Kakashi had been invited for a dinner. All four of them sat down by the table. They weren't his family, but they didn't pretend to be. They let him in without any obligations, because they wanted to, because it had been a long time since Minato had seen his student. Kakashi had been flooded in work, barely finding time to eat or sleep or do his taxes. Sensei's home was as inviting as ever but he'd learned to live without it.

Obito and Rin's deaths had been accidental. Not that it mattered. Kakashi had caused Rin's death. As he struck her point blank in her loving heart, it was unimportant how he felt.

The laws of physics spoke into his silence. Every object in a state of motion remains in that state unless an external force is applied to it. He was unobstructed until he was not. Not by a slope or by a tree, but by a friend. Stopped by someone who picked flowers and argued with her mom. A girl that gave him more chances than he deserved or even wanted. She died because he was scared. She died because he knew how to fight.

The discussion continued around the table, solipsistic yammering into the air. Minato made a joke and Kushina groaned, "That was not funny."

Smiling, Minato went on, "It was! It was so bad it went all the way round and became funny."

Naruto chimed in, his mouth full of rice, "Dad, that's not how it works-"

His clothes were stained, torn. The black leather belt kept his soaked pants up by pure stubbornness, rather out of some personal agenda. Kakashi pushed another sticky branch out of his way, passing and letting it rattle back against the dense vegetation. Wiping his brow, glancing at his wet shoes, he quickened his pace. He'd been walking for days, hours and minutes that started to blur. The Land of Hills was shaped like a cauldron, deep sweltering valleys to the West, crying mountains to the East, gray peaks sticking out to indifferently chew on the horizon. Focusing on his steps, he made his way up a tiny hillside and dropped his backpack beside a tree. It yanked on his shoulders and tore at his arms.

He grunted but straightened up, cracking his neck. Dipping his index finger in his mouth, he used the saliva to wipe off the face of the bulky watch.

He slowly turned his head from side to side, a slight crease forming on his forehead. There was the everlasting hum of the leaves, a quiet simmer from a creek further down, whistling from the spaces and the wind.

Groaning as he slung his backpack upright and onto his back, he then took a last look around. His face was still, expressionless, in the haphazard shadows from the crown of trees.

Hours later he made camp in a tiny clearing, beside a translucent lake. Mosquitoes clouded the air like droplets of black snow. He closed the tent with a confident snatch of his wrist, sealing himself off from the world and its bloodsuckers. Through the tent's roof he could still see the twitches of insects, rambling across the sky.

Turning around so that he was on his side, he pressed a hand in under his sleeping bag, feeling the stone there, round, sorry, immovable. His face contorted, his jaw going tense, tears pressing out of his tight eyes. He gasped, his hands rolling into fists, berating the fabric between his bone-taut fingers. Blinking and grimacing, he curled up in his sleeping bag.

Sakumo had cooed him into sleeping, those difficult days. His father had sat by him, gently touching the fabric beside Kakashi's upset leg.

"It gets better," he'd say, leaning his head to the right, as if angling his body for a hug, for a chance to pick up, and help, and shield. Sakumo was gone now, having wandered out. Kakashi sniffled into his low pillow. The orange tent wall made the evening light look dozed off.

Sakumo had given him the tent for his birthday, saying, "I played with my sister in this. We used to pretend we were trapped out into the wilderness," and every breath twinged in Kakashi's chest, as if his lungs were a travesty simply rehearsing for death. Inside him a gaping hole, a limber void of nothing. There was an eternity of birthdays that he would celebrate alone and graves that were his to sustain despite that he was eleven and never having held a shovel in all of his life.

Two days later he stumbled in through Minato's office, stopping right after the door, overwhelmed.

"The mission," he started.

Minato blinked, pen frozen in his hand, "What about it?"

"It went okay," but that wasn't why he'd come there, after a week in the slumping forests, "Please help me," he said.

Hatake Kakashi, age eleven and a half, was not articulate.

It was just who he was; a happy man, enchanting, some might say. When Kakashi heard his laugh bellow out into the corridor, all the hair on his arms stood on end. It was painstakingly difficult whenever they were in class and not outside, because the small groups would lead to there being few students for Minato to shift his gaze between. Kakashi felt as if he was being singled out, held above a great height, waiting to crash down.

He'd never been fond of eye contact, looking intently at a teacher or a friend, but in a classroom he had to. Meeting eyes with Minato's clear demanding gaze meant that he had to have his thoughts in order, and they never were. His thoughts were like a dump site for all kinds of things, none of them exactly relevant. Kakashi couldn't look at him, but he couldn't look away. It was harmless, and still not. It affected his life but he refused to let it.

One time when he came scrambling into the classroom, the others had been seated. Minato as well, his back a tableau of white. There was a sudden urge, mindless, always, to put his hand on his back.

If he'd put his hand on Minato's back, his life would have been something different. Kakashi would have been in Konoha, or on the forest floor, gasping, or sleeping soundly in his own bed between the harsh sheets.

If he'd put his hand on Minato's back, it would have happened. Rejection, or a refusal honest enough to make him puke, or Minato would have turned him down, fuming, or Kakashi would have woken up with tousled hair and lazy regrets, or none of that would have happened. But if he'd done it, different paths would have been tread upon.

He wouldn't be where he was, barricaded in a storage among slumping, fat bags of rice and dusty sake bottles. It rattled on the other side of the door as the troops scrambled up the stairs, spreading out and warming him up to the idea of being captured.

Prisoners of war rarely fared well. New agents such as himself could be traded, during normal circumstances. Konoha was in a state, a fragile steaming heap of headless shit. They couldn't keep the leadership intact, much less arrange for a hostage release.

It grew quieter in the hotel. Everyone was catching their breath, waiting for the military to do their job and apprehend whatever cretin that had tried to infiltrate their town. Kakashi ransacked a couple of the boxes until he found a piece of cloth around a bread. He shook it off, then neatly bandaged his shin. The bleeding had almost stopped, merely a slow oozing persisted.

At least twenty soldiers had gathered, their chakra signatures like reflective eyes in the night. There was no going down that way. He'd come up via the pristine foyer, taking the steps in one go, his clammy hand almost slipping off the banister.

On deals like this, they weren't taking any chances. He was famous. His dad had raised hell over half the world, it seemed, and now Kakashi showed an aptitude for killing. He was talented. Gifted. Foolhardy ideas for salvation. Admirable qualities.

How come they caused him nothing but grief? Not wanting it for himself, unsure of how to feel when he fought until his weapons broke, when his enemies yielded. Times when he was left alone with a victory and a disgrace.

He was seventeen and had a hole in his leg. Behind the flimsy barrier of expensive wood, the group of soldiers had fallen quiet.

Kakashi was tired. When they came to get him, he wouldn't fight. Sick of being brave. Sick of it.

Putting up with it all had given him nothing. He was finished. Done, and happy to let go.

After finding his body floating face-down in a river, Minato would say that Kakashi had fought bravely despite being gravely wounded and outnumbered. Who sent two full divisions to deal with a single kid? Didn't they have the decency to let him die in peace?

It wouldn't be long now. Noises from the street squelched in from the open window, the deliberately blue sky sticking out like a sore thumb in the middle of the drab pantry wall.

He got up, limping profusely, putting his knife in the satchel on his back. The window reached his waist. Many floors up. On the street, the people looked like hesitant ants, swerving around carriages and tiny shops with colorful sunscreens.

The footsteps rushing down the corridor sounded like thunder claps.

The wall got torn in two by an approaching army, their swords like flowers in full bloom.

Marguerite brought up yet another pack of sugar from behind the counter, putting it on the horizontal glass.

"Would you like something more?"

Her customer scrutinized the paper in her hands, her eyes squinting behind her glasses. "I don't think so..." She reached into her bag for the money, the lumpy hand shaking.

Marguerite helped pack the groceries atop the woman's cart, holding up the door for her on the way out. A crowd had gathered on the street, excitedly talking and looking upwards.

"Mom!" Kirei called out, his cheeks flushed with color. "The guards have caught an intruder, they're holding him captive in the hotel."

Covering her eyes with her hand, she glanced upwards at the hotel. There was a shattering sound, a crying out from glass. A window had been broken and innumerable shards of it fell down, causing panic in the crowd below it, a rushing and escape.

Straining her eyes to discern whatever happened above, she blinked against the harsh sunlight. There was an encompassing gasp from the crowd as they saw a shape jumping away from the building, its arms and legs outreached like those of a cat in mid-air, a desperate attempt to cling to molecules.

It was a boy, she saw now, not unlike Kirei, shaped like a beanstalk, arms and legs too long and not yet grown into. As he hurled through the air, closer to the ground for each passing glimpse, she saw him tense his body, angling it to take yet another beating.

Thud!

But he didn't let himself pause, he swung himself upright and ran across the flat expanse of roof. Whatever men that followed him cried out like antagonized guard dogs, frothing at their mouths. The boy didn't look back. He'd flung himself off the one-story building, his breath audible in the outskirt of the gathered crowd. They'd fallen silent at the sight of such one sided violence, of a single miscreant against a dozen soldiers.

She caught a glimpse of his bright hair when he rushed past the vegetable stand at the edge of the market place. So young, but already running for his life.