The two of them stand in the doorway for multiple minutes, neither of them willing to move. Naruto clings to Kakashi like he'll disappear if he lets go; Kakashi leans his shoulder against the doorframe, too exhausted to properly stay upright but determined not to interrupt the embrace.

His legs are trembling a bit with the effort, and because of that, it takes a while before he realizes that Naruto is trembling, too. He looks down at the top of the kid's head, alarmed. "Are you crying?"

Naruto buries his face further into Kakashi's sweater. "No," he replies, voice cracking. "It's happy tears, so it doesn't count."

Kakashi smiles to himself and ruffles Naruto's hair. "I'm glad to see you too, kid."

"Thanks." He looks up at Kakashi, tears squeezing from his eyes with his smile. "You have no idea how much that means."

Kakashi thinks he does kind of know how much that means to the kid. The thought makes his heart ache. He doesn't know how to translate that ache into comforting words, though; he hopes Naruto can read his mind a little, in that sense.

Naruto wipes at his eyes in the silence, apparently already distracted. "All right, that's enough tears," he decides, scrubbing his sleeve across his face. "Do you want to come in, Kakashi-san? You kinda look like you're going to fall over if we keep standing here much longer."

So the kid can read his mind. Kakashi huffs an embarrassed laugh. "Yeah, I- Yeah. Thanks."

He takes off his boots – which are covered in mud – at the door, and shuffles barefoot into the apartment. Naruto has run off to make sure the curtains are fully closed; when he gives Kakashi a thumbs-up, Kakashi drops his henge with a relieved sigh.

Naruto critically looks him up and down. "You're taller than I'd expected."

Kakashi raises an eyebrow at him, amused. "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

"Just a thing."

"All right, then." Holy shit, he's missed this kid. That realization is just about enough to knock him over right then and there, but he manages to stay on his feet. There's still stuff he needs to do before he gets to pass out. "Hey," he says, turning to Naruto, "would you mind helping me out with something? I need to make some seals to hide my chakra signature, but I don't think I'll have enough chakra left to make all of them."

Naruto nods. "I'll try," he says tentatively. "I've never made a seal before, though."

"It's not difficult," Kakashi reassures him. "I'll show you. Consider it your first ninjutsu lesson from me; I did promise I'd teach you stuff, remember?"

They grab some sheets of paper and sit down on the floor. Kakashi draws one seal as an example, his left index finger dipped in ink; Naruto meticulously copies every single stroke with a brush, the tip of his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. It's hard not to think of Kushina as Kakashi watches him work.

"I think I'm done," Naruto says, interrupting Kakashi's thoughts before they have the chance to spiral into something dark. He looks between his and Kakashi's sheets of paper a couple of times; "Did I do it right?"

"Pretty much. You missed a stroke right there." It's a tiny squiggly line; a detail easily overlooked by beginners who haven't learned how to read a seal yet. Kakashi adds the missing stroke himself. "There. These are done; now, we need to make two more identical seals."

The last two seals are finished much faster than the first ones, now that Naruto understands what he's doing. He seems to be getting the hang of it fairly quickly, and Kakashi isn't surprised; the talent for fuuinjutsu is in his blood, after all. His penmanship is sloppy as Hell, but Kakashi is in no position to criticize that, not when he's writing with the fingers of his non-dominant hand himself.

When all four seals are finished, Kakashi folds his hands into a sign above one of the sheets of paper. Naruto automatically copies him with his own sheet of paper.

"Have you learned how to focus your chakra on an object yet?" Kakashi asks him. He realizes he genuinely doesn't know. He graduated the Academy in a single year's time. He doesn't have a clue when normal Academy students learn the stuff he learned at age five.

"Uhh…" Naruto gives him a hesitant shrug. Probably not, then.

Kakashi chews on the inside of his cheek, trying to remember how he was taught to focus his chakra. He might've not even learned it at the Academy, now that he thinks about it, though the memory has been locked away for so long that he's not sure whether it's real or imagined. He thinks that his dad taught him, in the garden, on one of those rare days when they were both home. He thinks that he got it right on his first try and that his dad said he was proud of him, and that Kakashi called him weird over it because he got everything right on his first try. He thinks he can still remember the way his dad laughed at that.

Well, he sure is full of memories today. He feels too tired to be upset about it.

"Do you know how to start a fire with a magnifying glass?" he asks Naruto, drawing in a slow breath. Despite his efforts to ground himself in the present, he finds that his own voice and his dad's voice overlap in his mind.

Naruto grins at him. "Of course."

"Just… imagine you're holding a magnifying glass, and that you're trying to set the center of your seal on fire." At Naruto's nod, he continues: "Imagine the dot of sunlight on the seal. Stare at it really hard, and make sure you keep your hands in the sign. Imagine that soon, your paper will burst into flames."

"Nothing's happening," Naruto says, staring intensely at the paper.

Kakashi remembers saying the same thing himself when he was young. "Be patient. You'll notice that the seal will disappear gradually-"

The seal does not disappear gradually. The sheet of paper is wiped clean at once.

Every sheet of paper is wiped clean.

Naruto flails, startled, and turns to Kakashi with wide eyes. "Did I screw up?"

"Uhm." Kakashi lets out an incredulous laugh, immediately launching himself into a coughing fit. "No. As a matter of fact, you did better than I expected."

"I did?" Naruto sounds genuinely surprised. "Iruka-sensei always says my chakra control sucks."

"It does, but I'm not surprised you have a hard time controlling your chakra. You do have a lot of it."

"I do?"

"Yeah. Much more than the average person," Kakashi affirms with a nod. "It throws off your intuition, so you instinctively used far more chakra than you needed for this jutsu. In some cases, like with these seals, using more chakra will just make your jutsu more effective. We'll still need to work on your control, though, because it's not very good for your body to use up a lot of chakra all the time."

Naruto stares at him, his mouth dropped open. "How do you know all of that?" he exclaims. "And why has nobody else ever told me that stuff?"

"I know because your mother was the same way. She said she struggled with controlling her chakra when she was young, too. The lessons at school didn't really help her, because her teachers didn't know how to teach her how to control her chakra. Chakra reserves that large are, uh, kind of rare."

"Huh," Naruto says, one corner of his mouth curling up. He seems thoughtful for a moment, but then he shakes himself and grabs the now-blank pieces of paper. "What do we do with these?"

The four seals need to be applied to the outer corners of the apartment, so that they form a rough rectangle. All chakra within that rectangle will be hidden. Naruto and Kakashi split up for efficiency, each with a roll of tape.

In his search for the correct corners, Kakashi takes the chance to look around the apartment a bit. Objectively, it's a pretty nice apartment, though it's clear that nobody has offered Naruto any help or advice in maintaining it. The kitchen sink is filled with dirty dishes. The bathroom window is boarded up, broken and never repaired. There are a couple of dark spots along the ceiling that Kakashi thinks might be mold.

He's still staring at the missing blanket on the bed when Naruto calls that he's done, and Kakashi quickly shakes himself and finishes taping the last seal to the wall. Finally, he gets to let go of the tight control he's kept over his chakra. Automatically, he also lets go of the tension in his muscles, lowering himself to the floor with a sigh.

He's safe here, at least for now. He's safe.

Naruto pokes his head around the doorway, raising his eyebrows when he sees Kakashi sitting on the floor. "You okay?" he asks, padding over and sitting down as well.

"Yeah. Tired, though. Getting here wasn't easy."

Naruto winces. "Sorry you had to come all the way here. If I hadn't messed up somehow, the Hokage would've never found out you were here."

Kakashi hums thoughtfully. "I doubt he found out because you messed up. I think he just found out. There's very little that happens in this village-"

"-without him knowing about it, yeah, I know." Naruto pulls his knees up to his chin. "Still. I'm sorry you had to go through the trouble of getting here."

"It could've been worse. I got here alive and in one piece; my energy is a small price to pay for that."

"I guess I get that." Naruto gets up. "You can go to sleep, if you want," he says. "Take the bed. I'm not tired anymore, anyway."

As good as that sounds, Kakashi knows he shouldn't yet. "I should probably wash my clothes first," he says, plucking at the front of his sweater; it's soaked with rain and covered in mud. "And I should probably wash myself, too, honestly. Do you mind if I take a shower?" His illness has messed with his sense of smell a lot, but the last time he took a shower was back in Rain so he can imagine that he's not doing too great on the body odor front. The rain he walked through can't have washed away two weeks of that.

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea," Naruto agrees easily. "You kinda stink. Really bad."

"I know, I know. You've said that before." It was one of the first things Naruto had said to his face. "I smell like a corpse, right?"

Naruto's face flushes red. "I don't remember saying that," he replies wisely, and he quickly leaves the subject behind. "Anyway, the shower's broken, but the bath works. I can wash your clothes in the meantime – I'm an expert at getting dirt out of clothes."


Kakashi takes a moment to unseal the stuff he'd sealed in his scroll; Naruto takes the blanket so that he can wash it, and Kakashi takes the first-aid kit with him to the bathroom. It takes him more effort than he'd expected to walk there. It seems his body is finally starting to protest against everything he's done today. Kakashi accepts the wave of exhaustion passively, and he accepts the helping hand Naruto offers when he sways on his feet.

He heavily sits down on the bathroom floor to peel off his rain-soaked clothes. Naruto has left him alone; Kakashi can hear him puttering around on the other side of the apartment.

Kakashi wrestles himself out of his clothes, careful not to jolt his side or let his clothes catch in the splint around his wrist. He leaves the heap of clothes outside the door so that Naruto can grab them.

Bare-faced and in his underwear, he peels off the bandage on his side, which has been loosened in the rain. It's a small mercy; the last time he changed the bandage, it was stuck to the wound, and it hurt like Hell.

He heaves himself to his feet to examine his wound in the mirror above the sink. It's the first time he properly looks at himself since he left Rain, and the first thing he notices is that he visibly lost a lot of weight. Logically, it makes sense, considering he almost starved to death and also spent two days unconscious – but it kind of startles him regardless. He's suddenly really grateful for the weight he'd put on during the more peaceful months he'd had earlier this year. Without those fat reserves, he would've probably been dead. He'll have to build those up again as soon as he gets the chance.

With a shake of his head, he shifts his attention to his wound. It's his first time seeing it in proper lighting; the stitches are a lot sloppier than he remembered them being, but they manage to keep the wound closed regardless. The skin around the wound is a little red, irritated from today's journey, but it looks okay otherwise. He's been healing slowly, though. Which, again, makes sense because his body has been devoting all of its energy to keeping him alive, but it's annoying anyway.

Well, at least it hasn't gotten worse. With that reassurance, Kakashi steps away from the mirror and turns on the faucet to fill the bathtub.

He fills the tub about halfway, so that he can sit in it without soaking his wound in water. The water is blissfully warm against his skin; he hadn't noticed how cold he'd been feeling up until now. He takes his time washing the dirt and dried blood off himself.

He's washing his hair when there's a knock at the bathroom door, followed by Naruto's voice. "Kakashi-san?" he asks. "I've got some clothes for you. I'm coming in, I'm not looking."

He opens the door with his eyes squeezed tightly shut, holding a bundle of blue fabric that Kakashi immediately recognizes as a Konoha jounin uniform.

"I once took these off someone's clothesline as a joke," he admits, putting the clothes down on the closed toilet lid, "and then they never came looking for it, so I kinda just kept them. Not sure if they fit, but you can try."

"Thank you," Kakashi replies. Naruto gives a polite nod in the wrong direction, his eyes still closed, and leaves the bathroom. He bumps into the doorframe on his way out. Amused, Kakashi watches him fumble the door closed behind himself.

As soon as the door is closed, he gets out of the tub, towels himself off and dresses his wound with fresh gauze. The jounin uniform turns out to be a size too large, which thankfully means that it's very easy to put on. There's no mask, but Naruto has given him a scarf to tie around his face. Kakashi appreciates the thoughtfulness in that gesture.

This is his first time wearing a Konoha jounin uniform, he realizes. It's ironic, in a sense – he was a jounin long before he left Konoha, but he left before he was tall enough to wear the uniform. If he'd stayed, maybe this would've been what he'd looked like. He tries not to linger on that thought for too long. This day is already weird enough as is.

It's starting to get seriously difficult to keep his eye open, so he leaves the bathroom and shuffles back into the apartment, leaning his hand against the wall. He finds Naruto at the kitchen sink, washing Kakashi's clothes, apparently one by one. Half of the clothes are drying across the backs of the kitchen chairs; the other half has yet to be washed and is lying in a muddy pile on the floor.

Naruto looks up when Kakashi walks in and smiles at him. "Long time no see," he says. "Do the clothes fit at all?"

"Yeah," Kakashi says with a nod. "I'm not fully sure that blue is my color, though. What do you think?"

Naruto snorts. "Well, it's better than dirt-brown," he says, nodding his head towards the mud-covered unwashed clothes. "That wasn't your color, either."

"Hey now, that's a little mean, don't you think?" Kakashi replies, mock-hurt, and Naruto snickers. Kakashi lowers himself onto one of the kitchen chairs and leans his elbows heavily on the table. He said he was going to go to sleep, but in a way, he kind of prefers sitting here a bit longer. He came all this way for Naruto; he might as well spend some more time with the kid, even if that time is spent in silence.

The time is not spent in silence; Naruto soon turns to Kakashi with a very bewildered look on his face. "Question for you," he says, holding up a piece of clothing. "What the crap is this?"

"It's chainmail," Kakashi replies drily. He'd been wearing it underneath his sweater.

"Yeah, no, I know that," Naruto shoots back. "I meant this." He puts his hand through the hole in the side of the chainmail. "There's a hole in it! How?"

Kakashi gives him an amused look back. "Did you think the stab wound in my side just appeared there out of thin air?"

"Well, no, but- It's chainmail! Did you get stabbed through chainmail? Isn't chainmail supposed to keep you from getting stabbed?"

"You know, I agree with you there," Kakashi replies easily, and he makes a mental note to introduce Naruto to the dangers of strength-enhanced attacks later.

Naruto shakes his head. "You've got to be the unluckiest bastard on the entire planet," he mutters, returning to his task, and Kakashi barks a laugh that leaves him breathless.


Naruto finishes up washing the clothes, and then he bullies Kakashi into lying down. Kakashi gives in; he's started having trouble keeping his head upright, and his entire body feels heavy. He doesn't realize until he lies down on the mattress that his head is swimming. Yeah, it's probably for the best if he lets himself go to sleep soon.

He props the pillow behind his back, lying half upright because it's easier to breathe that way. Naruto apologizes for the fact that there's no blanket. Kakashi doesn't mind. The uniform is warm enough.

As his eye falls shut, he's quite suddenly overwhelmed by gratefulness. He's safe, clean, warm and not dead, all thanks to Naruto. And that's not all: although he's too tired to properly examine the thought, he thinks he's been feeling less… stuck, he supposes, since he met the kid. He'd locked away so many parts of himself because they were too painful to even think about – it seemed easier to never care about anyone again and to never think about the past again and to only ever plan ahead for the next week or so. He'd thought those parts would stay locked up forever, and he was okay with that.

…He's not okay with that anymore, because of Naruto. And it's terrifying. But he's willing to bear that terror, and he's willing to bear it for the rest of his life if he has to – because he is not willing to leave Naruto behind in this village that hates him.

He thinks he's made a decision, actually.

"Hey," he murmurs, cracking his eye open to look at Naruto, who is sitting at the foot of the bed, staring at his homework. "Remember what you said earlier? About me being the unluckiest bastard on the planet?"

Naruto looks up. "What about it?"

"I don't think you're right about that. I've been pretty damn lucky lately."

Naruto huffs a laugh. "Yeah? In what way?"

He sounds like he genuinely doesn't realize. Kakashi shakes his head in disbelief. "Kid," he says. "If you hadn't stumbled across me when you did- If you hadn't decided to help me, I would've been dead ten times over." Is that the first time he's acknowledged that out loud? He realizes with a stab of guilt that it probably is. "Thank you."

Naruto's eyes widen, and then he grins at Kakashi, bright as the sun. "No problem."

"I'm glad I got to meet you, Naruto."

The kid's smile has taken on a shaky edge. "You're kinda talking like you're going to die."

Kakashi shakes his head. "I'm- No. I was trying to say that I'm going to live." It makes sense in his head, but Naruto is giving him a puzzled look, so he clarifies: "I've… decided that I'm willing to take you with me when I leave."

Naruto is clinging to him again, burying his face in Kakashi's shoulder.

"But," he says, patting Naruto on the back, "I also want you to make an informed decision about it. Because leaving your village isn't going to be as easy as you think it is. So I'm going to tell you all the worst parts about leaving your village, and then I'm going to tell you the best parts, and then we can figure out how to keep you safe out there, and then I'll let you decide whether you still want to leave."

Naruto nods against his shoulder. "Okay. Thank you. So much."

They sit there a while longer, before Naruto sits up and wipes at his eyes. Kakashi gives him a sympathetic smile. "What a morning, huh?"

"You can say that again." Naruto gives a watery laugh. "Man, I really don't want to go to school today." At Kakashi's hesitant look, he continues: "I'm serious! I think it's better if I stay here. I think I might be getting sick, too." He coughs in a way that sounds disturbingly similar to the real thing.

Kakashi narrows his eye at him, and Naruto smirks at him. "Please don't joke about that," Kakashi sighs, exasperated. "You actually had me worried for a second there."

Naruto's smirk widens. "It's probably realistic enough to convince Iruka-sensei, then, if he asks," he decides. "Not that he'll come by to ask. He doesn't care that much."

Kakashi gives him another stern look, then sighs. "Fine. But I will give you homework, then. If you want to come with me, there's a lot you'll have to learn in a short amount of time." And even if he doesn't come with Kakashi, it would be good if he learned those skills anyway.

Naruto gives him a grin that's equal parts nervous and excited. "I'll do my best," he replies. "What do you want me to do?"

"Go to the library, and find a book about henge for genin. You're going to read it and write down all the questions you have. It'll probably be a bit advanced for you, since you're still an Academy student, but I'll help you with the stuff you don't understand."

Naruto nods. "Okay."

"And I'll need every book about hiding chakra that you can find. The more complicated, the better." It'd be a ridiculous task to teach Naruto how to hide his massive chakra signature in a week's time, if they even have that long, so Kakashi will have to look into alternate possibilities. "We'll discuss specific plans when I've rested a bit."

It's terrifying, all of this. It's terrifying to see the hope in Naruto's eyes. It's terrifying to realize that that same hope has made its home in Kakashi's own heart.

But there's peace in the fact that his decision has been made. Now, it's up to Naruto to decide what their future is going to look like.

The sudden silence in Kakashi's brain makes him suddenly lightheaded, and he closes his eye. He'll pass out soon, he knows.

He falls asleep to the sound of Naruto's "have a nice nap, Kakashi-san", and with a sense of peace he hasn't felt in decades.