they wanted what would have been without the interference of whatever nefarious entity controlled them."
Talk to Kurama.
Talk to the Kyuubi.
Befriend the Kyuubi, even.
Kakashi hasn't visited the Uzumaki house in three and a half days.
It feels like an eon.
"And Waru?" Kakashi asks.
"Perhaps they thought the same," Gai muses. "And the Hokage's decree was a useful way to hide the truth, but they wanted their friend to experience a life without crimes hanging over their head due to actions that were not their own in the first place."
That Sakura and Kanna had wanted Kurama to experience life as a regular person, without the crimes of Madara and his ilk poisoning the interactions.
Gai takes Kakashi's hand, rubs a thumb over his knuckles. "If Orochimaru came back tonight and possessed Anko, forced her to kill Kurenai, and then she fought him off and returned to herself, would you tell Asuma whose hands had wielded the blade?"
It's not the same thing, because Kakashi and Anko and Asuma already know each other, but—
Maybe.
Maybe?
Gai laces his fingers with Kakashi's, and it's more grounding than anything else has been. Kakashi faintly remembers one night, age eighteen, stolen kisses that trailed off into sobs and wails that nobody else saw. They'd never tried it again, never felt the need to, but it was a memory Kakashi cherished. Gai had stopped, without question, held Kakashi as a friend and asked for nothing more, no matter what excitement those experiments had held.
Kakashi turns and presses his face to Gai's shoulder.
Solid. Warm. Dependable.
His oldest friend, these days.
"Have you spoken with anyone else?" Gai asks.
"Yes," Kakashi says. He doesn't want to elaborate.
Gai hums, low and deep and it's quiet but somehow still suffuses Kakashi to the bone.
He is comforting in ways nobody else matches.
"I don't want to talk to—to 'Kimi,'" Kakashi admits. "We got along well enough, but the idea terrifies me, now that I know."
"Fear not, my friend," Gai says. "Your heart is stronger than anyone I have ever met. Whatever fear you have will be outweighed by your strength of will."
Kakashi laughs at that.
Gai is the one with willpower. He always has been.
He is not settled back into his skin, but he's… closer. The edges aren't quite so fuzzy.
He's almost a real person again.
It takes another day and a half before Kakashi goes to the Uzumaki house, checks who's inside (because he might not be as good as Kanna, because nobody is as good as Kanna, but he still has enough chakra sensitivity to scan a house or track a neighborhood), and goes in.
Kurama is there, alone, and… ironing.
Apparently.
"Can we talk?" Kakashi asks.
The man—the bijuu—looks up at him, and then down at the apron he's taking the wrinkles out of. He pauses, clearly torn, and then sighs. He shuts the iron off and sets it off on another part of the board where it won't burn or melt anything, and says, "Get you a drink?"
"No thanks," Kakashi says. His voice is quiet. He hates that.
There are bigger issues at play.
When Kakashi sits, it's at the edge of the armchair, tense and visibly flighty, and he knows it. The fact that Kurama sits the way he always does, lounging like a predator and with eyes half-lidded, doesn't help.
"What did you want to know?" Kurama prompts.
Kakashi doesn't flinch. It's a near thing. "Kushina always said that you felt angry. Full of hate. But you care about Naruto and the other kids, so that's obviously… not a given. You said that you were controlled into attacking, but…"
Kurama waits for him to finish the sentence, holding out for an ending that doesn't come. He sighs, eventually. "Do you know what the inside of that seal looked like?"
No.
No, he doesn't.
"I spent a good… what, sixty years? Thereabouts. Sixty years in Mito and Kushina's seals. Those seals were tight, they were well-made, they were crafty. Artwork, even. But they were torture. Kushina's seal didn't just chain me down, it had stakes all throughout me."
Kurama blinks, slow and even. "Would you have been happy and kind if you'd spent sixty years being tortured and punished for a crime you didn't even intend to commit?"
Kakashi looks down at his hands. They're trembling. He laces his fingers together and presses his hands between his knees. "But you don't hate them?"
"I do," Kurama answers. His voice is light. Kakashi doesn't look to see what his expression holds. "A little. They never asked questions, never tried to understand. Mito thought of me with disgust, and Kushina was scared of me. Mito chose the life of a Jinchuuriki, practically invented it. Kushina was… younger. I don't hate her as much, really, because she was just a kid. Same age as Karin is right now. She never tried to understand, but she also didn't really choose it. Someone else chose for her, and she agreed out of duty, and that's… not something you can hold against a child."
Nuance. Lots of it.
Kakashi tries to breathe.
He can, but it takes thought.
His mind isn't safe, but when has it ever been?
"And Naruto?" He asks. It's barely more than a whisper. "Kanna?"
"Naruto was literally a newborn," Kurama scoffs. "He had even less choice than Kushina, and he doesn't know what I am, yet, but he's a ball of hell-damned sunshine. If he does anything more than bluster for a few minutes and yell at me before trying to befriend me out of spite, I'll eat my hat."
"You don't have a hat."
"I'll eat Kanna's."
"She will literally murder you."
It's so easy to slip back into that dynamic. To see that wry, sardonic grin and poke until he gets a reaction from Naruto's precious 'uncle.'
"She can try," Kurama laughs, and then subsides. He eyes Kakashi for a few moments, weighing him. Measuring. "I don't like Kanna much, but we work together. It's a partnership born of need, and we both recognize it. Mito chose the life, Kushina agreed to it, and Naruto was forced into it, but Kanna… she negotiated. She freed me from the prison I was in, and told me the situation, and offered a deal. It's… ah. Mito and Kushina's seals were torture, but Naruto's is just a cage. Unpleasant and isolating, but pretty much harmless. Kanna's isn't a cage, for all that she used to be a warden. It's… a safehouse. A place to hide until the danger is past. An ambush position, maybe, for when my bastard of an uncle finally makes his move."
Negotiating with a Bijuu is a wild, terrifying idea that would get Kakashi laughed out of any bar he brought it up in, but Kurama's more than proven that he's a rational creature. The man, the beast, the Kyuubi can bargain, and not just for power. Not maliciously.
Kakashi closes his eyes and breathes. His skin crawls.
Naruto loves his weird, grumpy uncle. Kanna and Sakura tolerate him, at minimum. Karin uses him as a jungle gym, and Juugo and the Root kids just enjoy his presence as the favorite babysitter, tied for first with Kakashi himself.
Kakashi opens his eyes, and looks. It's still Kushina's face, still all her features with a tiny twist. More masculine, a few features just off in a way that might have come from Mito, for all Kakashi knows. A ploy, sure, to make it easy to justify his presence in Konoha, in this house, but also… a sign. Maybe.
His expression is so calm. Just… waiting for Kakashi to come to a decision.
Kakashi wants to hate him, but he feels empty.
"You might be more human than I am, at this point," Kakashi says, and he buries his face in his hands, elbows on his knees, and can't help but shudder.
"Pretty sure that's what the therapy's for," Kurama remarks, and it's not even snide.
Kakashi laughs, and the sound is broken even to his own ears.
He thinks about how he came in to find Kurama ironing. How the man is probably more domestic than any other adult in the kids' lives, if only because he can't exist away from the manifestation seals Kanna has etched into the walls and her own skin. How the man cooks and cleans and patiently helps Naruto with homework, or Sai with interactions, or Juugo with the chickens, how he does all that when everyone else is on missions or working or just plain busy.
The Kyuubi no Kitsune is a goddamn househusband. House-uncle. House-bijuu. A stay-at-home whatever, if only because he's basically under house arrest.
It's the world's worst joke and Kakashi's the butt of it.
"I keep forgetting," Kurama says, and Kakashi lifts his head just enough to drop his chin into his hands and stare. "You're all so young."
"I've been a shinobi since I was five," Kakashi says, but the words are dead in his mouth.
"That's not a good thing," Kurama tells him. "You're all kids. I'm over ten times older than your village. I was old centuries before it was a sparkle in Hashirama's eye. Even the oldest of you humans… brats."
"Like unto mayflies," Kakashi mutters, and Kurama barks a laugh out.
"Yeah, basically," Kurama sighs. "It's not that time passes differently for me, but that it all looks so different in perspective. Things you see as unshakable truths are so much newer than any of you humans thinks. Some of the oldest summons, my siblings… that's all that's left, of the age. Sage, but you're all so damned young."
Kakashi wants to argue, because being told he was a child has always been used to hold him back, and while a lot of that was for his own good and would have been good, in hindsight… it rankles to be told he's young.
But he can't argue with the chakra beast that's over forty times his age.
"Come here," Kurama says.
"What."
Kurama quirks a brow, and while he doesn't look soft, Kakashi somehow feels at ease.
"Humans never did figure out that the big ol' scary Kyuubi could sense any emotion, not just hate," Kurama says. He slings an arm across the back of the couch, like he does when he's silently encouraging Naruto to come and cuddle. "So I know exactly what you're feeling right now, and I'm saying… come here. If it's not going to cause another freak-out."
What the fuck.
"You're fucking with me."
Kurama shrugs. "Kitsune are tricksters, but not this time. You're too important to the brat and all the family. They definitely wouldn't be happy if I broke you."
Fragile, Sai had said.
Kakashi feels like he's piloting a foreign object when he stands up, because the situation is so weird already that this might as well happen.
He sits on the couch. He leans to the side. He's pulled gently into a side hug by the most terrifying monster in living memory, and it's warm.
Kurama is warm, in heat and in chakra. Naruto may be sunshine, but Kurama is a banked fire in winter, dangerous but comforting.
Kakashi doesn't know what to do about it, but it doesn't matter.
The chakra washes away at his anxiety, and he falls asleep.
As quickly as Kakashi is lulled to sleep by Kurama's chakra, it doesn't change the fact that he's still a shinobi, and shinobi wake up at loud noises.
The door slams and Kanna strides in, eyes wild. She doesn't react to the sight in front of her, though Jiraiya—right behind her—does. She slams a paper down on the kitchen island.
"Kurama," she says, voice tight. "Come look at this."
The man checks to see if Kakashi is awake before standing up, because apparently the Kyuubi has a Dad Mode. He wanders over to the island, and Kakashi… doesn't want to be left out, honestly, so he ambles over with his hands in his pockets and a weird feeling in the back of his throat.
It might be an emotion.
The paper is Naruto's seal from earlier in the week. Kakashi's getting a closer look now than he did before, and it's… it makes no sense. If he had a few months and reference book, Kakashi might be able to untangle it in his free time, but it's not… it's just not.
It's just Not.
"Oh," Kurama says, because apparently this makes perfect sense to him.
"Yeah," Kanna breathes, eyes shining. "Kid hit the jackpot."
Jiraiya meets Kakashi's eyes over the island and smiles ruefully. "Uzumakis. Don't even need words."
"He told me he's the Kyuubi," Kakashi deadpans.
Jiraiya blinks for a moment, and then shrugs. "Three out of the four Jinchuuriki he's had were Uzumaki Seal Mistresses. Gotta pick something up after a while. Besides, Kanna said the body was as biologically Uzumaki as a blood-augmented Kage Bunshin could get."
"A what now."
"Oi. Idiots. Time-space seal." Kanna snapped her fingers. "If you're not going to talk about how to unravel what Naruto did so we can rework it for the Tobi trap, get out of my sight."
"Well, I'm useless," Kakashi mutters.
Kanna looks up, expression hard, and—stops.
She looks at Kurama.
She looks at Kakashi.
"So… y'all figured it out? Where to go from here?"
Kakashi shrugs. He certainly feels better now. "I guess."
Kanna squints at him, and then nods sharply. "Good. The kids missed you. Now get out of my house so I can break the laws of physics."
Kakashi pouts at her, and she rolls her eyes.
"Don't you have a Kazekage to seduce?"
Yes. Yes he does.
A/N:
Kakashi: I tried making out with Gai once because we were curious but I ended up having a panic attack that turned into a grief-fueled breakdown and I don't want to talk about it but if anyone ever touches a hair on this man's head, I'm pulling out the big jutsu.