Note: Set about 10 years in the future. I don't own Naruto.

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Within the game of go, there existed a proverb, 'If you don't know ladders, don't play go'. It was a game that Kakashi had never had the time to learn properly, just well enough to know what a ladder was in game context, and so he took the phrase at face value.

Thus, go, though he knew it was the sort of thing he could be quite good at if he played it everyday, and joined the small but enthusiastic group of go players in the village, it remained one of the hobbies he did not pick up.

Mostly in favor of less useful, almost idle activities, like taking on Gai's innumerable, idiotic challenges, and becoming extremely good at bluffing his fellow shinobi in poker. Aoba called him an unreadable monster, whether his mask was up or not, and his comrade even wore sunglasses indoors and at night - in some lame attempt to look unflappable or mysterious. None of the others had been taught to play poker by the Yondaime.

The reason for such an unusual proverb to come to mind had nothing to do with hobbies or games, though. Well, he supposed to some people it might be just that sort of thing, but he had never been one of them. It was more to do with how out of his depth he knew he was right at this moment in his life, about this one thing that he wasn't quite ready to look straight in the eye.

This wasn't the sort of situation he could just say to himself, "Well, I'll never be very good, because I don't have the time to put into it, so why bother." Honestly, he wanted to kick his own ass for even thinking it.

Sakura was late.

She was more than late. Two months late, but she hadn't said anything.

The dates lined up, and he'd been home enough that she had to know he knew. She might be a finely-honed killing machine, but the village could also set it's clocks and calendars by the mechanical regularity of Sakura's period. He'd always mentally kept track, so he could plan around it.

She wasn't one of those women who had a lot of pain, or wanted sympathy, but she did get more irritable. If he wasn't on a job, sometimes it was just better to find Gai and play full-contact table-tennis all day, until one of them broke a paddle and then go home and make her dinner.

He started to remember how weird Minato-sensei had gotten about seven months before Naruto had been born, with all the hair-ruffling and saying i'You'll understand, one day,'/i over and over. Kakashi's own mind was already taking some pretty strange turns.

He remembered his father, whom he'd made peace with years ago, and hadn't really thought about much of late. He thought of his friend Asuma, and of the cute little girl who hadn't gotten to meet him. At least she wasn't an orphan, like so many people he'd known over the years, including himself.

The past ten years in Konoha had been peaceful enough that it finally wasn't unusual for a kid to have two living parents, and even a grandparent hanging around.

When Naruto had become Nanadaime, he'd already changed the world for the better, but Kakashi couldn't forget everything that had led up to those changes. Hundreds of thousands of people had died, and the survivors, country to country, were maimed and scarred inside and out and living with the memories. He knew plenty of guys who used the bottle cure for it.

And even though this was called peacetime, they still had to fight. It wasn't just bandits and thugs. There were still small factions who kept the old grudges alive, and not everyone was keen on the idea of abandoning the ninja system. The weapons were still there, along with the deadly jutsus and and the highly-specialized men and women who had nothing left inside of them but violence and greed.

Which brought him back to the fact that Kakashi was still, in his own mind, a warrior, and had always intended to die one; in fact, already had done. Now he had to do what so many others he'd known and loved had not managed to do, and avoid dying permanently before he could teach this new person all the things they'd taught him.

It was with this in his mind he arrived in front of their apartment building. Sakura was up there, maybe not waiting or even thinking about him right now, but possibly trapped in her own cycle of panicked thoughts. She was pregnant, and he was fairly confident he was the only man she was sleeping with. She was a medic, too, and if she'd let it get this far, he was fairly certain she intended to keep it.

He hefted the brown paper bag full of groceries in the crook of his left arm and opened the door to the stairwell with the other. If she didn't bring it up, maybe he'd wait till they were at the table to say something. Emotional topics and cooking didn't mix.

This wasn't a game, and it didn't matter if he didn't know the territory, he had to move forward, and plan and adapt to the situation. This wasn't any different than any other part of his life.

The door was already open, and as soon as he turned his head to the left, he could see Sakura sitting at the kitchen table with her head in her hands, being shoulder hugged by her slender blonde girlfriend, Ino. They both looked up at him at the same time, Ino planting a firm suggestion in his mind with her eyes for him to tread carefully, and Sakura with an expression of faint surprise. She hadn't been crying, but her face was flushed.

"Yo." He grinned at them, nonchalant, and made his way to the kitchen.

"You're home early," she said.

"I finished early," he said, shrugging. "Do you want to stay for dinner, Ino? I've got enough for three." He began unpacking the groceries onto the narrow counter; fish wrapped in paper, a bunch of green onions, a loaf of bread, a bottle of rice wine, some little aubergines, miso, a bottle of prenatal vitamins.

Sakura's eyes widened, and Ino pursed her lips. "Oh, no, no. I bet you two probably have things to talk about," she said, waving the invitation away, and elbowing Sakura in the shoulder. "Don't you?" She laughed nervously, and then whispered, "I'll be at the flower shop all morning, tomorrow," before making a speedy exit.