Title: Are You Ready?
Chapter: 23 – Temper
Author: Killaurey
Rating: T
Word Count: 5,486
Summary: AU. Sakura gives up on Kakashi as a teacher after Team 7 falls apart. Too bad fate, enemy ninja, and sheer bad luck have other plans.
Disclaimer: Naruto doesn't belong to me. It's Kishimoto's and I just play with it. Part 23 of ? Unbeta'd.

Kakashi had not planned on spending a significant amount of time with his arm around a hysterically crying teen girl today—and yet.

He pats Sakura's shoulder, hoping how incredibly awkward he feels isn't transmitted while the comfort is, and tries to decide what to do. Ino is seated against the trunk of a tree, eyes closed and totally unmoving, completely blind to what is going on, and he's honestly grateful for that.

I think… I think Sakura needed this.

And it's easier to deal with without his other student losing her shit on him for causing this meltdown.

Easier, too, that we're not in the village right now. Even when you think you're alone in the village, anyone could be wandering by, and then-

Well. Gossip is the lifeblood of any shinobi, good or bad.

Kakashi rubs her shoulder again and tries to gauge if her tears are slowing down at all.

I don't think she's fit to continue training today, but that's no worry. Our timeline is flexible. The problem now is that I'm not sure what to say and… whatever I say, will she be in the mood to listen to it?

He's dealt with tears before. Every shinobi fails a job now and then and when emotions are high, tears are one of the natural reactions to such things. But he's never actually had to comfort a teen girl over…

I don't want to call any of this silly, he thinks dryly. Because it's not. But it's not the same as when someone dies.

That he's got experience with.

I'm not certain that I've got anything to apologize for either. They're students. They're going to fail sometimes. Sometimes failure is the best way to learn to be better.

Should he have given them more warning? Taken it easier on them? Given them more supportive words?

Training in ANBU had been so much simpler. Everyone had their own damage, everyone always did, but by the time you were recruited to ANBU, you'd either gotten your shit together enough to be functional, even just for missions, or you… weren't recruited at all.

I'd expected Ino's reaction. Her and her pride, but she's already moving past it, which is also what I'd expected.

But Sakura…

I'd guessed that she would be upset. She was already a little off kilter this morning. But… we're going to need to deal with this. She can't be reacting like the world is ending over a training failure, and the way she'd attacked me… Ino could have gotten seriously hurt if Sakura had done that to her. But can I punish her when she's already punishing herself?

It leaves an ugly taste in his mouth just thinking about it.

But we do need to talk about self-control. Okay, crying, screaming, they're frustrating but we're not anywhere that it's a danger to be emotional. This isn't a warzone, where that would get us killed. Attacking, though… that's a different level entirely. Kunai, shuriken, and senbon aren't toys. Same with kicking and punching.

When she finally seems like she's done crying, though there's still a tremble in her body that betrays the depths of her upset, Kakashi fishes out a (clean) length of bandage and urges her to take it.

"Use this," he says. "And go wash your face in the stream. You'll feel a little better."

He looks at her; she does not look at him.

"Then come back here and we'll talk."

She nods dispiritedly and goes to do that.

Kakashi watches her back for a long moment then goes to check on Ino. He crouches down in front of her.

If anything has changed about Ino, it's not visible. He decides to find that reassuring as her pulse is strong and steady (he checks) and her breathing even. He reaches out with his chakra and hers is still hers, familiar and unchanged. Since she's in a trance, it's smooth and unruffled, like a still pond that's surprisingly deep.

He makes no move to wake her from the meditative trance she's driven herself down into. She's in no danger so far and it hasn't been longer than two hours, tops—it had felt longer, with Sakura crying on him—which means he doesn't even need to be concerned with the time it's taken.

And if she doesn't get it today, that's also fine. I'm asking a lot of her, using abilities she's barely even started to explore. Besides, while I think she'll be annoyed at missing what's going on, I think it's better if Sakura and I sort this out without her. She'll understand.

The Yamanaka were the most carefully discreet ninja clan he knew of and for good reason. If they went around blabbing every secret they knew, well, they'd be ostracized.

So even if Ino goes looking to see what had gone on, she'll keep it to herself—or she'll bring it up directly with him or Sakura.

And if that causes trouble, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. For now…

He has enough trouble to figure out.

Sakura feels like death.

She doesn't so much as wash her face in the stream as she collapses, face-forward, into it and gives serious thought to trying to drown herself in it. Only the idea of Ino finding her like that gets her to pull her face out of the water. She coughs and splutters, her eyes and nose stinging, both from the tears and all that had come with it, and now the unexpected dowsing.

Once that's done… she sighs and washes her face and then her arms, grimacing at the damage she's done to herself. Already the bruises coming in hurt. They'll hurt worse later. Her clothes are disaster, full of new grime and, worse, snot. The cleanest part of her is, oddly enough, the bandage she used to wrap her knee. Sakura is grateful for the clean bandage Hatake-sensei gave her and blows her nose on it.

Gross.

Every part of her feels like slime from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair.

I don't want to go and face the music.

For a second of grim, despairing amusement, Sakura pictures Hatake-sensei smacking her with a flute. It makes her feel even worse, somehow, than not having thought of it at all. That's stupid. Even I know that's stupid. There's no way he plays.

But she hadn't thought he'd danced either and he'd proven her wrong on that count during their game of follow the leader.

What's wrong with me? I should've been laughing with Ino about it. It's honestly really funny, now that I look back on it. Hatake-sensei knows how to cha-cha through bushes! And yet… I was…

Sakura winces in embarrassment. Then winces again because her face aches. She hadn't wanted him to think she was a crybaby.

And now he'll never think I'm anything but one.

It's honestly a pretty good argument for drowning herself, if it wasn't for Ino. She can't do that to her. Sakura splashes more water on her face and blows her nose again. That hurts too. Her face is raw and puffy from crying.

She feels… empty, though that's not quite the right word. It's like someone has scooped out all her insides and then scoured what was left until she burns. Everything that was taken from her hasn't yet been replaced, either, so it's just aching nothingness flavoured with rising mortification.

Maybe I can just stay here for forever. That's better than drowning. Ino won't be traumatized if I just become a river spirit or something, right?

But, no, Hatake-sensei had made sure to tell her to come back.

He'd definitely come looking for me if I just didn't show up, no matter how tempting that sounds right now. And I can't leave here. He'd catch me long before I could cut my way out and being caught doing that…

Even now, faced with the prospect of having to talk everything out, to try and explain what she'd been thinking (she hadn't been, she'd just been feeling), actually facing Hatake-sensei seems less like a death sentence than…

Not much less of one, she thinks mournfully, making sure she's as presentable as she can be, which isn't very. But being a disaster to teach is better than being a deserter or a traitor.

For one, the sheer shame she feels at the very idea dwarfs anything she feels about going and talking to her sensei, even now. And for another, being either of those things would make her a missing-nin.

I'd be the worst missing-nin ever. Everyone is more of a threat than I am. They wouldn't even bother sending hunter-nin after me, they'd just hire a random squad of Genin and I'd be a goner.

Sakura tries to picture a reality where she's a credible threat as a missing-nin for a long moment, blatantly stalling for time, even in her own mind, before she sighs and, before she can think better of it, pushes herself to her feet.

It's going to be so, so, so awful.

She doesn't want to face this.

But if I don't face him now, will I ever become the kind of shinobi that can stand on her own two feet? I'm not very strong, I don't know many jutsu, I'm not very fast or particularly good with any weapon. My stamina is absolutely garbage.

But he'd said: Team Seven is lucky to have you.

He'd said that.

Hatake-sensei doesn't tend to say things he doesn't mean. I know that. So that means that I can be pretty sure he meant it, even if I really don't see how… can I believe that he meant it?

She wants to but she's not sure if she deserves it. She'd been doing so good, she'd been learning so much, and then she'd hauled off and ruined it by being the worst her she can be.

But he still said it.

Sakura takes one step, nearly stumbling more out of inner turmoil than because of uneven ground or tripping over her own two feet.

The second step is a little easier. She tucks her hair behind one ear, fingers brushing over the band to her hitae-ite. Takes a third step.

So, if he believes that, that Team Seven is lucky to have me… then… why?

This stumps her a little, at first, as she takes a few more steps. Each step is a little easier—momentum; once begun, keeps going. With the way she's feeling right now, it's hard to imagine her presence being a boon for anyone.

It's like, as soon as she graduated the Academy, her luck has been nothing but bad—and it's spread, too, to everyone she's been around.

Sakura shakes her head furiously, trying to dislodge that thought.

Hatake-sensei let me do a watch shift. And maybe I wasn't perfect during the game or the quiz that came after, but I kept up better than I would have a month ago. He's seemed pleased with how fast I pick up new jutsu when he teaches one. I always show up on time. Even Tsunade-sama says my chakra control is very good.

It seems like a paltry list of strengths to try and use to balance out her damningly long list of weaknesses. She could go on for days about those.

But it's not nothing. She's not only weaknesses.

That careful, delicate, might break if she looks too hard at it, thought buoys her long enough that she reaches the edge of the training grounds. Then, of course, it's far too late to do anything but keep moving forward because he looks up from where he's crouched down and checking on Ino.

He looks up and looks right at her.

Internally, she quails, but steels herself anyway. She's come this far, she can't back down now! Sakura walks over.

Ino looks like a sleeping fairy, dappled with leaf shadows that shift and dance with the breeze. If it wasn't for the movement of breath through her body, Sakura thinks she'd almost be tempted to believe Ino was just an illusion.

"Is she okay?" Sakura asks, looking at Ino and then looking around, frowning a little about something that isn't her own internal turmoil. It's still afternoon, though it's felt like the longest one in existence, but the sun is making a steady trek towards the horizon. "Hatake-sensei?"

"She's fine," Hatake-sensei says, rising from his crouch. His gaze rests on Ino for a long moment—Sakura wonders what he's thinking—and then he glances at her and, silently, gestures for her to follow him.

She does.

She's come this far and if she ever wants to be the kind of shinobi that she dreams of (someone strong, someone brave, someone beautiful to see in action) then… Sakura knows that the only way out of this is to go through it.

And I just have to hope that he doesn't give up on me and that this won't be he's telling me I'm done, he's washing his hands of me!

He leads her over, not to where the training dummies are, but almost directly across the practice area from Ino, under the shade of another tree. Hidden in the shade, where she hadn't noticed it before, partly because of how nature has grown up around it, is a bench.

"Take a seat," he says, as he does the same.

Licking her lips nervously, Sakura does so. Then, he's quiet for a long time, and she tries to pretend that the silence isn't killing her. (It is. It so is.)

"So," he says finally, "there are several issues we need to address here. First is the easiest one: do you require first aid?"

Sakura blinks, taken completely off-guard by that question. She hadn't thought, hadn't expected, him to ask about something like that.

Her arms hurt, the bruises that are coming in are awful looking. She's got a couple nasty scrapes.

"No, Hatake-sensei. Nothing needs first aid right now."

Later, she'll properly clean everything. Later, she'll wrap her arms up in ointment and bandages.

He sighs. Sakura tries not to let it go through her like an arrow striking home.

"Good. Then he says: "Secondly, do you want to tell me what caused all of… that?"

No, her traitorous heart thinks.

Except, of course, the way he says it means that it's not really a request, it's an order.

"I… I…," she stammers, flushing with embarrassment and shame. "I… don't know, Hatake-sensei."

"All right," he says. "Would you like me to make some guesses and you can tell me what's closest?"

No, she thinks, glad that he's not a mind reader but suspecting, from the look he gives her, that he might as well be in the here and now. "Yes, Hatake-sensei," Sakura says, because what else can she say?

Hatake-sensei nods slowly. "I can't change what already happened," he says, "but my job, right here, is to make things better going forward. You're scared of being left behind." He pauses. "Again."

Unwillingly, grudgingly, she nods.

"You're jealous of Ino's sensor-abilities."

Sakura hates nodding for this one but she does. It's such an ugly, petty feeling.

"You're worried you won't ever catch up to your peers."

His words are like poison, bile, and that only because it's the truth. Sakura hopes there's a treatment somewhere in all of this because—she doesn't know what to say. She's a walking disaster.

He's quiet then, as she waits for him to keep listing her problems. It both hurts to have them listed out, so very obviously, but it also feels…

Like maybe he doesn't think it's the end of the world for her to have all of these issues. She's not really sure what to make of that.

"The way your team fell apart," he says. "I think you blame yourself for that, too, because you're the only one left here in Konoha."

Sakura lowers her head.

"I wasn't there for how your team was formed, how it grew, and how it fell apart," he says slowly. "And feelings like guilt and shame are nearly impossible be alleviated by an outside force. I could tell you that it wasn't your fault until I was blue in the face but that doesn't change the fact that I wasn't there, and I don't know. Maybe it was partly your fault. Maybe you could have changed it."

Sakura flinches, his words going bone-deep, but he's not finished yet, as he continues—

"But none of that matters now."

"What?" she blurts out. "But how can you—if I'd been better, then—"

"Then we wouldn't be here, right now," he says.

She opens her mouth, then frowning, closes it. "I don't understand, Hatake-sensei."

He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, letting his hands dangle. She can't read his expression.

"It's probably going to sound strange coming from me, since I'm currently time-displaced, which proves that under some circumstances, you can actually go back in time to change things—as I imagine that's what the Kakashi-sensei from this time, who now finds himself back in time, might think of to do, but—" He pauses and looks at her. "Yes?"

She's a little embarrassed that her urge to speak had been noticed so obviously, but since he doesn't seem mad, she asks, "What… what do you think Kakashi-sensei might change in the past?"

"I don't know," Hatake-sensei admits. "It might be the outcomes of missions. That sort of thing. There might not be a big, unifying goal that drives him in the past."

"Do… do you think… maybe he'd save Sasuke-kun?" Sakura wonders, realizing for the first time, that her original sensei might be able to do so many things, if he wanted to. "Do you think he could… stop the Uchiha Massacre from ever happening? Or… if not, then maybe if… by not being alone sooner…?"

Her thought falters there because, because it's not fair, really, if Kakashi-sensei goes and saves Sasuke that he couldn't also save Naruto, and that's the terrible thing about it, really, that she doesn't know that he would. He'd stop them from being killed, she knows that. He'd die for them.

But… but could he live with them, raise them, love them as a family? Until Sasuke no longer thought of only revenge and Naruto would learn what it's like to grow up 'normal'.

And where would she be, in a world like that? Would she still be placed on Team Seven if Sasuke and Naruto were raised as basically brothers?

"He could do that, in theory. What ramifications that would have on this present—well, that's for the theorists and philosophers to figure out. Their understanding of the intricacies of how timelines blend and change quite eclipse my own meager knowledge about the subject. It's also equally as likely that he's decided to just… go with the flow. But we're getting off topic, Sakura."

Hatake-sensei still doesn't sound mad.

"Sorry," she says, and he waves that off.

"It's a good question," he says. "It's just the wrong… time for it, so to speak."

For a very brief moment, she feels the mad urge to giggle helplessly. She doesn't, though, because everything else is still all too raw.

"As I was saying," Hatake-sensei continues, "barring extraordinary circumstances, you can't change the past. You can drown yourself in what-ifs, you can flay yourself with what you should have done, you can dream away pain and re-tread paths a million times to see if you can't find a way where it all would have worked out perfectly.

"And you're going to do that. You'll hate yourself. You'll hate them. You'll stare at the ceiling during long sleepless nights, dwelling on might-have-beens. You'll punish yourself for it, claw open your wounds again and again and again because of it."

Sakura stares at him, wide-eyed.

"But, you know, you can't change any of it. The only thing you can do is what we're doing right now—keep walking. Learn how to adjust and carry the new weight. Study the pain and learn the lessons you can from it, so that you don't do it again."

"That… that… sucks," Sakura says.

He huffs something too soft to be a laugh. "Yeah, it does, and don't let anyone tell you that it's worth it, or you should be glad it happened, because it's made you stronger. Pain might hone a soul into a blade, but sometimes the weapons it forms are brittle. You need to learn to work with it, work past it, but if it consumes you, Sakura, that's when a shinobi truly becomes useless, no matter how skilled they are."

"Why?"

"Pain ossifies," Hatake-sensei says. "If left unchecked, obsessively consumed, it freezes the soul. If you don't work at it, at the best, it'll leave you the same as you were when the pain happened. At the worst…"

He doesn't finish that sentence, but she doesn't need him to do so.

Sakura sits in silence for what feels like a long, long time, though the sun doesn't seem to move much. The soft breeze tugs at her hair and she reaches up, tucking a few pink strands back behind her hitae-ite, and catching sight of her bruises.

"Hatake-sensei," she says finally, "I want to grow."

"You already are," he tells her. "You've grown tremendously in the last month, Sakura."

She shivers a little, feeling the press of weariness deep in her soul.

"I don't feel like I've grown," Sakura admits. "I thought I had, last night, when I managed to do a watch shift all by myself. I felt… I felt good about it, Hatake-sensei, I really did. Then today happened and… and I failed and then I…"

Had lost her mind? Thrown a fit? She rubs her forehead.

"I took a hundred steps backwards," Sakura settles on. "Just when I'd finally started to feel like I was actually moving forwards."

"That's probably why today's failure hit you so hard," Hatake-sensei says. "And it's actually a good thing—"

"That I fell apart?!" Sakura protests, interrupting him without thinking about it and then flushing red. "Sorry, Hatake-sensei."

"That you fell apart," he agrees, waving off her interruption.

Her cheeks feel burning hot, like she's eaten something with too many peppers in it. "I don't understand how that's supposed to be a good thing."

"Because," he says slowly, "it means you're finally able to process and grieve for everything that happened. It means you finally feel safe enough to fall apart and figure out the pieces of how to put yourself back together. It means that, here and now, you're stronger than you were yesterday, for having cried it all out."

Sakura is quiet then, just thinking about that. It… it doesn't really sound like it makes much sense. How does crying something out of her make her stronger when she feels so much weaker for having done so?

But at the same time, Sakura realizes, even though she feels awful, embarrassed, and shamed…

That scoured feeling remains. Like she's cleaned house and flung the windows wide.

"What… what do I do now?" Sakura asks tentatively.

"You keep going," he says. "You keep learning. Keep trying your best. There will be good days and bad days, but I think that this, right here, means that eventually you'll be just fine."

She kind of wishes that there was a map or a guide or something that would lead the way. A place on a map where she'd know exactly when she'd be fine, once she'd completed the journey. From what Hatake-sensei says, though, it doesn't sound like there's anything like that.

Just… finding pieces and sorting them out as she goes. It seems like a really big task. Daunting, really.

"Do I have to do it alone?" she asks plaintively.

He looks at her. "Are you alone right now? Do you think you'll be alone in the future?"

She flushes, realizing that—no, she's not alone. Hatake-sensei is right here. Ino's been with her all along, since they put their friendship back together, though even before that, looking back on it now, she's not sure Ino ever really left her.

I think that maybe I left Ino more than she left me, Sakura wonders for the first time. Was I really that bad of a friend?

And then here she is, still being jealous of Ino for something that neither of them could help.

Sakura feels… really ugly, then, in ways that have nothing to do with her appearance.

Ino hasn't even said anything about before. She's just…

Kept on moving. Ino is always moving forward, Sakura realizes. She doesn't look back at all.

Maybe, eventually, could she be like that too? In another time, another place?

"No, Hatake-sensei," Sakura says quietly. "I'm not alone, even though the original Team Seven is… gone."

It is gone, too, smashed to pieces. Sasuke turned traitor, Naruto off on a training journey, Kakashi-sensei lost in another time.

It's just her.

And Hatake-sensei. And Ino. And Hinata and Tenten and all of the boys. It's Tsunade-sama and Shizune-san.

That's what the Will of Fire means, she thinks in wonder. She's always believed in it, like anyone raised in Konoha, but this is the first time she really thinks she understands it. We're all still here and moving forward. I just… I was the one that was stuck and I couldn't see it.

It feels like a revelation.

"As long as you know that," Hatake-sensei says and then he sighs. "However, Sakura, there is something I do need to talk to you about. It's a good thing that you fell apart, for your own healing."

"I'm sorry for attacking you, Hatake-sensei," she says contritely. "I didn't—I wasn't thinking."

"I appreciate the apology," he says, "but that's not… quite what I was getting at. I can take it. That kind of attack wasn't going to injure me."

She puzzles over that. Sakura can't even take offense to his words—he's a Jounin, she's… well, she's decidedly not, even if she's getting better training these days. Maybe one day she'll actually make Jounin.

It seems so far off. It seems closer than it had been this morning.

"Then… what is it…?" Sakura asks.

"Do you remember when I took your pouches?" Hatake-sensei says.

"Not when you took them," she admits, because even reviewing her memories of the fight they're… they're a mess. She hadn't been thinking at all. "I did notice when I went to use the—oh."

Was that it? Was that the problem? That she'd tried to draw a weapon and use it on her sensei? She flushes miserably at the thought of that. Calmer now, she can't believe she ever even tried.

A year ago, the very thought of doing something like that would have been absolutely unimaginable. Yet, here she is… with so much of the year having been beyond what she could have ever guessed.

And most of it a nightmare.

"You're on the right track," he says. "Let me put it to you a different way. Even though it's in incredibly poor taste to attack your sensei and mean it—when I took your pouches, I wasn't worried about me."

His gaze shifts to where Ino is still under the tree, in her trance.

"You weren't thinking. You weren't aiming."

There's a roaring in her ears as the true horror of what could have happened sinks in. She feels faint, like all the blood has rushed from her face, leaving her ghastly pale and nauseous.

"You could have killed your teammate while she's absolutely defenseless," Hatake-sensei says inexorably. "All it would have taken would be one wild throw. That's the part of what you did here today that is absolutely unacceptable, Sakura."

She stares mutely over at Ino.

All the times that Ino's saved her, helped her, trained with her, laughed with her, supported her—

And she could have killed her. She wouldn't even have known about it, until she'd come out of… her breakdown.

Sakura's entire being recoils from that thought. She can picture it all too well. A wild kunai having slashed her throat, blood slipping down her front, Ino never feeling a thing. Or it hitting her chest, leaving her to die more slowly and painfully. Slamming into her forehead, pinning her to the tree she's under…

"You're dismissed from training for the rest of the day," Hatake-sensei says, the words almost gentle, but she doesn't miss the steel underneath. "Go walk the perimeter, then do whatever you want. After dinner, I want you to tell me how you think you should be punished for attempting to draw a weapon while not thinking."

Sakura stands mechanically, her eyes still fixed on Ino. She feels a terrible, dreadful urge to go and make sure that Ino's okay now, even though Hatake-sensei had made it so what could have happened, hadn't.

From behind her, Hatake-sensei says, "And tomorrow, we'll continue your training."

Sakura barely hears him. She staggers over to Ino and stares down at her. Her blonde hair is loose and windswept, she's clean and healthy and breathing. The rise and fall of her chest is the most soothing thing that Sakura has ever seen.

Nothing happened.

She'd known that, she had, but the fact that… if it hadn't been for Hatake-sensei…

Sakura listens to her heartbeat, loud in her ears, and then bolts, crying again, but this time… this time because she knows exactly what she could have done.

I hope I did the right thing, Kakashi thinks, watching Sakura flee the training yard. It's a risk, cutting her down like that right after her breakthrough, but… a ninja who doesn't look after their teammates is worse than trash. She needed to know.

He rubs his jaw tiredly.

I'm going to have to keep an eye on her, but give her enough distance that she feels like she's got privacy, while also keeping an eye on Ino…

If he'd had his dogs, this would have been simple. He doesn't want to incur the chakra cost that using a Kage Bunshin would cause, especially not as the sun is slowly going down and they don't know what will happen once darkness falls.

But I don't have my dogs and if we don't find them here… I'll have to do what I said to Sakura. Begin walking forward again.

Kakashi sighs.

Like I told Sakura, it's not easy.

But he's going to have to start thinking about what to do if they really can't find the summoning scroll—or if they do, and it doesn't help at all. With the two of us swapped, it's possible we won't be able to summon at all, unless we make a contract with a different animal.

On his end, that wasn't going to happen.

It's an interesting question that Sakura posed, though. If my original timeline isn't far from what her history calls the Uchiha Massacre… what would the other me do?

He can think of a lot of things he'd do and he doesn't even have all the information he'd want before attempting something like that. (He has barely scratched the surface of what he'd like to know.)

Kakashi rests his elbows on his knees and laces his fingers together thoughtfully.

The bigger question, however, is what happened to change me into this timeline's Hatake Kakashi?

Because he does not like the man he's apparently fated to become. He doesn't like him at all.

From everything he's learned, mostly from Sakura and Ino, the original Hatake Kakashi had been someone who dwelled so long and so far that it had…

Not ruined him, I don't think. But giving him enough rope to hang himself? Oh yes, I can see that.

And doing so with a Genin team in tow.

I wonder if the Sandaime wanted to have the other me teach in order to ground me better in the current time, rather than the past.

It's plausible, certainly, but with the Sandaime dead, they'll never know.

I'm pretty grounded, I like to think. What I'd told Sakura was the truth—if you don't keep moving, you freeze and break. Of course, you never stop mourning, and there's nothing wrong with that either. Visiting the Memorial Stone to speak with my family doesn't stop me from living.

So, what had changed? And why?

Something to look into when we get out of here. I don't know if it'll do me any good to know what happened in this timeline, but maybe it will explain why the other Hatake Kakashi did so many things I just can't agree with.

After all, he's what I'm supposed to become.

I want to know the why.