Chapter Text
Unceremoniously, a week before graduation, the Hokage shows up unannounced at his apartment. Sasuke is home, but he’s made himself scarce. He isn’t yet sure if this is cause for concern - Sasuke rarely hides. Not from him. Not from the dark. Not from Tsukuyomi.
But - anyways, the Hokage is in his living room. Thankfully he’s put his pipe away. Smoking in someone else’s home is, after all, exceptionally poor etiquette. Sasuke would berate him later if he had let the room become suffused with smoke.
“Kakashi,” The Sandaime greets. Kakashi holds his tongue; asking how did you get in was a ridiculous question. The protective seals plastered around his apartment were primarily to keep out enemy intruders, not his own superior. Why would probably be the better question, and he doesn’t like what this meeting is shaping up to be.
“You’ll have to excuse the mess.” Kakashi says, kicking one of Urushi’s torn-apart toys under the table. Sasuke left his homework out - unusual, again. Maybe Sasuke is the one that let him in. Maybe he fled before he remembered to take it with him. “I wasn’t expecting guests.”
The Sandaime weathers a glance at the homework. “How is Sasuke? I haven’t been following up on the situation in these recent months. Has he adjusted well?”
“Everything looks fine.” Kakashi replies. Except for the way he’s hell-bent on killing his brother, but. There is a limit to what he can do. “His grades haven’t suffered. The development of his Sharingan is coming along fine.”
That’s what he wants to hear. That’s what Minato wanted to hear when Kakashi shucked his blood-soaked armor on his desk and dug his nails into his palms to keep the tears from his eyes. That the Sharingan is fine.
It hasn’t escaped his notice how lax the Sandaime has been with this situation. He likely would’ve let Sasuke live out the rest of his life in the very house his parents had been murdered in, without even bothering to scrub out the blood stains. And Kakashi wouldn’t have done anything about it either. It wouldn’t have even crossed his mind.
It would not have crossed his mind that growing up in the house where one’s parents died violently was probably damaging. Kakashi is, privately, more than a little chafed by his own apathy. By his own aptitude for passivity.
“Good.” He says. “I actually came here for another purpose: on the formation of Team Seven.”
Oh no.
This has got to be some kind of joke. Some grand, cosmic joke of which he was the punchline. Sasuke stares at him when he breaks the news, squinting. He swallows his undercooked broccoli - and manages not to grimace too much, because he actually let Kakashi handle dinner this time - and glares at him from across the table. “Why am I on the same team as Naruto?”
“Because,” Kakashi pats his head, dodging when his mean, unhinged kid tries to bite him, “The Hokage thinks the two of you will work well together.”
“Why would he think that.”
“Sakura will be there to moderate.”
“Why does he think that.”
Oh, this is going to be fun. He finally gets the chance to embarrass Sasuke in front of his teammates! Twelve is a tumultuous age, nearing adolescence, and Kakashi plans to make it infinitely harder for him. Mostly to distract himself from the old wound that is Team Seven, but that’s for no one to know but himself.
“Why am I on the same team as you?” He continues to complain. “Doesn’t this count as favoritism?”
“What makes you think you’ll be my favorite?”
“I told Urushi to pee in your shoes.” Sasuke says, and then slams the door in his face.
All in all, that interaction went better than expected.
Sasuke drags him from bed that morning, keenly aware that it’s a bad day, and also completely insistent that Kakashi not be late for training. He’s diligent - Kakashi will give him that. It’s cute when he’s talking about schoolwork; it’s less cute when he’s trying to manhandle him out the door.
He forbids Sasuke from telling either Naruto or Sakura about the real purpose of the bell test. He instructs him to stay behind, because he already has an unfair advantage. Naruto bursts onto the scene with shadow-clones, and Sakura tries admirably to tag-team him with Sasuke before he traps her in a genjutsu. Sasuke retaliates by fighting him anyways, which lands all three of them in time-out. And for shocking him with Chidori, Sasuke gets tied to the pole. For actually managing to pull off the move and hit him, Kakashi is incredibly proud.
They pass, of course, just like he predicted. Naruto cheers and Sakura stares at him like he’s grown another head.
This is his team. Inextricably, he’s fond of them.
Sasuke drags him up at sunrise; it becomes a habit. He really doesn’t know when the kid sleeps. Considering the fact that they always arrive together (usually fifteen minutes late, much to Sasuke’s chagrain), it’s a surprise that the other half of his team doesn’t put two-and-two together.
“You live with him?!” Naruto shrieks. “There’s no way-”
“What does your house look like?” Sakura chimes in brightly. “Does he always have his ninken out? Why are you always late in the mornings? Does he train you-?”
“Favoritism!” Naruto continues, “That’s why you already know how to do all this stuff! This is so unfair Kakashi-sensei!”
“He has a shelf full of porn books.” Sasuke tells Sakura. “It’s not that interesting. It’s just a house.”
“Are our personal lives that interesting?” Kakashi adds in, dropping down from the tree-branch where he was perched. Sakura screams, then, and throws a shuriken before she can think about it. Good. Kakashi has been trying to cultivate her temper by leaving around pointy-objects where she can reach them. He’s aiming to dethrone the other jounin for the most annoying team. She has so much potential for property-damage just based on temperament alone.
“We don’t know anything about you.” Sakura points out. “You’ve met my parents, Kakashi-sensei, and we all know where Naruto lives.”
“Well, here’s a thought,” Kakashi says, pressing his fingertips together. He feels the precise moment when Sasuke turns to glare daggers at him, “How about we spend the night at my house? It’ll be a great bonding experience.”
“No.” Sasuke snaps. “We are not doing that. You wouldn’t like it anyways. There’s dog fur everywhere.”
“Don’t let Urushi hear you say that; she might not let you back inside.”
Urushi likes Sasuke more than she likes Kakashi. He thinks she’d like Sasuke more than she likes Kakashi even if he threw her favorite chewed-up toy away. It’s kind of annoying.
“Start being a paranoid asshole again.” Sasuke shoves at him. “Don’t let them in the house.”
“Isn’t that what kids your age like to do, though?” Kakashi asks innocently. “Have sleepovers?”
Sasuke’s glare is downright murderous.
“What would you know about that, sensei?” Sakura crows.
“Yeah!” Naruto yells. “You’re like, a million years old!”
Kakashi blinks. “How old do you guys think I am?”
“Thirty seven?” Sakura says.
“One hundred.”
Sasuke tries to hide his smile in his collar. Kakashi quickly tucks that bruise to his ego away. “Well, since I’m clearly so ancient, I guess we can’t go on this C-rank mission I got for us. Ah, what a shame, these old bones just don’t move like they used to-”
Naruto pounces on him before he can get any further. “A C-rank!?”
“Yes, yes, unless you want to chase that cat again.”
Sakura grumbles from behind her hair. “At this point I think he might be better off in the wild.”
“What’s the mission?” Sasuke cuts in, a hungry look in his eyes. Kakashi recognizes that look - endless ambition, black as a trench. That’s probably how he looked when he took his chunin and jounin exams, always endeavoring after something greater, right up until that aspiration got tangled enough to wrap around his throat. Until it was no longer a choice, but an expectation.
“Have any of you heard of the land of waves?”
Their client is a stout, ill-tempered man who has his hand around the neck of a bottle when he sees them first.
“A couple of brats?” He sneers.
Needless to say, they don’t get off on a good foot.
As they begin their trek, Kakashi allows his mind to wander. Sakura rambles on about the sociopolitical climate of Wave - spouting information as easily as he wielded a knife - occasionally pausing so Tazuna can contribute to the conversation. They snag on the topic of Shinobi; the land of waves has no formal military, and little means of protection from invasion. Once, the ocean might have served as protection enough, a physical barrier separating it from the rest of the world, but that very isolation was what ended up bringing the country to its knees.
“Why don’t they have shinobi?” Naruto asks.
“There’s no hidden village.” Kakashi replies.
Sakura looks perplexed. “You don’t need to have a hidden village to perform jutsu, though.”
Kakashi sighs.
“No,” He agrees, “But there are… extenuating circumstances which don’t make militarizing a possibility for Wave.”
She frowns. “What kind of circumstances? Is it illegal or something? I didn’t read anything like that - just that the government’s, um, decentralized. But I figured that didn’t really mean anything.”
He tries not to let her innocent curiosity get the best of him, even if her insistence burrows under his skin like worms. She’s a child; he shouldn’t begrudge her interest.
Kakashi, at her age, was not permitted to ask questions like that. They were bad for the war ethic - undermining patriotism, and all that. Considering anyone else’s standpoint was a good way to get on T&I’s list - especially if you were someone like him, who had the potential to become a threat.
“Kakashi,” He remembers his ANBU superior telling him, “do not ask anything like that ever again. Do you know what they do to animals that cannot behave? They put them down. Look at me with your Sharingan - commit this to memory - people like you and I must have a leash, because if we do not, then we have a noose.”
“It might be better for Tazuna to answer that question.” He tells her lightly.
Tazuna never gets the chance, because a form emerges from the puddle on the ground. Kakashi’s first instinct is not to be surprised - it hasn’t rained in days, and he’d have been a fool not to recognize the chakra. Nevertheless, he goes along with it - pretends to be attacked so he can observe his team’s reactions.
Maybe it’s a little mean. He’s sure Minato would be proud of him.
Sasuke jumps - flinches - when the chunin tears his substitute apart. Just long enough for the red to seep into his eyes. Naruto and Sakura scramble. Sasuke throws a kunai at the chain connecting the two, pinning them both to the tree. Sakura puts herself between Tazuna and the attackers. The chirping of birds fills the air.
A commendable performance. He can work with that.
He reappears as soon as the first is incapacitated, getting him around the throat before he can lunge at Sakura. She’s pale, sweat beading her temples, kunai clutched in white-knuckled fingers. Sasuke rips his knife from the tree and lets the shackle clatter to the ground.
“...a substitute…” She mumbles.
“Good job, team.” He says. “Everyone alright?”
“Um,” Sakura says. Naruto starts shouting at himself and Sasuke calls him a “scaredy-cat”. Good to know that his meanstreak is still going.
He shakes the chunin. “Well? Care to explain what’s going on?”
Kakashi never should have accepted this mission. He never should have brought three children into the land of waves as Shinobi - for any reason. It was notorious for its gang activity, and if what Tazuna says is true, then the Shinobi in Gato’s employ will all be incredibly dangerous. Too dangerous for a handful of genin.
They huddle together, voices hushed in the fog. The gentle lull of the waves dislodges some of his anxiety.
“That’s terrible.” Sakura frowns.
“We can’t just leave them here!” Naruto adds vehemently, brow creased. Kakashi sighs. These kids are going to be the death of him.
“Alright.” He sighs. “But if at any point I decide it’s too dangerous, we’re turning around.”
And then Zabuza shows up.
Kakashi shifts beneath his coverings, a fever flushing his face and chakra exhaustion pooling in his veins. Sasuke leans over him, scowling, with his own Sharingan activated. “I told you not to do that.”
“Hmm? And I should have let my cute little genin get eviscerated?”
Sasuke scowls. “I was fine, and you’d be no help if you’re dead-”
Kakashi brushes him off. They have… bigger issues to focus on right now. That being - the issue of the ANBU. At the time, he was… indisposed enough not to take issue with it. Surely Sasuke hadn't missed the signs either. No matter if they weren’t Konoha’s ANBU, it was still misconduct to move the body from its resting place unless it was in danger of having its secrets stolen. Furthermore, senbon were not typically lethal weapons, and there were no vitals in the neck which could have been pierced to kill him. Not from that angle, certainly, or with that amount of force.
Zabuza is still alive. In that case, their mission is far from over. Unfortunately.
He’ll train the kids some more, and hopefully, by that point, they’ll have a chance against Zabuza and his pet ANBU.
Sasuke hovers while his teammates scale trees. Sakura takes to it almost immediately - with the size of her chakra reserves, it only makes sense. Naruto, on the other hand, has some… difficulty. As Sasuke claims he has nothing to learn from this exercise, he stands next to Kakashi and then demands that he sit down.
“I can supervise them.” He says. “You look ridiculous.”
“Ahh? But what if they have questions?”
“Like you would answer anyways.”
Well. It’s not like he can argue with that.
The land of waves is destitute. Sakura bites her lip as they pass through the streets, and he keeps a hand on her shoulder. The alley is crammed with storefronts, each as gutted as the last, riddled with disease and poverty and a thick, permeable misery. He tastes seasalt on his tongue and steers her out of the way of a leering group of men. He considers flashing the Sharingan at them before thinking better of it.
He’s seen so much of villages like this that it doesn’t occur to him that anyone else might feel shocked looking at them. He’s glad she hasn’t asked any more questions on how the land of waves became so impoverished - mostly because then he’d have to explain Konoha’s hand in it, and he doesn’t know if he has the heart to do it.
Maybe that shame is an indication that something more is wrong.
“Are the three of you ready for a fight?” He asks them instead. Naruto stops stomping around the alley, and Sasuke turns to look up at him impassively. Figures the little shit wouldn’t even flinch at the prospect.
“I’ll win this time.” Sasuke tells him. Hah. Yeah, Kakashi plants a hand on his head, he’s not raising a loser.
Kakashi has not felt real, true fear since he was fourteen. He hasn’t felt anything so despairing, so unmoored, since when he ripped his hand from Rin’s chest. He plunges Chidori through Haku’s chest when he leaps in front of Zabuza, already halfway to death, the second time he’s been on the receiving end of this jutsu-
The difference is that Kakashi’s is deadly.
Through the mist, he can see the sickly light of the Kyuubi’s chakra, Haku’s mirrors disintegrating. Beneath them is Naruto, his face tear-stained, with Sasuke on the ground, a needle clean through his heart. His heart ratchets into his throat. Lightning courses up the length of his arm, hissing and screaming, but the sharp bite of electricity is numb beneath his own shock.
Zabuza doesn’t even pause to throw aside Haku’s lifeless body while Kakashi struggles to get himself under control. Sakura’s shriek cuts straight through his panic, right down to his bones, and he prepares himself again.
He doesn’t look over. He doesn’t look at Sasuke. He doesn’t fucking look, because he cannot do that. If he does that he will lose this fight. If he does that the reality will come setting in, and he doesn’t think he can live with another body on his hands. This body.
Blood drips between his fingers. Rin’s face flashes in front of his eyes. Naruto cries for Haku - over the fact that Zabuza can dispose of him so easily, that Zabuza feels not even an ounce of regret, or grief, for the fact that Haku threw away his life for him. But Kakashi knows better, because he sees the same furious determination in his opponent’s eyes.
Gato’s army gathers on the end of the pier. Kakashi couldn’t care less. He doesn’t have the chakra to summon another Chidori, but he can take this amateur gang easily. Zabuza beats him to it.
They die together. He moves their bodies together so that they might walk each other to wherever it is you go after you die, and tries not to feel resentful. His heartbeat thunders in his ears.
“Kakashi-sensei!” Sakura screams. “Kakashi-sensei, it’s Sasuke!”
The body on the ground stirs. He sits up in starts and fits, wincing the entire way, the surprise on his face echoed in that of his teammates. Sasuke expected to die. Sakura and Naruto dogpile him before he can find his voice to tell them to give him space. Kakashi stands behind them, hands in his pockets to disguise their shaking, his relief potent enough to force him to his knees. They don’t move for a while.
None of the parenting books talk about ripping senbon needles from your kid’s throat. Sasuke does his best to brace himself through it, his knuckles white around the table when Kakashi pulls out another one - with as much care as he can possibly manage; the precision that Haku demonstrated when throwing these needles is absolutely vital to recreate. If he moves even a millimeter, he could knick an aortic valve.
The pain medication that Tsunami offered is a stronger grade than what they typically offer in Konoha’s hospitals - he almost asks where she got it, but refrains at the last moment. She had promised him that it wasn’t cut with anything with a pinch to her face when she looked at Sasuke. I know what it’s like to have a sick kid, she said, that will keep him down for a while.
Kakashi couldn’t decide whether or not it was better for Sasuke to be awake for this; on one hand, if he was unconscious he couldn’t move and endanger himself. On the other, Kakashi would have no way to know if anything was wrong.
They save the one in his throat for last.
“Last one.” He says. Sasuke doesn’t reply; he’s barely conscious - still valiantly fighting the effects of the medication. He doesn’t like to fall asleep around other people. He left this one for last because it’s going to take the most effort to get out - lodged in the muscle as it is. With some maneuvering, he manages to pull it free, staunching the blood flow. Sasuke’s slumps bonelessly against his collar.
He’s going to be fine, obviously. Kakashi tries to glance at him without jostling him too much - is pretty sure that no amount of jostling him could wake him up at this point - and then readjusts. He can’t maintain eye-contact. He doesn’t know what to do with himself.
Urushi stalks into the living room where they’re camped not long after, nudging her cold nose onto his lap.
“He was angry with you earlier.” She tells him.
“He’s usually angry with me.”
Her spotted ear flicks. “Perhaps.”
Kakashi really doesn’t know what he’s going to do with them. This is ridiculous.
“When are you going to put him on the scroll?” She asks. Kakashi freezes. Sasuke doesn’t stir.
“Hmm?” He stalls, mostly to give himself time to recover. “If you want to make a pact with Sasuke, you’re more than welcome to. Don’t let me stop you.”
She huffs. “You’re both ridiculous children. The Hatake scroll. It’s due time you showed him that respect.”
The Hatake family has always been a sore subject, a bruise on his otherwise perfect record. Kakashi can do whatever he pleases with the summons and the scrolls, since he’s the only one left. If the dogs want it, then he should be obligated to do so - but it - somehow -
That scroll was something passed from parent to child. He remembers when his own father had handed it to him, the paper sealed against the offending factors of time and weather, and read all the names that had come before him. It seemed that the page got longer and longer - all the people who had come before him.
It might be presumptuous. He wouldn’t even know how to go about asking.
“I’m not sure he’s ready.” He deflects.
Urushi settles her chin on Sasuke’s leg. “You always were a stubborn brat.”
Urushi is the first of the dogs he managed to summon. When he had finally worked up the courage to touch the scroll under his bed - after ten years of it and his family legacy collecting dust - Kakashi scraped it from the floor and unfurled the pages. His logic, then, was that if they decided to kill him for his insolence, then it would be deserved, and that he had nothing left to lose.
She had come to his summons, and he hadn't been able to understand a word she said. She snarled at him, belly to the floor, as they circled. Kakashi was not afraid. He was ANBU.
They fought, and eventually, they came to an understanding. He picked himself from the floor, his clothes torn and bleeding, and she looked upon him as an equal.
Their loyalty could not be bought. Loyalty. That had been the cornerstone of his father’s teachings, the virtue which the Hatake clan was proud to possess. Her allegiance would have to be earned.
“We agree to be your summons, foolish boy.” She told him. “Do not ever make us wait so long again.”
Kakashi knew precious little about summons; they were a topic he avoided religiously, and his father had died before he was able to tell him much about them at all. He was led to believe that the process would be intuitive; that it would not have him wrestling with a dog on his bedroom floor, that it would not leave him with scrapes and bruises and injured pride.
“Could you talk this whole time?”
“It would not have mattered either way.” She replied. “The only way through to you was with my teeth.”
Naruto peeks his head in around the fifteenth-hour of Sasuke’s sleep. It’s the longest Kakashi has ever seen him sleep, and his stillness is more than a little unnerving.
“Is he okay?” He blurts, uncharacteristically nervous.
“He’ll be fine.” Kakashi replies.
Naruto fidgets. “He’s only - he only got hit ‘cause he was protecting me. I passed out and Haku aimed for me and that bastard ran in front of me.”
…ah. Kakashi understands the hesitancy, now.
“Sasuke has never done anything he didn’t want to do.”
“It wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t there. Or if I wasn’t passed out.”
Kakashi sighs. “Yes. So it’s your responsibility not to put your teammates into positions like that. But, Naruto - that’s what your team is for. Sasuke made the decision to jump in front of that attack.”
This kid - the jinchuuriki who he wasn’t allowed to interfere with - Minato’s fucking kid - collapses down next to them. He’s got a big heart. It’s a miracle he came from Minato at all.
Sasuke would hate this.
(Sasuke might endure it, because he and Naruto have a thing. He does not understand the parameters of their rivalry or the depths of their devotion to it; he does not desire to know).
Sakura sneaks in twenty minutes later. Sasuke wakes up, tries to put a kunai between his ribs, and immediately falls back asleep.
The Chunin exams are their next obstacle (if he ignores the thing and the fact that his students can’t behave normally towards each other). One more thing he can tackle.
He cannot tackle… Sasuke. A second tomoe spins in his eye now, a testament to his determination to protect Naruto. He doesn’t know what happened inside of those mirrors, and he doesn’t think it’s his place to pry. He seems fine by all accounts, but Kakashi watches anyway just to make sure. Ibiki had reminded him that he needed to be careful with Sasuke’s mental state, since apparently he was predisposed to… slipping. Because it was determined that whatever was wrong with Itachi was genetic.
Or maybe it’s just because he’s Uchiha.
He puts Urushi up to the task of checking up on him, and she reports nothing out of the ordinary, which is good - because it means he can sign them up for the Chunin exams with no hang ups. And even though he isn’t expecting them to pass, this will set the groundwork for the next year.
So confident is he in this plan that he doesn’t consider one of the three sannin infiltrating the village. Because why on earth would he consider that?
“Orochimaru attacked my students,” Kakashi says slowly, “and you refuse to pull them out?”
Refuse, as if Kakashi could ever order him to do anything. He thinks about himself at sixteen, at his festering anger, the wound which could not heal, how the sickness metastasized until it was everywhere, until it was unkillable, until it was all he was-
He decided that day to choose mercy. He decided not to kill the Hokage because of his own selfish morals. There were other factors, he supposed - that Danzo would get to the robes first, and that catharsis would not be worth the political upheaval - but they had both been afterthoughts. Kakashi made that decision to spare him. He wonders if he shouldn’t have.
Heel. It's Minato’s voice. It’s Minato’s fucking voice. His teacher never spoke to him like that, but Kakashi would be damned if that wasn’t what it meant. Envisioning him now isn’t doing anything to sate his anger, or his nerves.
“We’ve determined that there is no present danger to any of your students.”
Orochimaru managed to enter the village, he thinks. Orochimaru attacked my students and left one with a debilitating seal. He almost killed them. He insinuated that he had plans to use Sasuke in the future.
“With all due respect,” Kakashi says, “They’re only three months out of the academy. I only entered them because I thought it would increase their chances for promotion next year. I don’t see any problem with withdrawing them from the competition now.”
The Sandaime is barely looking at him. “The third stage of the exam is a publicized event. The regional daimyo has heard that an Uchiha is going to be participating; the people want a show.”
Heel.
Money. He’s talking about - revenue. The people want a show, and by god, the Hokage is going to give it to them. Nevermind that it might come at the cost of a thirteen year old - when have they ever cared about things like that, anyways?
Kakashi is usually so resigned. He’s not used to being so - angry. But he cannot excuse this coming at the expense of Sasuke. He’s a kid. A kid who the village has refused to help before.
“We’ll tighten security.” He says, like it’s a consolation. “We’ll ensure that he doesn’t find his way inside again.”
Heel.
There are a lot of things he could say. He’s coming to discover that there’s a lot he wants to say, but he snaps his mouth shut and takes that dismissal for what it is. Kakashi lacks the integrity of his ninken. He sits when he’s told.
Sasuke stays in the hospital for a while, after Kakashi counter-seals his curse mark. Guards are posted outside his room as promised, but it still isn’t enough to dissuade the kidnapping attempt. They’re lucky that Kakashi happened to be visiting at the time, because otherwise, their masked assailant would have succeeded.
And because apparently no one can do their damn jobs, Kakashi pulls out a folding chair from the nurse’s closet (after some persuasion on his part) and sits next to his bed, listening to the steady beat of his heart. He calls off training to do it - and because he didn’t feel like going to work. They just happened to coincide.
Sakura and Naruto try to sneak in as well, but Sasuke’s condition is fragile - he’s on a ventilator, and the hospital’s code of conduct is that only one person can be in the room with a patient like that at a time.
Fifteen hours pass. Sasuke wakes up.
“Are you not hungry?” Kakashi asks, taking out another container of tupperware. Sasuke isn’t a picky eater, per-se, but he has a hard time articulating what he does like, so it’s a lot of trial and error. Kakashi is on cooking duty for the foreseeable future, given Sasuke’s state. “If the medication is affecting your appetite, you have to document that for them.”
Sasuke grumbles, leaning his head on his hand. There’s not a lot they can do about the curse mark - they don’t know enough about it to even try, the med-nin’s best guess is that it originated from a strain of viral DNA - which also means that the secondary effects of counter-sealing are free to wreak havoc on his system. Nausea, dizziness, suppressed immune response - all common reactions.
“I’m fine.” He insists.
Ibiki asked him to document any mood changes, too, such as increased irritability - but it was hard to tell with Sasuke, since his baseline was already pretty high. Kakashi couldn’t be sure if he was mad because he was sick, mad because he was a teenager, mad because of any of the assorted trauma, or mad because of the curse mark. Maybe all of the above. If it was any consolation, Sasuke didn’t seem to know either.
“If you say so.” Kakashi stares at him dubiously. Nudges the food towards him. Sasuke grimaces and asks if they can train instead.
Sasuke knows what he needs to to pierce Gaara’s armor. The main problem now is the curse mark, which is being… dealt with. They’re working around it.
“I need an edge.” Sasuke says. “I can’t use as much chakra as I would have.”
Kakashi hums and tries to think back to how any of his comrades fought - how Itachi fought, and that delineates - he remembers something else. Shisui telling him a story about how Itachi had dropped one of his mother’s swords on his foot when he was seven. How kenjutsu was the only skill which did not come naturally to him.
Moreover, steel is an excellent conductor.
“Sasuke,” He says, “How would you like to wield a sword?”
The third stage does not pass without event, as nothing in his life can ever be simple. Worse, the attack starts in the middle of Sasuke’s fight. As a result of Sasuke’s fight. It starts well enough - they trained his agility so much that Gaara is near incapable of landing a hit, and then Chidori pierces through the armor as easily as a knife. He watches his student dart back away from the cocoon as it bulges and mutates, and then, horribly, the one-tails emerges.
He knew there was something more going on. He knew it.
A genjutsu sweeps across the crowd. Kakashi snaps down into the stadium before he can think about it.
Sasuke is ordered to retreat - everyone is evacuated - but he knows Sasuke well enough to realize that he isn’t going to turn tail. Especially not now that Naruto is getting involved. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have time to stop him from doing anything stupid.
Kakashi grabs his arm, and Sasuke glares up at him, as defiant as ever.
“Don’t die.” He tells him. “If you do anything stupid, I’ll know.”
His jaw tightens, and then he nods. Kakashi doesn’t have time to consider that he was lying.
“You’re on kitchen duty forever.” He tells Sasuke when he sees him next. “Forever, you hear me? I asked you to do one thing-”
“Two things,” He mumbles sullenly.
“-and you land yourself in the hospital.”
Naruto isn’t any better. He managed to talk down the one-tails when Sasuke wanted to fight. Or, perhaps, the person behind it. Either way, it was ridiculous and dangerous and Sasuke is going to spend the rest of his life doing chores.
The only thing that seems to persist is his foul mood. The curse mark stands out starkly against his neck, and he palms at it absentmindedly, mouth twisting. Kakashi had assumed that Orochimaru offered him power - he hopes to divert this by offering new things to do. The sword, the jutsu he’s been talking about. None of this requires Orochimaru’s hand to achieve.
Then again - Sasuke probably isn’t thinking rationally. Kakashi will have to think of another way to appeal to his single-minded determination.
But Sasuke does not think his progress is fast enough. He does not think that his accomplishments are worthy - he’s only seeing Itachi. He’s only ever seen Itachi, and Kakashi hardly blame him. It seems like everyone else only saw Itachi too.
Urushi, far better at understanding Sasuke than he is, nudges her head onto his lap. He reluctantly pets her. Iruka is always so insistent that they get better at communicating; Kakashi takes an ice-pack from the freezer and tosses it his way. Sasuke catches it without even looking. “I told you I’m fine.”
“I didn’t know ice-packs were so damaging to your pride.” Kakashi replies mildly. “Use the ice, Sasuke. It won’t kill you. It might even make you feel better.”
Sasuke glares at him. He’s been doing a lot of that lately. Then he looks away, conceding - mad about that, too - and picks it up. Urushi curls up on his lap before he can retreat to his room to lick his wounds in peace. Kakashi doesn’t even know what the wounds are, because he refuses to tell him.
He sets down to complete another round of paperwork. The static of the radio crackles in the background, and the sun sinks below the horizon. Urushi huffs softly from the couch. He glances at the sword hanging on the wall - thirty inches of tempered steel, the smallest chokuto the smithery had ever produced. Kakashi had pulled a few strings, having imported it from southern Iwa. The Uchiha used to be blacksmiths, but Sasuke hadn't seemed to want to take any of his mother’s swords still mounted proudly on the wall. He goes back to the compound occasionally to tend to them - not often, but frequently enough that Kakashi takes notice.
Because of its origin, the chokuto and its sheath were rather expensive - and troublesome to obtain. Sasuke had almost refused when he’d given it to him, frowning at the decorative cloth wrapped around the handle and the shine of the metal. An early birthday present, Kakashi had replied, which Sasuke conceded.
He wonders idly if Sasuke would have taken to blacksmithing in another life.
“He’s asleep.” Urushi says. Sure enough, the brat is soundly asleep, propped up against the cushions. He’s been doing that more often lately - it’s a nice reprieve from the tension that he usually observes on his student’s face.
Urushi lifts her face to look at him, mild amusement flickering across their bond. “That eye?”
Kakashi hadn't even realized his Sharingan was exposed. It locks the moment into his memory as he drapes the knitted blanket hanging off the back of the couch onto him. He, Obito, Rin, and Minato had made it together - a patchwork, rather ugly thing, but it was one of the few things that Kakashi could say he made with his own hands. One of his sparing happy memories to cling to.
Some things deserve to be immortalized. He hates this eye, sometimes, for committing the death on Obito’s face to memory, for searing Rin’s face into the back of his mind - but it does have its finer applications. This is one of them.
“Go to sleep, Kakashi.” Urushi demands. He does.
He thinks things are going alright. Sasuke hasn’t spiraled, and he’s adjusting to the curse mark well, and his mood has lightened some.
Then, Itachi Uchiha shows up, and ruins everything.
Kakashi’s consciousness comes back to him piecemeal. He blinks away the remnants of Tsukuyomi that have pierced his soul and tainted his mind, three day’s worth of torture stretched on an infinite loop, and never in his entire life has he been so grateful for interrogation training. Separating oneself from your own consciousness when in a semi-liminal nightmare world was far more difficult than it was to do in real life, but when it comes to compartmentalization, no one has him beat.
So he tucks the shivering, wounded bulk of his mind away for later dealing and focuses on the papery sheets beneath him, the staccato of the heart monitor. One of the nurses dutifully recounts to him the situation - minus the parts above her clearance - while she wheels around her cart, summoning for Tsunade.
That was another person he never thought he’d see again. She walks into his room with an air of nonchalance, considering the circumstances. They debrief; and with every passing minute, the heart monitor kicks up in speed, betraying him. She hasn’t said anything about Sasuke or Naruto. He cannot imagine that either one of them is holding up well.
And oh, gods, this is the nightmare that Itachi inflicted upon his seven year old brother? Kakashi has advanced training against the mind-altering effects of genjutsu; he can’t even imagine what it would feel like without fortification and without training, after just having experienced the most traumatic moment of his life. It’s a miracle that Sasuke is alive.
“The Uchiha is in my care.” She tells him, after explaining how desperately Naruto hunted him down. “Naruto convinced me to come back for him. I don’t know what he sees in that boy - but I understand his determination, and I respect it. Your student is going to be fine. He looks like he’s on track to a full recovery.”
Yes, but all they do is talk around Sasuke. Tsunade hasn’t even considered any type of evaluation - because genjutsu is dangerous - and no one is taking into account what this might have done to him. Set back five years of progress. Unwound all that scar tissue to reveal a fresh wound.
“Where is he?” He demands.
“You’re on bedrest, Hatake.” Tsunade replies, unmoving as stone. But she doesn’t understand that Sasuke should not be alone right now. She hasn’t considered the context.
“Tsunade,” He says, closes his eye against the exhaustion, swallows his pride, “please.”
Her mouth twitches and she considers him again. “Fine.” She relents. “But only fifteen minutes.”
He brings Sasuke home from the hospital three days later, dread filling a deposit in his gut like silt. He hasn’t said a word since being discharged, hadn't even raised a hand to meet Urushi’s greeting when she climbed on his lap. He doesn’t want to eat - hasn’t expressed anything aside from an interest in training - but Tsunade told him not to strain himself.
The nightmares - the nightmares are bad. Worse than they were before, somehow, when he hadn't quite figured out how to keep himself quiet. Kakashi hasn’t been sleeping either, because now, aside from Obito and Rin, Tsukuyomi has stayed back to haunt him as well.
Kakashi wakes up nearly being smothered by the dogs in their haste to wake him up. They pool around the door in a whirlpool of nervous energy, and Kakashi, semi-conscious, stumbles after them.
The scream snaps him from any sleep after that. He’s never heard Sasuke make a sound like that. Urushi’s hackles stand on end.
Sasuke’s fear is usually quiet. So quiet, in fact, that it was easy to miss - or to mistake as anger.
He knocks on the door. “Sasuke?”
No response.
“I’m coming in.”
Sasuke doesn’t let him into his room often; Kakashi almost never does anyways. It’s rather impersonal - he denies ever wanting to add anything else to it, no matter how many times Kakashi asks him. There’s a plant on his nightstand that Iruka suggested he get, because he claims it can improve health. He still doesn’t know if he was just messing with him.
The kid sits up on his bed, the red of his Sharingan piercing the darkness. His fingers are strangled in his sheets. Kakashi can hear the fast, uneven cantor of his breath from where he stands.
Ah. Alright. He hadn't thought this far ahead.
Urushi nudges him, the cold of her nose startling against his palm.
“What do you want?” Sasuke snaps. His voice sounds hoarse.
“I’m going to make tea if you want to come out.” He leaves the offer open-ended, turning back towards the kitchen. Behind him, Urushi climbs up on the bed to drag Sasuke out by his sleeve. While she begins the task of circling him with a blanket in her teeth, much to Sasuke’s bewilderment - “What are you doing?” - Kakashi turns on the stove.
With something to occupy his hands, it’s easier to focus - and easier to watch Sasuke out of the corner of his eye, stewing angrily in his blanket pile. Urushi jumps neatly after him, licking his face.
“Stop - ew - Urushi!”
When he finishes boiling the tea, he sits down on the other side of the table, passing the mug his way. Sasuke accepts it begrudgingly.
“Are you alright?” He asks, in lieu of anything else to say. He doesn’t know if he could choke anything else out. It’s rather obvious that he isn’t okay, that he isn’t happy, but he doesn’t know how to fix it.
“Fine.”
Kakashi exhales. “I don’t know if the nurses already went through this with you-” But considering that this is his second time encountering Tsukuyomi, “-but nightmares are a common side-effect of genjutsu, especially of this nature. I get them too. Did they tell you this?”
Mutely, he shakes his head. He presses his fingers so tightly around the mug that Kakashi thinks it might crack.
“Auditory and visual hallucinations are another. So is nausea, vertigo, and migraines. Have you had any of those?”
He shakes his head again, slower this time.
“I have. Tsunade had to put a bucket next to my bed.” Sasuke eases up a little. “I got hit with a bad one when I was - something like fourteen. It was a mistake on my part, but I ended up having a conversation with a squirrel for a full fifteen minutes before anybody clocked in that anything was wrong. All the side-effects are temporary, and I went back to normal after a couple days.”
“...a squirrel?”
“He was a surprisingly good conversationalist. What I’m saying is, if you are experiencing any of those symptoms - which you told me you aren’t - they’re temporary.”
“Okay.” Sasuke says, the fight slumping out of him.
The silence stretches a little longer.
“I’m going to go to the compound.”
“Right now?” Is that a good idea?
“No. Later.” Sasuke glances at him, mouth twisting, and immediately looks away.
“Alright.” Kakashi agrees uneasily. He’s not going to tell Sasuke where he can and can’t go - he certainly isn’t going to prevent him from visiting his own home. It is around the time of month he usually visits, to maintain the upkeep as best he can, but he still isn’t sure it’s good for him. He bites out, “Thank you for telling me.”
Sasuke falls asleep on the couch, and Kakashi stays where he is. He doubts that he would’ve gotten any sleep anyways, and if his student feels better like this - then so be it.
It happens when Kakashi is at another appointment. The hospital buzzes around him while Inoichi walks him through the purpose of the checkpoint just like he does every six-months when he revisits this evaluation. That, combined with the genjutsu, spurred him to complete the test a little earlier than usual.
He doesn’t get home until it’s already dark, and he feels unease stirring across the length of his bond with the summons. It’s dark when he gets back, the blanket folded neatly across the back of the couch, Sasuke’s sword missing from its place on the wall. His heart sinks.
“Where’s Sasuke?” He demands. Urushi bares her teeth, pacing the length of the room. On the table in the middle of the room is a note.
It’s undeniably Sasuke’s handwriting - short and straight to the point. Kakashi gives it a perfunctory glance with his Sharingan, just to make sure it was Sasuke and this isn’t an attempt at impersonation. But it is Sasuke’s, and he’s never had the decency to announce when he’s leaving ever before.
The note is simple: thanking him for letting him stay in his house. Nothing more. It doesn’t say why he’s leaving or where he’s planning to go, but Kakashi already knows.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
“How long has he been gone?”
“I don’t know.” Urushi snaps back. “We accompanied you to your appointments because of your injuries - I did not see him leave.”
His panic tears him straight to the the Hokage’s door, where it’s revealed that they already dispatched a handful of genin to go after them. Children, fighting Orochimaru’s test subjects. Not to mention, none of them are equipped to fight Sasuke if he doesn’t want to come back.
Sasuke has chosen Orochimaru. Sasuke has decided that the village holds him back from his goal, that his life has no purpose outside of Itachi, that he has decided to drive himself straight into the ground. Kakashi could not protect him.
“You’re moving too fast in your condition.” Urushi hisses.
Perhaps - the injuries inflicted upon him had not only been imaginary.
“We still might have time to catch up.” He replies.
The trail ends in the Valley of the End - and shouldn’t that be a fitting battleplace. The waterfall roars and crashes against the basin. Naruto lays in the shallows, the back of his jacket brushing the shale. He can still feel the Kyuubi’s acidic chakra hanging in the air. The front of his shirt is soaked in blood, but no wound remains.
Kakashi picks up Naruto as gently as he can manage.
“I don’t know which way he went.” Urushi says, which is the closest thing to defeat she will admit. The rain falls in droves, soaking him to the bone. He stands there a little longer, just to make sure it’s true. That this isn’t another nightmare.
He knows it isn’t. He’s long since learned to differentiate the horror of reality from that of a dream.
Sasuke is gone.
He isn’t sure this is grief.
“Had you signed him to our contract,” Urushi tells him, “This would not have happened.”
Urushi doesn’t speak for a long time after that, retreating to the spirit realm to process her loss. Naruto will make a full recovery. He spends the rest of the day - the second, the third - in a sort of liminal haze. It feels like shaking off a genjutsu. He keeps disrupting the flow of his chakra, expecting the illusion to break.
It never does.
This doesn’t feel like how Obito and Rin felt. Both times, his grief had been tumultuous and loud and angry. Right now, he doesn’t feel much of anything.
Sakura and Naruto drop by the house once he’s been discharged. Sakura carries a bouquet of flowers with her, wrapped in plastic.
“My Mom bought these.” She says, handing them to him. “She hopes you feel better.”
Kakashi takes them, partly amused, mostly numb. “That’s very kind of her, Sakura. Tell her I said thanks.”
“I didn’t tell her too much.” Sakura continues, like she thinks he’s mad at her for sharing parts of his living situation with her family. “Just that you and Sasuke live together. She said that if I ever disappeared she would feel horrible. Um,” She blanches, “She told me not to say that part…”
Their dedication to protecting his feelings is very funny, and equally as heartbreaking. They’re good kids. They’ve been dealt a bad hand.
(He doesn’t think about the fact that Sasuke is with Orochimaru. He absolutely doesn’t think about it).
“We’ll get him back, Kakashi-sensei!” Naruto says loudly. “There’s no way that bastard thinks he can get away from me that easily! I’m gonna get stronger and kick his ass and then bring him home.”
Kakashi smiles and pats his head. “I’m sure you will, Naruto. Does that mean you’re continuing your training with Jiraiya?”
“Mm-hmm!”
Sakura locks her hands shyly behind her back. “Tsunade said that she would be willing to take me on as an apprentice. This way I don’t have to hold the team back anymore!”
“And then we can both kick Sasuke’s ass!”
They’re so, so good. Too good for him. But it isn’t that simple. Sasuke’s motivations for leaving weren’t so easily summed up as power - Sasuke has never been selfish like that. He doesn’t know how. This is another act of self-sacrifice on behalf of all the people who were left behind, denied a proper burial and robbed of their lives, their honor, their dignity. Sasuke loved his family and it’s going to get him killed.
That’s always been the price of these eyes - love.
“Alright, kids.” He says. The house feels empty. “Run along to your teachers, then.”
No more rescue missions get authorized. The way the elders speak about Sasuke - it makes his skin crawl. They declare him a traitor to Konoha, despite the fact that Sasuke was thirteen and that he was very likely coerced. Despite the fact that it’s Orochimaru.
Worst of all - they speak of a curse. The curse of hatred. Kakashi cannot even fathom the lengths these people will reach to justify themselves.
These are the people he’s given his life to defending. That countless others have given their lives to defending. These are the people that ruined his life.
It’s only once the anger has resurfaced again that Urushi reappears.
“Have you finally gotten your head out of your ass?”
“Always such a charmer.” Kakashi replies, guiding his knife down onto the cutting board. Sasuke would make fun of him for using his Sharingan to do it.
“You bring shame to your family name, allowing yourself to be used by the vermin that command this village. Have you no shame? No integrity? You are not worthy to be my summoner.”
“What would you have me do?” He replies. “Leave the village?”
“Your loyalty is cheap whenever you barter it for the highest price.” She replies, all teeth. Urushi has always been all teeth. They’re circling again - in words, this time, but fighting no less. The only way through to you was my teeth. “You stubborn fool. You have sacrificed endlessly for these cowardly rats, and this is how they repay you? You have been disrespected enough. Is there nothing you will stand for?”
“Urushi, I’m a Shinobi of Konoha-”
If that is meaningless, then everything he’s done has been meaningless. All the people he’s killed, his childhood destroyed, Rin and Obito, dead, for nothing.
“Do not speak of loyalty to me.” She hisses. The other dogs dare not interfere. “Our allegiance must be earned with respect. It does not extend to those who would betray and use us like tools.”
Kakashi remains silent. Her fur bristles.
“Hatake Kakashi,” She says coldly, “You are your father’s son.”
Kakashi is not drunk enough to deal with this.
His request has been denied again. He doubts Urushi has much more patience to wait. She hasn’t been so angry with him since he first opened that contract - it says something about the strength of her character, he thinks. Whether or not he agrees with her assessment of the village - vermin, she had called them, gutless worms - he can agree that, perhaps, he has become too lenient. Too permissive.
He isn’t naive enough to think that the Shinobi world could ever be a good place, which was why he put so much emphasis on protecting one another, but children should not fight the battles of adults.
“Kakashi!” Gai greets, a few decibels shy of ear-shattering. He’s toning it down for him, since he’s sensed he’s in a bad mood. “How do you fare, my eternal rival?”
“I’ve,” Kakashi grimaces, looking down into his glass, “I’ve been better.”
“I’m terribly sorry for the news.” He continues remorsefully, launching into a half-an-hour ballad about something or other. He’s still not drunk enough for this, but he is drunk enough to mostly tune it out.
“Gai,” He says, “I’m about to do something stupid.”
Stupider than trying to murder the Hokage, even.
His friend startles, and then sobers. It’s a little disturbing how easily he reads him. “Ah, youth. Don’t let me stop you, Kakashi! Go, save your boy!”
Kakashi slaps a hand over his mouth before he can announce it to the whole village and not just this seedy bar.
His kid. Yeah - yeah, he figures that’s what Urushi was trying to tell him. He admits it.
“Thank you, for everything. You’ve been a good friend.” Oftentimes, Kakashi has not. He pays off both of their tabs before standing up. He cannot believe he’s doing this.
He's going to find Sasuke.