Iruka could feel the howl.
It reverberated in his bones, hummed just beneath his skin.
Initially, he had thought of it like hundreds of tiny threads, reaching out and tugging at his consciousness while he dropped off to sleep. After he met Wolf for the first time in the dreams, it had become a recognizable wolf's howl even that never quite reached his ears, sticking somewhere in the crevices of his mind instead.
He didn't know if the sound had always been a howl that he'd simply never recognized without context, or if the wolf had altered his perception and it was really the same noiseless call it had always been.
Either way, it was his call. The sign that Wolf was ready to be found.
For a year and a half, the howl didn't come.
Iruka didn't know why.
When he had asked Wolf if becoming a jōnin would mean he stopped talking to not-even-genin-Iruka, he hadn't really expected it to happen. But it had.
Wolf had called him a figment. Iruka didn't know what that word meant, but he knew 'imagination'. It meant things that weren't real, things you fantasized.
But Iruka was very, very real, and Wolf was, too. He had met him once, even if they had never spoken. He remembered those gray eyes. They were a little different now, a little older, a little wiser, a little more filled with memories and salves to fill the holes; but they were still that boy's.
Even if Iruka hadn't seen him for almost three years.
Plus, he first met Wolf only a few months after the graveyard boy. They had to be the same person.
If Wolf was real, and he didn't call... did that mean he was dead?
Or did he not believe in Iruka? Was he too grown up now to care about a 'figment'?
Iruka tried to find Wolf on his own. He searched in his dreams, crossed what felt like miles of forests and lakes and ruins. He imagined the howl as clearly as he could when he fell asleep, even tried to make it himself, though he had no clue how.
Sometimes, Iruka almost believed he could hear him.
Then the howl was inevitably swallowed up by visions of crimson and swirling black tomoe. They sucked Iruka in, threatened to suffocate him with oppressive force. They sapped his very life with every moment he lingered, until he had no choice but to wake up or be consumed.
Those nights grew so bad that he eventually stopped searching for fear of them.
He didn't see Wolf again.
Not until the ruins became part of his waking world, too.
The last thing Kakashi remembered was Boar taking over the watch. By luck of the draw, it was the fourth night in a row Kakashi had taken a middle shift, meaning he was sleeping in three hour increments or less, and at whatever random times they could afford. Following the Kyuubi attack, there were few ANBU out in the field, so the ones left were stretched thin.
Kakashi was glad he was one of them.
The rest were all dead.
The last people who had loved Kakashi, the last people that he could consider more than assigned comrades.
Killed because Kakashi couldn't protect them. Because he had been too weak.
He didn't want to see the remnants of Konoha that were left.
He didn't want to see what of the Hatake Estate had survived.
He hoped it had burned to the ground, and at the same time, he felt as though he might lose the very last part of Hatake Kakashi if it did.
His little jōnin apartment was intact, but it would be a long while until he slept there again. Not until Konoha's borders were deemed secure once more, and that wasn't happening anytime soon.
Kakashi thought it would take an eternity for sleep to come that night, as it had in all the last, but perhaps his body had finally decided to take mercy on him. He remembered counting only twenty-seven of Owl's deep, even breaths, before the world went black.
At first, Kakashi had no clue he was asleep. There was no light wherever he was, pitch black surrounding him on all sides. His brain flitted through genjutsu and yin chakra and a dozen other possibilities.
Then he realized, with the sort of uncanny revelation that most would attribute to deities, that it was dark because he was buried.
Was he dead?
The idea rang around his hollow skull, bouncing off bone without generating any friction within his mind. He knew logically that the thought should be frightening, but all he felt was resignation.
He had failed Konoha once again.
But no—
Someone was crying.
He didn't know anyone who would cry if he died.
Despite the dirt filling his nostrils, the hundreds of pounds of pressure upon his ribs, the grit of clay and soil caving into his mouth as he clawed his way up from the ground—Kakashi could breathe just fine.
He didn't have to think about what direction to go. It didn't matter which way was up or down; he needed to find the crying person. Nothing else mattered, even if it led him straight into the depths of hell.
Kakashi had already let down so many.
When he broke through the surface, the muffled cries sharpened to heaving sobs. Clumps of dirt and tiny beetles matted Kakashi's fur. He wasn't even certain when his human body had been replaced with the once-familiar wolf, but like so many other things, it didn't matter—not in the face of the few things that did.
Iruka was there.
Iruka mattered.
Kakashi couldn't tell it was the boy by any physical sense—merely by another piece of innate knowledge dropped into his awareness.
Iruka was nothing like he remembered, and yet Kakashi could see each detail of him in an overlay of the creature before him.
Iruka's voice was nearly two years older and broken by heaving gasps, wet coughs, and the unnatural, trembling chimes of so many horrible bells. He smelled like ash and brick. His shoulders were wider, but hunched and curled in on themselves. His hair was tangled and knotted, falling between his shoulder-blades, where there lay the greatest change of all:
Two wings. Slender, skeletal, with bird-like bones. A rice-paper-thin black membrane connected them, with veins like trails of ink. The wings seemed so fragile, as if they would break in a mild wind.
There was no wind.
As Kakashi stepped closer, Iruka tucked them in, folding them into his body as if that would hide them from sight. He dropped his face to his knees, pressing into rumpled sweatpants. They were stained with copper and smelled like salt, from tears this time rather than the ocean. The fabric muffled his cries, mouth open and biting into the cloth, but it couldn't stifle as well as however many feet of dirt Kakashi had dug through to get to him.
It wouldn't keep Kakashi away.
Nothing would. He hadn't been there when Obito needed him. Nor Rin, Kushina, Minato.
He didn't know what he was supposed to be doing here, how he was supposed to offer comfort to an unfamiliar quarter of his mind, but it was better than doing nothing. Better than wasting away.
Sitting beside Iruka, Kakashi glanced at their surroundings for the first time.
A wasteland.
It wasn't quite like the deserts in Suna, with soft sand and stone and mountainous cliffs. This was an endless outstretch of beige rubble, like an ancient civilization gone to ruin, with dead trees and hard-packed sand through which no water could seep.
The only sign of life was a lone butterfly dipping close to the ground, landing for a moment before taking off again. Its leathery wings held feathered edges, flapping in uneven increments. They were shaded in tawny browns, orange and crimson spots like dripping blood. It's long yellow proboscis darted out to lick at stones or sand, moving on when it didn't find the rotten flesh it sought.
That was the world that Iruka faced, at least.
Behind them, where Kakashi had come from, was the hill on which Minato and Kushina died. It was empty and yet vast in all it contained.
Somehow, Kakashi knew that, within that hill, there sat the cliff upon which Rin had taken her life. Buried further, beneath the cliff and hill, like a shaken foundation, were the crumbled rocks that had crushed Obito, the ones that should have crushed Kakashi.
Deeper still, close to this earth's core, were rice paper walls and a stained tatami.
The pit from which Kakashi had crawled was beneath it all, the pointed dagger upon which all else rested.
It seemed like a betrayal of the worst sort that he had been able to breathe through it all, through the dirt that he gouged to find Iruka. It was cruel, shameful treachery that he was allowed to breathe now, still, when none of the others could.
That world, with its many layers, was Kakashi's hell. This wasteland was Iruka's.
Why Kakashi's exhausted creation needed a hell of his own, Kakashi didn't know.
But he wanted to destroy it.
It took an eternity for Iruka's tears to dry. He wiped shiny snot on his pants and rubbed at his eyes with clenched fists. Then he reached out a shaking, open hand, without looking, and placed it gently between Kakashi's ears.
When Kakashi didn't move, Iruka did. His calloused palm slowly stroked Kakashi's head, rubbed against his cheek. It shook out small particles and debris, felt the perfectly triangular shape of his fully-grown ears.
Iruka's tremulous chuckle and accompanying words were muffled by his knees. "Maybe you are a wolf after all."
Kakashi nudged Iruka's neck with his nose. Iruka flinched and pulled his hand away to rub at the spot, looking over at Kakashi with red-rimmed eyes and cracked, swollen lips. The scar that Kakashi had once seen on his features, the one that crossed his cheeks and nose, was present once again. Tear tracks streaked clean lines through the dust that covered it, catching on the scar and pooling to each side of the recess.
"And you're a mermaid with wings."
Iruka's mouth twitched into a wry, crooked smile, before falling back. He looked forward, out into the desert. The air shimmered like heat waves, though Kakashi couldn't feel it.
He felt cold.
"I think I'm a bat. I wanted to fly, but this is all I could come up with." The wings spasmed, extending a few inches before shrinking back. "They're too weak to hold me up."
His response was automatic. "Then train them."
Iruka glanced over at him, eyes narrowing and tone cutting in a way they never had been before. "It's not so easy for all of us. I wasn't born with a ton of chakra or clan jutsu or one-on-one training since I could walk. My parents are—" His jaw clenched, biting his tongue on the words. He continued, quieter. "They were the best people I ever knew. I'm proud of them. But... I don't know if I can be like them."
Kakashi couldn't relate.
Even to himself, apparently—though it was getting harder and harder to remember that Iruka wasn't real.
Kakashi was born to a legend, taught by another, and had never considered a future beyond serving Konoha. Nothing else was an option. Though, that wasn't to say it came without effort. Kakashi was taught from an early age how to train himself, how to break himself down to build himself up, how to take damage and inflict it.
There were others, like Might Guy, who had done even more. Ones who were born with practically nothing and chose their goals, then worked to achieve them.
Kakashi had never chosen his at all.
Kakashi always believed that Iruka was a fictitious person, a part of Kakashi that he had unconsciously isolated and starved until it could only exist in his unconscious mind. But, if he were to be honest, to reject conventional logic and look internally with an open mind, open heart...
He didn't think he had anyone like Iruka inside of him.
"What do you want to be?" Kakashi asked.
Iruka dug his bare toes into the ground, disrupting the line where dirt and sand met. He stared at them as if he could dig up an entire well if he just wished it hard enough.
Maybe he could.
"I don't know." Iruka finally shrugged. He scratched the scar over his nose, an action Kakashi had seen him do a few times before, but had never connected to the invisible mark. "I want my parents to be proud of me. I wanna protect people, like they did. I don't know if I want to kill people, though."
"No one wants to kill. Not if they're human." Kakashi laid down, blades of grass cold as ice against his belly.
Iruka's feet were covered now in dirt and sand, browns of all shades. He didn't seem to care. "Or wolf?"
Kakashi thought of the people that had died by his hand. The ones that hadn't.
"Or wolf. You just do what you have to do. To survive, and to protect your pack."
"I guess I gotta find a pack I want to protect, huh?" The question sounded rhetorical. Iruka leaned back on his palms and looked up at the sky. Black clouds rolled over the horizon, from the wasteland and heading towards them. "I tried to come see you, many times. But I couldn't get in."
It had been nearly two years since Iruka appeared in Kakashi's dreams. Since Hannabi Bridge changed them all to nightmares.
Sometimes the brain shuts down part of itself to stay whole.
Kakashi was no stranger to that.
"You have scars now." Iruka said.
Kakashi glanced up. The boy reached out with dirty hands, gently cupping the wolf's face, fingers curling around his cheeks. His thumbs stroked tenderly below Kakashi's eye left, down his jaw, up to a clip in his right ear.
Obito's eye wasn't in this dream, but the scar from it was. Along with many others. As Iruka touched him, Kakashi became aware of a fine network of them lacing his entire body, threading through tufts of fur in thin, pale lines, like from tanto or katana.
He didn't have all of those when he was awake.
Maybe they were the ones that normally sat beneath his skin, put on display for Iruka to see.
Did Kakashi want to be exposed?
"I have scars, too." Iruka smiled. It looked like it hurt more than his tears. "Let's try to heal them, ok?"
Kakashi woke abruptly. The scent of decaying leaves and pine needles filled his nose, filtered through a thin layer of cloth and another of porcelain.
He reached up a gloved hand, running fingers under the ANBU mask, pressing deep to feel beneath the softer inner shell.
Scars were no longer etched into his skin.
That didn't mean they were gone.
"Hound." Boar said again, crouched on a tree branch several feet away. "Time to move out."
That night as they ran, on the backs of his comrades, Kakashi's periphery overlaid skeletal wings and long brown hair.
It was a few months later when Kakashi learned for certain that Iruka wasn't a figment of his imagination.
At least, mostly for certain. Kakashi had an excellent memory, and he clearly recalled the entirety of the day, from start to finish. He hadn't taken a nap or been knocked unconscious, poisoned, genjutsu'd, or any of the other various things that might cause him to hallucinate. A quick check of his senses also told him that all of them were working properly, giving him exactly the feedback he would expect after stepping into the Hokage's office, so it wasn't likely to be a dream.
Most telling of all, Kakashi wasn't a wolf.
Well, unless he counted the porcelain mask.
At first, he didn't even realize it was Iruka. He categorized each individual present according to threat level, separating them into hazards to body or classified information, and then shifted his attention to the Hokage, awaiting the signal to relay his report. If there was time for pleasantries, Kakashi wouldn't have entered the office while others were present at all, but there wasn't. It wasn't his place to judge who was privy to the information he held, only that its relay was critical.
Then, Hiruzen spoke.
"You may go, Team Six. You are free to pick up a new mission as soon as your reparations are complete." He smiled, wizened lips curling around his pipe.
"Nice going, Iruka." A short boy muttered, jabbing his elbow into another one, who jabbed him back just as hard before the jōnin-sensei forced them apart and pushed them towards the door.
ANBU weren't supposed to show a reaction. They were weapons, their opinions and observations left unexpressed except to meet the needs of the mission. It was only those long ingrained habits that kept Kakashi from turning his head and staring in shock. Instead, he glanced out of the corner of his eye as the genin filed out.
It was Iruka. His Iruka—but there were differences.
His brown hair was shorter, and pulled into a high ponytail rather than hanging loose. His skin was a shade darker than Kakashi recalled, perhaps from the summer sun, with a warm undertone like cocobolo wood. His eyelashes were longer, his arms skinnier, his nose a touch more broad and marked with the same scar that Kakashi had come to associate with Iruka's most vulnerable moments.
The team looked at Hound as they passed, taking in the daunting sight of the red and white mask. The jōnin nodded in respectful recognition. The genin did not.
One showed awe.
One showed fear.
The one that mattered showed curiosity.
There was no contact as Iruka passed—but Kakashi could feel the disturbance in the air. He could hear soft breathing and footsteps, smell something faint and unidentifiable, but real enough.
Very real.
Kakashi's report to the Hokage came through numb lips, his heart pounding a rhythm too vicious, too visceral, to be a fabrication.
Iruka didn't come into his dreams that night.
Disappointment and relief fought in Kakashi's brain until a nightmare consumed them both.
After that, Kakashi started listening.
He heard more than he ever thought possible.
Umino Iruka, with a hitai-ate still shiny and new. He was the son of a chūnin and a tokubetsu jōnin, both killed in the Kyuubi attack. He was also a known trouble-maker, but a favorite of the Sandaime starting after he was orphaned. The kid was reported to be decent at all of the basics, pretty good with traps used for pranks, but no specialties or areas of high proficiency. His genjutsu was weaker than his ninjutsu or taijutsu, making that an unlikely avenue by which he and Kakashi were communicating.
It could have been a kekkei genkai, but Kakashi had never heard of it. Dreams would obviously be the realm of yin, but there was nothing he could see that would combine with that to make dreamwalking. It would have to be a specific jutsu, perhaps a Yamanaka-style, which Iruka shouldn't have been capable of at such a young age even if he had been part of the clan.
Maybe it wasn't Iruka in his dreams at all. Maybe Kakashi had heard about the kid and subconsciously built a character around him, absorbing information and disseminating it into his dreams. It wasn't a completely insane theory. It was slightly more plausible than Iruka sneaking into Kakashi's bed at night and whispering in his ear, at least. Particularly since Kakashi was very rarely in his bed to begin with.
In the end, trying to rationalize it did him no good, and the doubts he tried to latch onto each slipped through his fingers like soap.
Iruka was real. Somehow, Kakashi had known that for a while, whether he wanted to recognize it or not.
The only question was what to do about it.
He could foresee the events that would play out if he told the Hokage, or his ANBU Captain.
If he let the Yamanakas get ahold of his mind, they might never let go.
There hadn't been anything dangerous about Iruka in the last five years. No indication that he was anything less than innocent. It wouldn't be dangerous in the future.
Even when Iruka asked for his name.
"We could meet. Outside, you know." A purple pebble skipped across the creek's surface, making no sound and never sinking, sitting atop the water as if it were a pane of glass. "You have my name. You could find me if you want. Or I could find you."
Kakashi's breath caught. He looked up from the clear water running across smooth stones and over his paws. It felt blissfully cool, though the rest of his body had no discernible temperature.
Until he heard Iruka's question, at least. Then, his chest felt like an ice shard had pierced his sternum, while heat flooded his face in contrast.
Iruka might have always known Kakashi was real, if not who he actually was.
Kakashi was the one who had been living under a delusion.
He wasn't anymore.
So he wondered.
For an entire minute, he allowed himself to consider the idea. He imagined meeting the boy he had seen in the Sandaime's office. He imagined introducing himself, imagined Iruka looking up at him and—
And seeing him.
Actually seeing him.
Learning that the Wolf was Hatake Kakashi, the son of the White Fang.
Kakashi imagined Iruka figuring out that he didn't actually have a fascination with wolves, but a whole host of father-related traumas and dead teammates behind him. He imagined Iruka connecting "I'm going to be a better shinobi than my father" to the man that had killed himself in his study, laying in a pool of his own congealed blood for his eight-year-old son to find. He imagined Iruka hearing the whispers of 'Friend-Killer Kakashi' and connecting it to his dream-friend, imagined seeing in those warm brown eyes not curiosity, but fear, or disgust, or—perhaps worst of all—awe.
He had already shown Iruka so much. In small ways, in tiny admissions that Iruka absorbed without a blink of an eye, but that carried the entire weight of Kakashi's wounds within them. He had trusted him unknowingly, unwittingly, with more than he had any other living soul, specifically because he hadn't believed Iruka was real. And Iruka had accepted it all without question.
In reality, Kakashi wore masks of cold porcelain and stifling cloth and a history five miles long. Together, these things concealed all truths.
Iruka, right now, held more of Kakashi than a name ever would. He was the only thing that stopped Kakashi nightmares—both the ones that came with sleep, and those that came with dawn.
"I'm sorry."
Iruka's hopeful expression fell. His body tensed, webbed toes forming an obstacle for the current to overcome, and something sharp dug into his next question. "Why?"
Kakashi looked up to the sun, shining bright down on them but not reflecting off the surface of the water. It didn't hurt his eyes to look at. Iruka would. "I'll never turn you from my dreams again. But that's all I can do."
Iruka bit his lower lip and clenched his hands into fists. "No one else has time for me anymore, either. Orphans in Konoha are a dime a dozen, right? No one cares what happens to us, as long as we're still willing to die for them." He spat bitter sparks to the ground, literal ones that Kakashi could see, vitriol forming into oil-like splotches on the dirt and the khaki of Iruka's shorts. "I thought you were different."
Was Kakashi different? He was also an orphan of Konoha, had lost his last parent at an even younger age than Iruka.
However, he had never been cast aside. He was already a chūnin by that time, already leading teams and taking lives and playing a part in a larger war. He hadn't needed anyone. Not like Iruka had.
"I'm a shinobi of Konoha as well. I'll die for her just as you will."
Iruka flinched. Kakashi continued.
"Believe me, Iruka." He said quietly, stepping across the stones to reach the water's edge. He looked up to see Iruka's ducked face and placed a large, heavy paw on the boy's knee. "You have an important place in the village. You'll find it. And I'll be in your dreams when you do."
If he was still alive. If Iruka would still have him.
Perhaps Iruka heard the unspoken words, because his features crumpled, all fight leaving him as quickly as it had come. No tears formed, but then again, Iruka was better at manipulating the dreams than Kakashi was. Always had been.
Iruka had the power to change not just himself, but the world.
Kakashi hoped he was around to see it when he did.
"Your scars keep changing." Iruka said. A year post-Kyuubi and his wings were larger, the bones stronger, the membrane no longer translucent and veiny. A fine velveteen fuzz covered its surface, like chinchilla fur or the down of chicks.
Iruka leaned forward, careful not to topple off the ledge, or worse, drop his popsicle. Their cave was several hundred feet above ground, and while Iruka showed no fear at the heights, he also had given no indication his wings were yet ready for flight. Kakashi didn't want to put his imaginary paws to the test, either.
"Except for this one." Iruka gently ran his thumb beneath Kakashi's left eye. Obito's eye.
That was another mercy; in these dreams, the sharingan never said a word.
"Do you want to keep it?"
Kakashi tilted his head at the question, inadvertently pushing his cheek and whiskers into Iruka's hand.
His immediate instinct was to say no, of course he didn't want the sharingan. If he could have chosen, he would have never had it to begin with. It constantly sucked his chakra, and every second of use was a million tiny hammers pounding away at his skull.
Worse, it was a constant reminder of his mistakes. When Fugaku requested to have it removed, Kakashi had very nearly given in.
But it was Obito's way to see the world.
He would fight tooth and nail to keep that from being taken away.
It was an incredible relief to not have the drain on him in these dreams, to not suffer the visual flashbacks that accompanied the sharingan when his mind was off-guard. But in the real world, the eye was part of him, always would be. It was fitting that the scar, even in his dreams, remained.
"What about yours?" Kakashi asked instead. The mark over Iruka's nose hadn't disappeared since the wasteland. In fact, most of his form hadn't changed, except for the strength of his wings, the soft coat on them. He had tried a prehensile tail once, but he admitted to finding it difficult to control. Kakashi had never been less than fully capable in his wolf skin, whatever that said about him.
"I'm starting to like it." Iruka retrieved his hand to rub at the scar self-consciously. His cheeks pinkened and he averted his gaze. "Well, maybe not. But it's harder to erase these days." He bit into the yellow popsicle, either immune to the cold, or purposefully refusing to process the tooth pain that should have accompanied it.
"You have no trouble changing everything else." Kakashi pointed out, watching as sticky juice dripped over Iruka's knuckles. It must have been summer, from the shorts and sleeveless tank-top Iruka had chosen. His wings emerged seamlessly from the white fabric of his shirt, as if grown from it.
Iruka shrugged. "It's easier to change your surroundings than yourself."
Kakashi looked out over the tree canopy, into the distance where the sun remained stationary, hanging as if from a string in the center of an indigo sky.
"You can control yourself." He disagreed. He wasn't sure which world they were talking about anymore. "You can't control others."
"No, but you can control where you are, what you're doing. Smiling when you're sad is easier than suddenly just—" Iruka tightened his free hand in a fist and then popped his fingers open like a mini-explosion. "—not being sad, right? And sometimes the emotion will follow. I hope so, anyway." He added in a mutter.
"A mask can't change what's on the inside. Only what others see."
"Hmm, I dunno. Have you tried it?"
Kakashi barked a bitter laugh. "Once or twice."
"Were the masks ones you wanted to wear?" Iruka glanced at him sideways. "I think, in order to change, you have to know exactly what you want and work towards that. Which is my problem." He bit off another part of the popsicle, somehow never reaching the stick that held it. "I dunno what I wanna be. Not like you do, Wolf-san."
Kakashi wasn't sure that was the truth at all.
He had never decided to be a wolf, or a shinobi. They were just facts that transcended life and dreams. Nothing more.
When Kakashi was seventeen, he asked Tenzō what form he took in his dreams.
"I don't dream much." Tenzō frowned, looking up from his bedroll. There were a lot of excellent things about working with Tenzō, one of which was the dependable source of shelter. Rain pattered around them, but their wooden cabin remained watertight.
"Humor me."
"Don't I always?" Tenzō sighed, plopping down cross-legged on the floor. "I don't think I have an identity in them, senpai. I'm in first-person, looking out at my surroundings, exactly like when I'm awake."
"So you're human?"
Tenzō's eyebrows raised. "As far as I'm aware."
Kakashi let it drop.
For someone without a name or clan or history, Tenzō had a firm grasp on who he was.
Kakashi did, too—but he wondered if something else might not be better.
Eight years, and their dreamscape had never before taken the form of a swamp.
Kakashi wished that had remained the case.
He trudged through mud that reached nearly to his belly, melting beneath paws and staining light fur. A pungent scent of sulfur filled his nostrils, swirling noxiously in his lungs, but he trudged on. He tried to form chakra in his paws, to balance him atop the sludge like walking on water, but apparently Wolf-Kakashi had only his fangs for weapons. There was no telltale build of energy in his paw pads, no tingling swell of life force begging to be used. He wouldn't even be able to jump onto a tree branch like this.
Kakashi vaguely remembered learning to walk up trees in his youth. Smooth platforms like concrete walls were easiest, but his father had started him on the white oak on the Hatake Estate, with rough bark and twining branches. He couldn't recall how long it had taken him to learn, but he remembered the sun setting and his father going in to cook dinner while Kakashi continued, perspiration sticking to his skin like sap.
When Kakashi finally came inside, after putting his mark on the tip of the highest branch, the food was cold.
It was miso soup with eggplant. His favorite.
Sakumo had always known Kakashi would succeed, no matter how long it took.
That had been comforting. Now, Kakashi was stranded in unknown terrain with strange scents and colors—the sounds of bubbling liquid from underground gasses leaching to the surface, an endless mix of browns and vague greens with too many shadows beneath the trees.
And there was no sign of Iruka.
Kakashi couldn't be sure why he chose to travel the direction he did, as the shadows had no particular angle that would indicate to him the position of the sun—but he was certain he was walking where he needed to go.
He just needed to reach it. Before something else reached him.
There were rabbits in the underbrush, prints from tiny animals on the surface of the mud, their weight lower or their feet wider or their chakra control good enough that they didn't sink in like Kakashi did. A butterfly followed along Kakashi's side for a while, fawn and white wings that were coated in a textured, moss-or-mold green, spines coming off the back of its wing like additional legs.
Where there was prey, there were predators also.
Normally, that predator was Kakashi, but this wasn't his territory. The fur along his spine rose in contrast to the spots that mud had matted down, gray eyes flickering across the endless expanse, ears oscillating directions.
It wasn't until the trees began to thin and daylight streamed in that Kakashi knew for what he was searching.
Iruka sat on a dry, hard-dirt island in the middle of a large watery area, kneeling facing away from Kakashi. His wings were sparsely feathered these days, beginning to resemble a crow's more than a bat's. They spread around him on either side, framing his torso. Over the upper arch of the wings, Kakashi could see carved rock.
The memorial stone.
"Took you long enough." Iruka glanced over his shoulder, folding his wings in tight when they obstructed his view.
"Maa, you could have chosen friendlier terrain." Kakashi's calves (did wolves have calves?) burned with the effort of slogging through the mud. It became thinner the closer Kakashi drew to the island, until he was paddling through murky water. When he got close enough Iruka reached down to help him up, hooking both of his hands behind Kakashi's hind legs, heedless of the dirt that transferred to his once-pristine skin.
"I chose the memorial. I think the swamp is you."
Kakashi didn't recall being in any swamps like this for at least two years, since he was sixteen. Then again, Iruka may not have been in a swamp like this at any point.
Kakashi knew what it was like to struggle to pull a corpse from the mud before it sank too low. He knew what it was like to hear the squishy plop as the suction broke so he could haul the body onto his shoulder, waiting until his teammate could find a dry place to lay the transport scroll.
Maybe he had chosen this.
Disturbingly, there was no sound of dripping water even as Kakashi's tail came loose and spread drops onto the platform. He thought of the shake that the newest addition to his pack, Shiba, did after baths, and twisted his body and head rapidly. Iruka held a hand up to shield his eyes, grimacing.
"Your fur is gonna get matted with all that mud." Iruka said when he was done, scooping a finger through the hollow of the wolf's ankle. Kakashi couldn't feel anything despite the visual confirmation of touch, as if the mud were blocking all sensation, numbing the flesh underneath.
Kakashi was fairly certain Shiba would be licking himself at this point, but he didn't want to find out if the mud tasted like mud or something far worse.
"Maa, it doesn't matter. It'll all disappear when I wake up." Kakashi dismissed.
"That doesn't mean you should have to suffer it now." Iruka countered. He scooted on his knees close to the edge. Dipping his hand in the water, he pulled up a shallow wooden bowl. The fluid inside was perfectly clear when he shuffled back to Kakashi. "I hope you're better at taking care of yourself when you're awake."
He was. He ate all the necessary rations. He drank plenty of water. He worked out. He slept. He bathed. He trained. He let the medics treat him when necessary.
He was fine.
Laying on his belly, Kakashi watched as Iruka slowly poured the water over his front paws. The liquid came away a light brown, travelling off the side of the platform in a ruler-straight line, leaving no trail when Iruka turned away to refill his bowl.
The first thing Kakashi truly felt was Iruka massaging his paw pads, working the soil from between each toe, even scraping his fingernail against a particularly stubborn fleck on his sensitive dewclaw, being careful not to bend it awkwardly. Each time Iruka refilled the bowl, he went a little further down Kakashi's body, soothing away debris and detangling fine silver fur and imbuing feeling into deadened muscle.
Kakashi wondered what it would be like to be cared for that way in human form. To feel the heat of bath water, to feel a bare hand moving across his skin with deliberate, tender attention.
He would probably be too busy expecting a stab in the back to appreciate it. Showing weakness was an animal's death sentence, predator or prey. It was only in the safety of these dreams, these moments between existences, that he could forget that.
"You don't have to be alone when you're awake, you know." Iruka said quietly, easing flecks of mud from the tuft of Kakashi's tail.
"I'm not." Kakashi couldn't see Iruka's expresion, but he felt how fingers stilled on his fur before resuming motion. "I have a pack now."
Pakkun, Shiba, Bull, his ANBU team… They weren't the sort of companions most people would consider friends, but they were creatures he wanted to protect.
That was more than he'd had in a very long time.
"I'm glad." Iruka leaned forward, scratching between Kakashi's ears. His smile was warm and genuine. "I'm still looking for mine."