Chapter 9 - Flash Signals

"Hey, you! Jounin-brat. Where's the heck's your sensei?"

Kakashi was thirteen years old, cooling his feet in the river. He had his shoes arranged neatly beside him, left foot, right foot.

It was one of those hot, blue-sky days, a July day. Minato-sensei had given him the afternoon off.

He didn't turn back to look at her, but he knew that she was there, at the top of the hill. Kakashi pretended that he didn't notice her and leaned back, splashing his feet, knocking them against the concrete river bank.

"Don't act like you can't hear me. I know you can, you little twerp."

Kakashi didn't reply. He started to whistle.

He felt a foot on his back. "Tell me where he is or I'm kicking you in the river, yeah?"

"You wouldn't do that."

"Ah! He speaks. What, you want me to try?"

"No. You wouldn't be able to."

And Kakashi demonstrated why, a second later, disappearing in a moment and reappearing behind her. His feet were still wet.

And all she could do was laugh. "Man, I just can't get anything past you, huh, kid?"

Kakashi shrugged, glancing sideways, perfectly nonchalant. "Whatever."

She crossed her arms over her belly, her mouth fixed sorta sideways. She didn't bother turning around, instead looking down at him over her shoulder. "So, again. Since I got your attention, yeah? Where's your sensei?"

"I dunno."

Minato-sensei was in his office, of course. Taking care of some Things.

"Don't give me that, kid, I know that you know. Just tell me, yeah?"

Kakashi looked the other way, with his one uncovered eye.

"He doesn't want to be bothered."

"Pff. Really, now."

"Yeah."

"And how do you know that, yeah?"

"Because he told me."

She rolled her eyes. "Uh-huh." She wasn't leaving. "I still wanna know where he is."

Kakashi returned to the riverbank, sat down, carefully, dipped his feet back into in the water. "Ask someone else. He still doesn't wanna be bothered."

She scoffed. "You're concerned about me bothering him? I'm the mother of his freakin' kid, yeah? I get to bother him. Since I'm bothered twenty-four-seven by this little octopus in my stomach, yeah?"

Kakashi was whistling again.

Next thing he knew, she was sitting next to him. It took her quite an effort, and she rested her hand on her stomach, sighing deeply as she took off her sandals, right foot, left foot. She let them fall where they lay.

"Kid, when you're outta here, I swear. First thing I'm gonna do is, like, a million backflips, yeah? You're makin' it hard to move."

Kakashi didn't look at her.

"…look, kid, I understand if you don't like me."

Kakashi was already well-informed of her frankness. He hadn't yet experienced it personally, and he found himself tensing up from it.

"Why wouldn't I like you?"

"Well I'm kinda stealing your sensei away from you, kid. Even I'd hate me, if I were in your shoes."

She was sitting to his right. So she could see if he was looking at her.

He still wasn't.

"What makes you think I think that?"

Her red hair burned in his peripheral vision.

"Just a hunch. I know how close the two of you are."

"He's just my sensei, it's no big deal."

She laughed. Kakashi always thought it was strange, how she laughed without covering her mouth, like a man did.

"No big… pff, you are such a kid. You try not to act like it, but you are, yeah?"

Kakashi wasn't a kid. But he didn't say this.

"You wanna know a secret?"

Not particularly. So he didn't say anything.

She continued anyways.

"Minato's kinda scared of having less time with you, too. The guy worries about you a freakin' lot, yeah?"

Kakashi looked at his feet, so he wouldn't have to look at her. She was probably smiling.

"Really, he talks to me all the time about how you're gonna get on, what with the baby keeping us busy," she added. "I mean, you're a jounin and everything. That's pretty impressive. But he still worries."

Did he really worry that much? His sensei?

The sting of losing Obito was still as fresh as the scar over his left eye.

"I really couldn't care less. I'll be fine."

"Right. And I'm gonna lose all of my baby weight."

She laughed, but it didn't last very long.

"…there's nothing wrong with those kinds of feelings, Kakashi."

Did she have to use his name? Like that, like she knew him so well?

He almost preferred being called a kid.

"Plus… he told me about your dad. And he worries about that, too, yeah."

He had to look at her, for that. "What does my dad have to do with anything?"

Her face had an almost foreign softness to it, in her smile, her dark blue eyes. "He knows how much you miss him."

Kakashi glared at her.

The things he wanted to say.

But he said nothing.

"Really, this is less about me and more about you, I guess. I suppose I've been leading you on, yeah?"

Nothing. He looked at his feet again. Hers were uncomfortably close to his, in the water.

"Honestly, I'm a little worried about you, too. Because," she added, managing to laugh - how could she laugh so easily? "if you're not okay, then Minato's not okay, and I'm not okay with that. Yeah?"

He had no idea why he wasn't just leaving.

His shoes were neatly set beside him. Left foot, right foot.

"If I'm confusing you or annoying you or whatever, that's fine. I don't expect you to start liking me all of a sudden, if at all, yeah."

There was a sort of unspoken expectation in her words, but Kakashi couldn't tell if they were her expectations or his.

"I kinda don't know what I'm even doing here, at this point. I really am looking for Minato, yeah, but I've been thinking about this a lot, lately, and I just wanted to let you know."

Nothing.

"Just know that… I'm not trying to steal him away from you. I know how much you need him. I'm not trying to take him away. I want you to be happy too, yeah? This kinda stuff is hard to deal with. I know how hard it's been for you."

She'd said that already. She didn't need to say it.

He didn't need to hear it.

"Just wanted to let you to know that, yeah?"

Sure.

She grunted a little as she hauled herself to her feet. It took a while. "Hup. Well. I guess I'll go ask someone else about this, yeah?"

"Ask Rin. She'll know."

Kakashi didn't know where Rin was.

She was quiet, for a while. He could hear her putting her shoes back on, right foot, left foot, starting back up the hill.

Then, suddenly, from behind him, this:

"For telling me that, I'm not gonna kick you in the river."

He didn't see her at all again, for the rest of the day.

Which was a relief, because he didn't want her to witness the confused smile in his good eye, the mess of his face struggling with that summer's emotions.

Kakashi'd had a lot of dreams like that, lately. He had no idea why.

It had been a long time since he'd had a dream that wasn't just a re-run of a memory, though. A very long time.

It was Yamato that woke him up from that particular memory, of the blue-sky river summer, the burning red hair.

Kakashi had fallen asleep on the couch, halfway through a book. This is how babysitting with Kotoji tapered off, a lot of the time, especially at night.

"Where's Kotoji? He hasn't gotten into anything, has he?" Kakashi asked. His reflexes woke him up at the slightest sound, but with Kotoji, you had to keep on your toes.

"Nah, he's still sleeping. I wasn't gone for very long." Yamato spoke very softly. He sounded tired.

Kakashi felt like he'd been asleep for far longer. He rubbed his eye. "Mm. So how'd it go with…"

"Haruhi-kun? It went well enough."

Kakashi yawned. "What were you helping with, anyways?" Yamato had rushed out so quickly that he hadn't given much of a reason for his departure, but this was nothing new.

"Well, Benio-chan's student didn't show up for training this morning. You know, that Hanamura boy, with the red hair."

Red hair…

Kakashi remembered him, and his frustrating familiarity, his closeness with Naruto. He had no idea what to make of the rumors claiming that the boy was his son. He supposed maybe there was some truth to them, though he couldn't quite articulate why.

"So you went looking for him?" Kakashi said.

"Yeah, she started to get really worried when a few hours went by and he still didn't show. He wasn't even at Naruto's house, when we went to go check."

"Oh, jeez. Naruto must be worried too, then. Did you go talk to him?"

"Of course. But he's just seriously bogged down with those Taki… guys." Yamato's face wrinkled. "You know, the ones with the swords. You've seen them around."

"Oh, yeah. I've seen them."

"Yeah. I get the feeling that Naruto's going to have to find that Taki Kiine girl, though, first and foremost. Wherever she is. We have practically the entire staff looking for her, it's absolutely ridiculous."

"Probably. It must be torture for him, you've seen how he is with that boy."

"Yes." Yamato's eyes were half-closed, his expression thoughtful. "The look on his face was just heartbreaking, Kakashi-san. Poor guy's just overwhelmed. Especially with the chuunin exams so soon." He looked up at Kakashi, who was getting up off the couch. "Was it ever this bad for you?"

"Hm?"

"As Hokage, I mean."

Kakashi thought for a moment, searching his memory.

His tenure as Hokage was a long and a lonely stretch of time, a period of resettling, a lukewarm age. Days of endless paperwork and picking up the pieces left behind by the Akatsuki and the war. It had its own pressures, its own set of stresses and circumstances.

Unlike Naruto, however, Kakashi didn't have a family, in those days. Blood or otherwise. This absence was both comforting, a lack of pain, and isolating, a constant reminder of it.

He couldn't really compare it to his current situation, his new life of gap-toothed smiles and books reborn as flowers, and old, familiar conversations.

"I don't know, really."

Yamato was quiet for a moment, breathing softly, in and out.

"I'll be heading home, now, unless you need me for anything," Kakashi continued, holding his book in his hand, keeping his place with his finger.

"Nah, you're good. Thanks a lot, Kakashi-san."

"Any time, Yamato."

And Kakashi was gone, lost in his book, looking at the words, but not really reading them. Force of habit.

But then he saw something in a face on the way home, out of the corner of his eye. It was enough to make him stop in his tracks, enough to freeze his blood.

There was a group of those Taki representatives shuffling about outside of a storefront; a big fellow, two medium-sized, and one very, very small.

It was the small one that caught his attention, and his face, especially his face.

It took only a moment for the memory to come rushing to the forefront of his mind. An old memory, and a violent one, of a face much like that one.

Blood-stained, eyes blank, dead, but defiant, almost happy.

Kakashi almost had to check to see that there wasn't blood on his arms, that it was a book he held in his hand and not the remains of a human heart.

They made eye contact, for just a moment. The boy had the face of a martyr and brown, living eyes.

Kakashi averted his gaze first, but he knew that the boy was still looking at him.

He had to make himself some tea when he got home, but his hands were shaking almost too badly to hold the cup.

It was like he had seen a ghost; that was the best way to put it. He didn't talk about it with other people, but that was how he would say it if he had to.

This happened, from time to time. He'd catch a glimpse of something and things would just come rushing back. Sometimes years would go by between incidents, but they still happened. Like that eager, dusky-skinned Cloud nin with the small black eyes but no eyebrows to match them. He'd seen that face at many chuunin exams, in years gone by. He'd already gotten used to the white-haired Kurunari, whom Naruto adored so much, enough to disregard his hermit's smile.

The things his eye had seen would give most people nightmares.

Kakashi had suffered from them, quietly, for quite a while now.

He tried to think of Kotoji's smile, and slowly, his hands began to stop shaking.