Chapter Three: Afterburn

"And I was carrying the weight of the universe; the typical brittle perfectionist confused by my every decision. One day, I was being the hero; the next, I was playing the coward, burnt out by my overreaction." Alive in New Light; IAMX

THE SILENCE WAS disconcerting. Kakashi's lungs heaved in tandem, a wheezy concert for the lonely clearing. His dark gray eyes were trained on the target in front of him and the evidence of his poor aim was abundant. It was quiet, unusually so. Silence was never really silent to a well-trained shinobi. Silence in the real world was a vacuous echo that the human mind had learned to quash, writing off the extra sounds as a dull humming that one tended not to notice.

Kakashi couldn't help but notice the emptiness in his ears, save for the grating rasp of his own breath. His lungs were quaking hard enough to jar his slight frame. He was exhausted, his body forced to a level of performance that it had not yet attained or experienced. Still, it was not enough. Naruto had possessed this much stamina when he was six, however. Kakashi knew this because he had been assigned to the ANBU squad that was responsible for the protection of his closest friend and most under-served pupil.

He dredged up more chakra, more than he should have. He intended to perform a Shunshin, though his body protested mightily. His joints suddenly ached and his muscles seized up in tandem, wide-spread muscle cramp that erupted all over his body. Kakashi cried out in frustration and pain, sinking to his knees. No matter what he did, his chakra reserves were not growing. The increase he'd experienced was negligible, like adding a strand of shredded cheese to an already meager portion. He'd been at it for a month already and he was no further along than he'd been before.

A side effect of being a Hatake was having smaller chakra reserves, though oftentimes the chakra itself was more potent. His father didn't seem to have that problem—even by normal standards the man had large reserves—but that was probably because Sakumo had been working like a man obsessed since he was in his youth. He knew far more jutsu than Kakashi could fathom to guess, though he doubted it was as much as the moniker from his old life would indicate. Sakumo had begun 'farming' for jutsu early on, though without the aid of the sharingan like Kakashi.

Sarutobi and Sakumo had worked side by side stealing jutsu and teaching it to the young ninja to undermine the enemy. Sakumo's illustrious death had consumed his decorated war efforts in Kakashi's original timeline.

Kakashi grit his teeth together and exhaled through his nostrils, trying to move past the pain. He tried to push off the ground to stand up, but his body didn't want to respond.

He forced his body into a standing position, frustration overwhelming his sensibilities. Another push, this one requiring enormous concentration, and Kakashi was on his feet.

Kakashi knew that it wasn't going to work. He didn't know why he tried again, but his hands were forming the seals for the Shushin again. This time hurt far more than the last. Black danced around the edges of his vision as his muscles clenched, pulling against connective tissue until his joints began to pop and groan. Regret overwhelmed him more loudly than the stillness had. His body clopped back to earth with a loud thump into a face plant. He wet the earth with his tears and then slipped into darkness.

Some people experienced the duration of unconsciousness in a strange dream-like trance. Others experienced it as a time of reflection. Kakashi, as of late, had taken to experiencing it as a tender drifting through seas of dark tones. He could only exist, reveling in the sound of his heart beating. He'd been unconscious a few times, but each time he was sad to leave the peacefulness of oblivion. He likened the experience of resuming conscious awareness to the wistfulness he'd felt in his old life as the last dregs of an orgasm faded away. This time, he did not feel wistful. He felt remorseful. It was as though his body had careened into the ground and the impact was what woke him. Even his veins hurt.

Breath hissed out of him like a cuss. Kakashi could only roll over; lifting himself to his feet was not an option. He, vaguely, made out an object blocking the glare of the sun and for that he was grateful. When the object shifted, he tried to sit up but gave up immediately. It was too painful and required too much strength.

"Why do you keep doing this to yourself?"

Kakashi grimaced when he realized who the voice belonged to. "Sensei, I—"

"You know when you told me that you thought you were dead a few weeks ago I really thought you were joking."

Minato crouched down next to his body, setting his med-kit on Kakashi's belly. He withdrew a sanitary wipe and began to clean the boy's hands as he spoke. "I am really beginning to worry about you. You're always training. Always reading theory. You never play, Kakashi. Ever since you came out of the hospital you have not been the same child. What happened?"

Dread pooled in his gut and he longed to tell the truth and just come clean to someone. But he couldn't. Not yet. Who would he even tell? Running to the Hokage at this point didn't seem to be a likely Avenue.

"I… I don't know."

Minato leaned down close to him, and Kakashi reflexively opened his eyes. Tears leaked out, unbidden as he met his teacher's gaze. "Is someone hurting you ? At home, or in the village?"

'Yes, me. How do I make it stop?' Kakashi wanted to say but there was nothing to say— no sane avenue of escape to come out of the mental prison he found himself in.

Minato stared at him long and hard, his shoulders sagging in defeat. He was quiet as he bandaged Kakashi's swollen finger tips. Kakashi hasn't noticed how raw they'd become with his training.

Kakashi didn't know what to say. He had never been in this position. This was how he coped. It has always been acceptable before— when he wasn't in a child's body and when his father was still very dead. Now he was a child and his father was alive and he wa and has no definable cause for it in the eyes of his peers and superiors.

Without warning or preamble, his sensei lifted him from the ground. It felt like his very veins had dried up and he was a giant, leathery bruise.

A shadow clone remained to pick up the many weapons that littered the ground from his earlier efforts. From his current position, Kakashi could only see part of sensei's face. His jaw was clenched in an angry way that Kakashi had only seen on the battlefield.

"Are you angry with me?" he croaked out.

Minato started a little, and looked down at him sadly. "No, Kakashi." No honorific, he noted. "I am just very sad."

Kakashi averted his gaze as shame grew like a weight upon his limbs and he felt small and fragile in a way he'd not yet experienced.

"IS IT POSSIBLE that someone within the village is hurting your son?"

'Are you abusing your son?' was all that Sakumo heard and his rage and wounded pride bred like wildfire in his gut.

"If you think that I've got anything to do with that what my son is going through—"

"Do you?" Minato countered.

Sakumo stilled and gripped onto the table, trying to contain himself. "I would never. He is all I have left."

Minato nodded and sighed heavily, his shoulders sagging under the weight of it all, and Sakumo was reminded suddenly just how young the boy was. Not even yet a man and he was already recorded in the bingo books as flee on sight.

"Something is wrong Sakumo-san. I don't mean to be so direct. I apologize for my rudeness. But something is wrong and I don't know what it is."

"Definitely not your most delicate work, kid," said Sakumo, gently putting his hand on the boy's shoulder. "Gomen, it is …. Sensitive. It's true. He's all I got. I don't know what's wrong. He just woke up one day after coming back from a normal day of training and then now this is… I want my son back. He was normal– sort of– at first, all things considered. Now he's …broken. Something is broken. I don't know what to do. He's just so different."

Kakashi was listening from the other room, his chest tight and tears pouring from his face. He was going to be found out. Sent away to T and I for being a fake, a phony. It has been six weeks and he was going to be found out as a fraud.

Terrible thoughts of being confused for a traitor, spy, and infiltrator filled his mind. What if they looked into his mind and discovered all that he was — all that he has seen?

"He needs to see someone. I know some young guys that might be good for him to be around. They are a little older than him. Do I have your permission to introduce him to a Yamanaka, officially?"

Had he been the child of a civilian or an orphan, the call would have been entirely up to his sensei. However, Kakashi's father was very much alive and very much involved in shinobi affairs and so it was his choice.

"Will it be on his record? I know he's a minor but he's a chunin.."

"Psych visits actually aren't a problem regardless of age as long as they serve the purpose they're meant to."

Tools are meant to work. Whatever repairs are needed don't matter as long as they're made.

"You have my consent. I want my child whole… I know it is wartime. But I'm afraid for him if something doesn't change."

Kakashi had never heard his father be so open about his concern for him. The past few weeks his father has continued to act normal around him which was truly a testament to the man's ability as a ninja. But something in Kakashi's very being was deconstructing and imploding inward as he realized the depth of his father's love for him.

When his father had killed himself before, he had felt sure that some part of him was not enough to keep his father alive. He's often lain awake at night wondering why he hadn't been enough for his father to come home to. All the ways that he had internalized that issue were beginning to crumble. Tendrils of bitterness he hadn't even recognized within himself were being wrenched away from his heart.

Kakashi was not sure how this was going to affect his mission, but the emotional toll of it rendered him unable to remain conscious as his chakra-deprived body began to slip away into sleep.

The gentle drone of Minato and Sakumo talking in the other room, their tea cups gently clinking every now and again carried with him into his dreams.

"Well you look like yourself, but you're somebody else. Only, it ain't on the surface. Well, you talk like yourself; no, I hear someone else, though. Now you're making me nervous." You're Somebody Else; Flora Cash

SAKUMO ROLLED HIS eyes in annoyance. "How many times have I told you not to overdo it when you train?"

"Thirty-six. I've been counting," muttered Kakashi. He glared at the ground in front of him, feigning indifference to his father's concern. "You don't have to babysit me while I train you know…"

"Oh, but I do. You have proven to me that I cannot trust you to be safe if you're alone. Now get to work." He sounded so stern, but the memory of his anxiousness was fresh in Kakashi's mind.

He scowled again, trying to figure out how to best attempt the next jutsu on the scroll. Six weeks had passed since his arrival and his father had grown tired of watching him try to perfect the first jutsu. Kakashi had anticipated this. It was a little bit of reverse psychology. Indeed, he did want to master the jutsu, but by appearing obsessed with mastering that particular jutsu his father became exasperated and more excited to teach him the harder ones, knowing that his son would master them and try to perfect them.

Kakashi had managed to create a small patch of mist with the latest jutsu, the Kasumi Kaben (Mist Petal). Why it was named as such he had no clue. The instructions provided for the jutsu demanded a Tori seal and nothing else. How he had managed to channel his chakra into a decent patch of mist before—or technically in the future—was also beyond him. Gripping his fingers into the formation of the Tori seal, he exhaled before he focused his chakra. "Kasumi Kaben!"

At first nothing happened, but then a very small patch of mist began to form at his feet. It was a thatch about the size of his fist, but it was dense. Kakashi frowned in contemplation as he stared at the collection of water particles hovering in the air. Looking at it made him feel just a little bit thirsty.

"Kuso! How could I forget?" he muttered, smacking himself in the face as he scurried off to get a drink. He was nowhere near water right now—which made it much harder to perform the jutsu. If he was near pre-existing water it would make this jutsu that much easier to perform.

"I did wonder when this would occur to you, shimmering," his dad said cheekily, not even lifting his gaze from the book he'd buried his nose in.

"Stuff it, old man."

"Maa, maa — don't be rude to me. I was going to follow a recipe for dinner tonight but I can be persuaded to make a classic—"

"Immediately, I regret my rudeness. I am feeling so remorseful all of a sudden, Tou-San!"

Sakumo chuckled and put the book back in his pocket. "Shall we?"

Kakashi smiled at his dad and accepted the hand that was extended toward him. Sakumo plopped him directly onto his shoulders and proceeded to walk him over to the river.

It took him nearly ten minutes to get to the edge of the water, but Kakashi didn't care. The childish part of him has never spent this kind of quality time with his dad.

Sakumo set him down and then sat upon a stump. Kakashi stood at the edge of the water, staring out across the river as he collected his chakra. He formed the Tori seal and then proudly proclaimed "Kasumi Kaben!" only to groan in irritation when the cloud of mist he formed was six inches by six inches.

The next time he channeled as much chakra as he could into it, only for the water to rise up out of the river ever so slightly and then settle back down. Hm. Interesting, but not the effect he was going for.

"What am I doing wrong…" He pondered for a moment before stepping out onto the water, forcing his tired body to comply. His chakra control was precise enough that he could walk and stay afloat if he concentrated, though he missed being able to walk on water without batting an eyelash. "Kasumi Kaben."

Mist formed again, though over a bit of a wider area. Was he perhaps using too much chakra? Kakashi tried it again, using as little chakra as he possibly could. The mist formed again, a bit more widespread, but less dense. Interesting.

He could feel his father's eyes on his back, undoubtedly amused by his frustration.

"Okay, if you're gonna stare at me give me a hint, Dad." Kakashi bit out in feigned annoyance. So much of this had become an automatic process in his last life that he couldn't remember how he'd mastered it. He knew how it was supposed to feel but not the actual process. No wonder Sakura hadn't flourished under his teaching.

She did better with instruction than blind searching and was not a great teacher of theory. Only hard knocks.

"Try less chakra and see how that goes, shinme."

He tried the jutsu about four more times before he began to feel the familiar tug at the back of his consciousness and the aching in his joints that informed him that his chakra was running dangerously low. Trudging back to the bank, Kakashi hung his head in frustration. He was up to a square foot of mist but he couldn't produce more than that. It clung to the ground, as it was supposed to, but it needed to coat the ground around him in a circle about fifteen feet across in diameter.

"Not planning on passing out from chakra exhaustion again, are we?" a voice purred from behind him. Kakashi turned slowly, resisting the urge to flick a kunai into his hand as he was so used to.

Minato smiled at him cheekily, scratching the back of his neck as was his way. Kakashi grunted and relaxed his posture. "Maa, I'm not that stupid."

"Are you sure? I kind of get that vibe from you," teased Minato, chuckling when Kakashi looked away, pretending to pout. "Is he recognizing his limits more quickly now, Sakumo-san?"

Sakumo nodded pleasantly and sat up a little. "I'd say so. He's about to drop now, but it's a safer level of exhaustion. Still not sure why he's training like the Tsuchikage himself is out to get him…"

Kakashi sighed, plopping down on the ground without replying. Minato wordlessly joined him with a slight thump. When Minato began to skip stones across the slow-moving river, Kakashi looked up with shame in his eyes, wanting to say something- anything - to ensure he'd never see the same defeated look on his sensei's face as he had the other day. Minato beat him to the punch.

"Sakumo-san, do you know that little Kakashi has invited me to be his aniki?"

Sakumo guffawed and snapped his book shut. "I'm sure that was appealing offer! You've got enough drama without an old man like me!"

Kakashi bristled defensively (that had been private!), but before he could respond Minato gently interrupted. "Better than no old man at all."

Sakumo paused, fixing Minato with a bewildered look that slowly became more conspiratorial. "We'll I'm sure you wouldn't enjoy basket weaving… but if you wanted to humour an old man and his strange boy we have plans to do that Thursday evening after I've finished some administrative duties."

Kakashi watched with rapt fascination as his teacher smiled slightly, his white knuckled grip around the skipping stone relaxing a little. "Aa... My oba-chan was the basket weaver in my family… Sadly, I won't be in the village then. I wanted to check on little Kakashi's before I went off on a solo mission for some time. I have arranged a few things for Kakashi in my absence. When I return, perhaps we can share a meal together?"

Kakashi smiled beneath his mask and nodded. Sakumo also nodded as Minato rose to his feet only to enter into a deep bow.

"Fantastic. I will cook, as I have heard Kakashi's… glowing reviews of your… skills."

Sakumo lunged for the boy, ready to fluff him up with faux-rage. Minato vanished from their sight with a brazen laugh and Sakumo was forced to turn his 'aggression' towards Kakashi. Laughter unbefitting of a shinobi exploded from the boy's mouth and he tried to dart away from his father but he was too tired.

Unable to flee, he was at the mercy of his fathers very-scary-totally-a-horrible-punishment tickles. He didn't even remember being this ticklish and the whole experience was so bizarre and novel Kakashi's couldn't help but laugh.

Eventually the attack subsided and the two sat quietly next to the river.

"Do you think he'll actually come?" Sakumo wondered aloud. He sounded so… uncertain. It struck Kakashi that he'd never once anticipated his father being shy in this way. His dad was the White Fang! What could he be afraid of?

"I hope so! Anything's better than your cooking," Kakashi ribbed, tossing his dad a cheeky grin as he threw a pebble into the water.

"You better watch it kid, I'm still bigger than you for a few years yet…"

Kakashi sighed and picked himself up off the ground, wondering about his sensei's abrupt comment and subsequent departure. Come to think of it ,the man never talked about his childhood, save for where it concerned Kushina.

He supposed it was something to think about. He hadn't realized until just now how little personal information he actually knew about his sensei. Or his father.

Authors Note

October 24,2022

Took a bunch of crap out. It's short now. But the new stuff can grow out now.

We love the pruning process, don't we?

Also this sappy dad stuff? My dad died in 2020 and I have realized so many critical things that Kakashi would have walked through. Weird.

Hope this reads better than before.