1 – A Conscious Effort

The silver-haired teen walks self-consciously through shelves and stands full of colorful objects that appear so foreign he can’t help but let his gaze linger in fascination.

Pausing, he reaches out for a tiny, round ball, and gives it a small shake, watching some glittery substance swirl around inside of the plastic shell. He allows his eyes to follow the dizzying movement for a moment, then places it back on the shelf and continues through the store.

The last time I shopped like this… I was six, wasn’t I? I can’t even remember the name of the shop anymore. I bought a top…

The image flashes in his mind, as clear as though he’d bought it only yesterday.

I’d seen some older kids playing with the ones on display. The way they laughed… it reminded me of him, so…

It was painted yellow—on the wide end. The tip was red, and the in-between was striped: first blue, then green.

I was nervous about it all day. I’d thought it was a good idea, at first, but after we started training I realized I should have gotten something more practical. Still… even though I was against the idea, he still managed to figure out what I was hiding, and I eventually handed it over.

A smile tugs at his masked lips.

It was just a stupid little top, but sensei acted like it was the greatest gift he’d ever received. He made a big deal about it all day, showing it off to everyone we met. I didn’t think I’d ever be more embarrassed… Then, seven years later, I saw it on his desk.

The smile vanishes without even fully forming, and a weight seems to settle over him as he tears his mind away from the past, the raw and painful memories that haunt him. It takes him a second longer to realize he’s stopped walking, and to register the plastic tops on the shelf in front of him.

The wooden top no longer sits on that desk, and it hasn’t for a year now… because that desk no longer belongs to his teacher.

He tears his eyes away from the shelf and quickly shoulders forward again.

It’s too soon, he tells himself silently, eyes searching the content of the shelves around him without really seeing them. Despite himself, the memory lingers, clawing at the back of his mind with vicious tenacity.

That was the only gift I ever bought. The next year… I forgot about his birthday completely… I’d been too wrapped up in everything going on at home—with o-tousan and everything. It was constantly on my mind back then. And after o-tousan was gone…

He pulls his thoughts away from that line with a sudden, violent desperation.

It’s too soon, he tells himself again. Because even though it’s been almost eight years, the pain has never dulled.

He forces his eyes to focus on the shelf he finds himself next to, and examines a brightly colored mobile. The orbs hanging from the frame are obviously meant to represent planets and stars, but each one is painted with the grotesquely stylized face of some grinning deity.

The teen cringes and quickly sets the object back in its place. Turning away from the shelf, he looks around the store again and lets out a soft sigh.

What am I doing here?

His thoughts automatically turn to the memorial where he’s spent so much of the last year. He visits every time he returns to the village, and makes sure to stop briefly every time he leaves. He spends hours of his free time in front of that place, as much as he can spare on his days off.

It isn’t enough.

He should be there now.

Sensei gave his life for this village. He deserves more respect than this.

But just thinking about the blond-haired man, he knows he can’t go now, because this is where he would want him to be. This is what he—the sentimental fool—would want him to do.

The teen snorts to himself and his gaze passes over a shelf of stuffed animals without really seeing them.

This isn’t what he’d want. This is nothing like what he’d want. He would want me to do so much more… But I can’t.

Because he’s weak and he can’t bring himself to do any more.

It’s for the best, he defends silently, hoping that if he thinks it enough he’ll start to believe it. His eyes linger on a yellow-furred parrot.

He would understand.

He gathers himself again and pushes past a few more isles quickly, shouldering past a woman as she tugs on the hand of a crying three-year-old.

“But, haha, I want it!” The little girl whines imploringly, tears in her eyes and a crack in her voice.

Ducking around a final corner reveals several shelves full of baby supplies. Large, colorful rings, tiny knit stockings, and cute, decorated sweaters stare down at him invitingly.

The teen’s cheeks go red under his mask and he quickly snatches up a toy. He locates the bright sticker in the corner reading 6-18 mo. and tucks it self-consciously against his side. He only catches a glimpse of the object inside, but the shape is one he knows intrinsically—whatever it is, it’s shaped like a kunai.

He hurries to the cashier and stares pointedly at a brightly colored sign advertising a sale that will be taking place the weekend after next—All items 20-50 percent off for one day only! He listens distractedly as the woman rings up his purchase, and pulls a handful of coins from his pocket, dropping them on the counter after she tells him the final price.

He snatches up his bag and leaves without waiting for his change to be returned.

He walks swiftly down the street towards the foster home, feeling his cheeks still burning red under his mask. The plastic kunai is wrapped safely in a paper bag with the store’s name printed across it in large, bubbly characters.

After only a few minutes the foster home appears on his right. His gaze lingers on the building for a moment, but his legs don’t stop moving—he can’t quite bring himself to enter.

This is stupid, he chastises himself, shame and embarrassment at odds with each other inside of him. It’s not like anyone will care. I’m just being stupid, I should go in there and get it over with.

He walks for a full three minutes, chastising himself for his cowardly retreat, before his wounded pride manages to force his legs to turn around and carry him back towards the house.

Again, he doesn’t stop.

He passes by it twice more before stuffing the paper bag in a pocket of his vest and reasoning that it’s getting late and he needs a little lunch before he stops by, anyway.

The food will bolster my courage, he muses, slipping into a nearby restaurant.

After eating enough for three people leaves him feeling uncomfortably bloated, he heads out to the training grounds at the edge of town and works himself hard. He’s sweaty, and dirt coats his face and arms before he stops.

Can’t visit the foster home like this, he muses, glancing down at his soiled uniform as he heads back to his apartment, the matron would kick me out.

The water, which he pours at a balmy 35 Celsius, goes cold before he drags himself out of the bath, feeling ridiculous.

“Just get it over with,” he mutters to himself as he towels his hair dry.

Reaching for his vest on the way to the door, determined to actually go through with it this time, the boy pauses when a scroll slips out of one of the pockets. He stoops to pick it up and turns it over in his hands once.

That’s right… It’s been almost a week since I summoned them. Chiro is probably getting fat again.

He slices his thumb and forms familiar seals quickly, thoughts of presents pushed obstinately from his mind. An instant later a pack of ornery ninken—who had been in the middle of a poker game before he so rudely interrupted them!—surrounds him. And an instant after that the eight of them are racing across rooftops and through back-alleys towards training grounds forty-eight.

-------

As the sun sinks low in the sky, he wraps up for the night. He opens his mouth for one last exercise command when the smallest of his dogs, coat damp with sweat, turns on him abruptly and clamps small teeth into his shin.

The teen lets out his breath in a hiss, wincing, and tilts his face to glare down at the dog.

“Pakkun…” he growls warningly, giving his leg a small shake.

The dog glares back up at him with beady black eyes. “Just give it to him already!” He demands, scratchy voice muffled oddly as he refuses to release his master’s leg—his whole body shakes with every movement of the teen’s appendage—“Stop taking your inability to express emotion out on us!”

For a second, the teen stands still, bewildered into silence. Then he gives his leg another quick kick, this time with enough force to dislodge the small pug. He glares.

“I’m not taking anything out on you—this is just training.” He crouches, still glowering, and takes a look at his leg. The small blotches of blood beginning to color his wrappings make him wince. He looks back at the dog, expression sharp, “Look what you did!”

The dog shifts sullenly, expression long, “Boss… we’ve trained enough today. We’re going home.”

The other dogs are gathered behind him. Tongues loll, fur glistens with sweat, and tails droop forlornly behind the animals. They’re exhausted, and the teen chaffs at knowing that he should have recognized it himself—he shouldn’t have needed it pointed out to him.

Scowling, he straightens. “Fine,” he spits out irritably.

The pug isn’t put off by his tone at all—the boy has the unnerving feeling that it knows exactly what he’s thinking. With a nod from the small dog, the pack around him disappears in a cloud of smoke. The boy’s a little surprised when the little dog doesn’t immediately follow.

Brown eyes stare up at him, hard, for a long moment, and then the pug barks, “Get it over with, already!” and follows the others, abandoning the teen to his own devices.

Shrugging his shoulders, the teen looks down at his leg wound one more time. His nose crinkles; not because of the red staining his leg, but because of the smell the movement of his head made him aware of. The scent of his dogs clings to him—sweat, drool, and something foul that Jinko would love. There’s no way he can go to visit while he smells like this.

He pats his vest pocket, to confirm that the package is still in place, then heads to his apartment again, stroll relaxed to ease off the stress of training.

-------

By the time he finally reaches the house, an hour and a half later, the sky is a deep, dark blue and the street lights have come on in the absence of a moon. The village is dark and thick with shadows. The teen feels more at ease because of it.

The shadows are familiar—he has spent the majority of his life hiding in them.

He pauses in front of the door, staring up at the dark house for a moment. None of the windows are lit.

Of course… it’s a home for children, so everyone’s probably asleep by now.

He dawdles on the doorstep, debating between forgetting the whole thing and possibly returning the next day. But it just won’t mean the same thing if he waits.

And sensei is counting on me.

At 11:32 he buckles down and breaks into the house. He is silent and no sign is left of his presence—not so much as a scratch on the handle. He’s an expert at this sort of thing.

He’s never been inside this house before, but he knows exactly where to go. Silently, he ascends the stairs to an upstairs bedroom. The door isn’t locked, and he slips inside unnoticed.

It is dark, only a small amount of light reaching into the room from a streetlamp at the corner twenty meters away. The darkness doesn’t hinder him from finding the baby’s crib. He walks surely and stops short of touching the wooden bars, staring down to find the still form inside.

Silence settles heavily over the room and he shifts awkwardly from foot to foot, unsure of what to do next.

He hasn’t seen the infant for an entire year. Not since—an image of hellish red eyes and glistening fanged teeth make him break off from that line of thought. He forces his attention down on the infant again, and propels his memory forward.

The baby looks much larger now. Its face is smooth and pale in the darkness—he remembers the blotchy red it had been then, features scrunched up painfully as the infant bawled.

He was crying so hard… I thought he was going to die. I’d thought everything sensei did for him would mean nothing.

With a shuddering breath he looks back at the sleeping baby in front of him. A light fuzz of pale yellow hair rests haphazardly above a relaxed face. The baby’s curled up on its side, tiny fingers forming tight fists.

Emotions clench inside the teen as memories of that night flash before him again.

Screaming filled the air and blood sprayed everywhere as the Kyuubi tore through our ranks.

His disjointed thoughts flash forward to the face of his teacher.

Pale from the loss of blood and shaking like I’d never seen him before…

He almost loses his nerve. He takes a half step back, sensei’s pale face overlaid with the infant’s. Catching himself in the middle of the movement, he forces himself to stop and stand still.

I can’t run from this forever.

He takes a deep breath and screws up his resolve before approaching the crib again.

I’ll only feel like more of an idiot if I can’t even face a one-year-old boy.

He lets out a quiet, dry laugh that’s barely more than a breath at the thought. Some shinobi I turned out to be.

Letting out a tired sigh, he glances at the child’s face again, but quickly glances away once more. Choosing a dark corner on the other side of the room, he stares pointedly at it as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the package.

The plastic is hard beneath his fingers, and with a sudden thought he looks back at the infant, lone eye widening. His eye fixes on the tiny, pudgy hands lying on the bed.

He’ll never be able to get it out of the package, he realizes, chagrined that he hadn’t thought of it earlier.

Face burning, he looks down at the package again, and it takes him a moment to work out the tricky method of opening the toy. It breaks apart with a creative application of chakra, and he pulls out the soft toy.

His eye fixes on his target again, waiting for some reaction to the noise.

The baby doesn’t seem to have heard, and he relaxes again to face the next problem.

He looks between the infant and the toy uncertainly, contemplating whether he should wake the baby. A cringe forms under his mask as he remembers again the squalling and squirming he’d endured the last time he’d seen the baby.

Definitely let him sleep, he decides, he’ll find it when he wakes up, anyway.

Leaning forward awkwardly, he fumbles with the plastic toy for a moment before gently tucking it into one of the infant’s hands. The baby stirs and the teen holds his breath, but with a sigh, the infant returns to its deep sleep, the tiny fist holding the kunai moving closer in to its body.

A smile sneaks over the teen’s mouth and he brushes back the light, blond fringe from the baby’s forehead. He’s not entirely sure why he’s smiling or why he doesn’t seem to want to stop. He isn’t sure what he’s feeling, but after a moment of staring he decides it might be affection—like he feels for his dogs now and again, when they aren’t biting him in the shin.

The baby stirs again at his touch and he draws back quickly, the smile sliding from his face as quickly as it came.

He watches the baby sleep a few minutes longer, then, silently, he slips back out of the room. His feet barely make a sound as he moves lightly down the stairs again and lets himself out the front door, locking it after.

He looks up at the dark sky overhead and struggles for a moment to estimate the time. It must be after midnight, already…

The teen strolls back to the road casually and his feet turn the corner to the right while his gaze lingers in the other direction. He frowns—it’s late and he should really head home to bed.

Instead, his body leads him all the way out to the edges of the village. Out into the forest where the monument for the Yondaime stands along a barely beaten path.

A rush of something like the affection he felt earlier fills him along with the pain he’s used to feeling and the teen relaxes slightly, tension melting out of his lean frame. For the first time in years he feels as though his teacher might really be proud of him.

The feeling is foreign and familiar at the same time, taking his mind away to days long past—back when it was just the two of them, before there was war and fighting and killing. Without realizing it, the teen slumps down on the cool grass at the foot of the monument, his consciousness drifting off as his body slips into an exhausted sleep.

2 – Good Intentions

He wipes the blood off his knife before returning it to his pouch, glancing between his teammates. The mission went well, for a change, and while Nezu would be carrying a few extra bruises home, they had avoided serious injury.

“It went well,” Kaba’s low voice confirms what the teen has already thought. The masked man lets out a sigh, “Problem is, I promised to meet my girlfriend for the fireworks tonight.”

Nezu snorts, sliding his sword back into position, “You don’t have a girlfriend, idiot.”

Kaba’s reply probably would have been sharp and insulting, but he doesn’t get to give it.

“Fireworks?” The teen’s voice is soft and doesn’t carry far, but his teammates have learned to listen well, and their quarrel is forgotten.

“They’re shooting off fireworks this year,” Nezu supplies, “Didn’t you hear?”

“You’ve been spending too much time at the memorial stone,” Kaba adds.

“Fireworks for what?” The teen questions again in irritation. There are fireworks on New Year’s, and to commemorate the day the Shodai Hokage founded the village, but it’s the middle of October, nowhere near either of those dates.

“…” The two ANBU exchange masked glances without saying anything.

In a sudden burst of clarity it occurs to the teen just what day in the middle of October it is—he’d been distracted enough on the mission that he’d lost track. Without a word he jumps to the nearest branch overhead. The other two follow silently.

“Back to the village,” is all he says before taking off, leaving his teammates to play catch-up from the start.

------

It’s late when the village gates finally burst into view. He isn’t sure how far back his teammates are, but he stopped hearing their complaints at the pace he set several hours earlier.

The fireworks are long past, and the night is as black as death. He drops down to the ground and is in front of the gate before the guard has time to do anything more than draw a kunai from his pouch.

Without a word, he drops his identification scroll in front of the man and waits impatiently as his return is confirmed and recorded. The guard hesitates, looking out at the black forest.

“Where are your teammates, Okami-san?”

“Behind me,” the teen answers concisely.

The other man hesitates a moment longer, looking between the sinister ANBU issued mask and the dirty armor before nodding and holding out the scroll.

“Welcome back, shinobi.”

The teen says nothing and instead disappears again as he passes through the gate.

He feels a familiar tug inside of him and veers toward the northern quadrant of the village, coming to an abrupt stop in front of the memorial stone.

He stands there in silence, dark eye following the lines of writing through the small slit in his mask. The quiet echo of his breathing and the slow rhythm of his heart give testament to his life in the barren clearing, and he only stays long enough to offer that silent assurance to the friends who left before him.

I’m still alive. I survived… again.

Then he takes off, wrenching his mind away from his personal ghosts and focusing them on the task at hand, only to find his genius failing him.

What sort of thing do two-year-olds like to play with?

He ruminates over the problem as he flits from one rooftop to the next, steadily making his way across the village to his apartment.

Probably too old for the baby things, he muses, throwing his mind back to the store he’d visited last year and wishing he had paid more attention at that time.

Too young for real kunai, obviously. He’s pretty sure he’d gotten his hands on his first kunai sometime in his second year, but he’s always been the exception to the rule.

He deactivates his own traps in a matter of seconds and begins divesting himself of his uniform, leaving a path of muddy, blood-splattered armor in his wake before closeting himself in the bathroom and turning the shower full and hot.

Most of the toys are marked with ages, anyway, he assures himself as he scrubs away layers of grime while the hot flow of water thaws his cold skin.

Don’t worry, sensei, I’ll make you proud. He promises as he shuts the water off again minutes after he began.

Toweling off as he makes his way to the dresser, the teen pulls on a fresh set of clothes and locks up, not bothering with extra traps since he’ll be in the village.

He feels a lot more at ease with the idea of shopping for children’s toys this year—the deserted streets do a lot to calm his nerves and his embarrassment. But when he arrives in front of the store he visited last year, he’s greeted with dark windows and a wooden sign on the door reading: Closed.

Scowling at his rotten luck and wondering just how late it really is, he turns to walk down to the next store—and then the next after that, always meeting similar sights.

By the time he’s walked down every major shopping street in the village, he’s finally willing to admit to himself that he is out of luck. There is no way he can buy the kid a gift when every store is closed.

Standing in front of a store filled with colorful tinker toys, he briefly considers letting himself in—he can leave the payment on the counter—but quickly dismisses the idea. The Hokage frowns heavily on his subordinates using their shinobi abilities in such a manner, especially in their own village.

He jumps swiftly to the nearest rooftop and hurries back to his apartment, letting himself in hastily and clumsily locking the door behind him. It’s late, and he hasn’t slept in seventy-two hours, but he isn’t ready to admit defeat just yet.

He pulls open the bottom drawer of his dresser and shuffles through the clothes, digging under garments he’s only worn once and probably will never wear again. Groping around at the bottom of the compartment, all he finds is some raggedy string, a sticky roll of bandages that he’s a little afraid to touch, and three buttons that have lost their homes.

The next drawer up produces similarly fruitless results and the teen shoves both drawers shut with an irritated huff before diving under the bed.

When he was young he’d had Western-style bed, a plush mattress on four raised legs. After he’d left his clan’s house, he’d spent most of his adolescence sleeping on a futon on the floor. The first thing he’d bought for his apartment, two years ago, was this bed.

It’s large enough for him to grow into, and more comfortable than any bed had a right to be—with a spring box right under the spongy mattress—and it sits high off the floor. High enough for him to shove a medical kit and the extra packs of shuriken he procures every time there’s a sale at his favorite weapon’s shop underneath.

Over the last two years a lot of things have found their way under there, the teen finds as he rifles through the dirty magazines Kaba gave him last year. He finds the forearm protector he spent a week looking for but never found, a wide variety of wraps, small coils of wire, and poorly kept weapons with chips in their blades and dust coating the handles. His nose wrinkles when he pulls out the moldy remains of the rawhide chew Pakkun pestered him to buy him at one time or another.

But nothing appropriate to give a two-year-old boy, he grumbles to himself, sliding back out and pushing to his feet.

With a brief glance around his single-room apartment, he reluctantly makes his way to the small closet next to the bathroom door. The middle shelf is full of towels and spare blankets, and the bottom is littered with extra clothing and weapons that didn’t have a place anywhere else. His travel pack is shoved to one side.

At the very top are the boxes and things he rarely ever takes out.

I don’t think I’ve looked at any of it since before I moved in…

He pulls out one box at a time, rooting through papers, rare trinkets, and even rarer photographs. He almost pauses at a picture of a thin woman with dark, deep-set eyes and a thin chin like his, but moves on quickly when a familiar wash of confused emotions begin to rise inside of him.

He stares at a picture of his team, and for a moment he doesn’t breathe, absorbed in the pain of remembering those people.

It’s too soon, he tells himself, turning the photo over with a sense of guilt. It’s still too soon.

He bypasses a small, uncoiled yoyo that he doesn’t remember ever using, and pushes aside a few of the worn adventure novels he’d read when he was young.

When did sixteen become old? He wonders wryly, and thinks about how much longer he has to live. He isn’t sure he likes the idea of living into his twenties or thirties, but he’s equally shy of the possibility of dying any time soon. He isn’t sure what happens after death, but isn’t willing to risk it as long as there’s a possibility of him having to face all of them again.

What will happen, will happen, he tells himself, instead, When the time comes, I’ll face it like a shinobi.

He pushes the thought aside and continues to search.

By the time he’s pulled down the final box, he’s almost forgotten what he’s looking for. Until he pulls that out.

It’s several years old and cheaply made. The thread has fallen out in places and the stuffing is oozing from the gaping holes. He struggles for a moment to remember exactly what it was from.

That was six years ago, he remembers finally, his thumb moving across the matted gray fur. Back when Obito and Rin first joined our team. Sensei took me to that festival to ‘make it up’ to me.

He’d complained the whole time, but his teacher never gave up in his attempts to get him to loosen up.

“Kakashi, here!” He remembers looking at the man dubiously as the blond grinned down at him, holding three large rings out to him.

“What?” I asked.

I didn’t even want to be there. But he was always dragging me to things like that when he had the chance—in between missions and training.

“See if you can get them around the pegs,” his teacher had demanded, thrusting a finger at the booth behind him. The man had wiggled his eyebrows, leaning in to whisper, “You get a prize if you make all three!”

“Sensei, that’s not fair—I’m—”

I always felt uncomfortable, going to places with him treating me as a regular kid. It felt like he was trying to make me into something I wasn’t.

Of course, he’d never told him how much he hated it. His sensei loved to go out like that, and he hadn’t wanted to lose someone else important to him back then. Not that it helped, because in the end he’d lost him, regardless.

“C’mon, ‘Kashi, it’ll be fun!” The man had cajoled, “Besides, look, at that! Doesn’t it look cool? I know I’d try to win it, but they won’t let me!”

I won it without even looking, he recalls the surprised face of the merchant. But when I tried to give it to sensei…

The teen rolls his eyes just thinking about it. His teacher had refused to take it.

“It’s yours, ‘Kashi! You won it! You should proudly put it on display on your own!”

So he’d shoved it in the back corner of his closet and never taken it out again.

It was supposed to be a shuriken, he thinks, with three uneven triangles protruding from an oblong center.

It was ugly when it was new… and it’s even worse now, he thinks, I forgot I even had it.

Still, he’s been searching three hours and hasn’t found anything else even remotely suitable. It’s late and his vision is beginning to blur for want of sleep—his bed is looking more and more inviting.

So he sits, with his back against the plush mattress, and pulls out his medical kit, selecting a fine, sturdy thread meant to sew up human flesh, not novelty pillows. His stitches are rough and uneven, but functional, and he stuffs the filling back in as he works.

Next year, he promises silently, I’ll get something better. To make up for… this.

He frowns at the final outcome and glances at the clock.

It’s well after midnight, and he wonders, briefly, whether two-year-olds are conscious of things like birthdays and the flow of time. He can’t remember when he was two years old. He can’t remember his second birthday; whether he’d waited in anticipation or been aware of the significance of the day at all.

He can remember a little from when he was three—snatches of moments.

I remember crying, clinging to a cold body.

But he can’t remember when he was two. But he suspects the boy won’t realize he’s been given his present a few hours late. He’s probably asleep, anyway.

Tucking the pillow under one arm, he heads out into the cool night again, alone on the streets of Konoha. If there are other shinobi about, he doesn’t see them, and he doesn’t look for them, either. He’s on a mission of his own.

Again, the house is dark, and he makes short work of breaking in. As he expects, the boy is sleeping.

He’s quite a bit bigger than the last time he saw him—an entire year before. His yellow hair has grown longer and messier—in definite need of a haircut—and a fond smile is on the teen’s face before he can stop it, the affection he felt the year before returning without conscious thought.

Sensei’s hair looked like that all the time, he remembers, And it got even worse before… Rin always used to be after him about it.

He recalls the man’s mannerisms, the way he’d run his fingers through his lengthy yellow spikes and laugh ruefully. “Maybe next weekend,” he’d say, “I don’t really have time right now—there’s a meeting with the clan leaders in fifteen minutes, and Kushina’s going to kill me if I miss our date tonight…”

And he was supposed to be the fastest man in the village. If he was really that fast, you’d think he’d be able to get his work done on time—and then have time to spare for something as simple as a haircut.

They’d bought him a pair of scissors, as a joke. It hadn’t been his idea, but Rin had talked him into handing over a portion of the money, and even into going to the shop with her. He still isn’t sure how she managed it.

I was pretty set on making her happy back then, I guess… It was so soon after… He tears his thoughts away and smirks, Sensei laughed so hard that tears came out of his eyes… And he finally let Rin cut his hair.

He doesn’t realize he’s been staring until the child stirs, the serene face shifting slightly as smooth eyelids crack open, a sliver of blue visible beyond.

The teen’s breath catches and his heart thuds loudly in his chest, fearful that he’ll be discovered without really understanding why that should make him afraid. As irrational as it is, he doesn’t move, standing frozen over the toddler’s bed until the light blue eyes slide shut again, never quite opening fully.

Still, he doesn’t dare breathe until several minutes have passed and he’s nearing the edge of his endurance. He releases his breath slowly, relaxing only when he’s positive the child is safely asleep.

Stupid, he chastises himself, embarrassed and glad that no one had seen how a two-year-old could manage to scare him in a way that facing handfuls of enemies never has.

This is no time for daydreaming, he chastises himself sternly; I should just get it over with and leave. There’ll be trouble if someone finds me in here.

He awkwardly places the small plush toy next to the child in his crib. The toy is big enough that it might be a pillow for the toddler, and another smile touches his lips when one of the boy’s hands move, rising to feel the soft material that covers the poorly made—and even more poorly mended—toy.

Small lips part, releasing a breath that might hold words; but if they do, the sound doesn’t carry.

The teen backs up a step or two, eyes fixed on the small, sleeping figure. Satisfied that his task is complete, he wonders if his teacher is proud.

Then he thinks about Rin—it’s been a while since he’s seen her.

I should go visit her tomorrow… She’d like that.

Silently, he steals from the house the same way he entered and disappears into the dark, early hours of the morning.

“That should do it,” she’s a pretty young nurse that any other man might admire. Another man would probably stare at her loosely wrapped bosom as she makes one final adjustment on his bandages, or appreciate the way her full lips curve into a smile when she straightens.

The teen doesn’t even notice, though. He takes a cursory look over the work she’s done and sits up. His side flashes in pain but he ignores it, swinging his legs out of bed.

“I’ll be on my way, then.”

“Oh, no!” The nurse’s brown eyes are wide with concern and her small hands pushing on his chest—above the broken bones—are nothing more than an irritation as she guides him back to his bed. “You can’t leave, yet! If you go out now, you’ll only end up hurting yourself more!”

He scowls, “I don’t have time for this.”

The nurse offers him a sympathetic smile that might melt the heart of a man with a weaker will. It doesn’t faze the teenager. “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to stay another two or three days, at least.”

With a sigh, he leans back against his pillows.

“I’ll be back to check on you soon,” the nurse assures him as she makes for the door, “So don’t you try sneaking off!”

He glances at the window. It’s still early in the day, but he feels pressed for time all the same.

They had been making great time on the last mission, and it had seemed like he’d be back a day or two ahead of schedule. Then they had run into an ambush. And now he’s stuck in the hospital with nurses watching his every movement like flesh-eating hawks. In uniforms.

His mind drifts; caught up in the heat of his last mission one second and spinning around grocery lists and training tips the next. And then, abruptly, he remembers what he has to do.

He considers staying in bed because his ribs ache and his head is pounding and he’s exhausted. But now that it’s on his mind, he can’t ignore it. He doesn’t want to ignore it. It’s the one thing he can still do anything about.

Carefully, he shuffles his feet over the edge of the bed. Blackness blurs the edges of his vision and the world spins for several seconds. When it finally stops, he’s looking up at the ceiling dazedly.

Slowly, he eases himself upright again. The wave of dizziness isn’t so bad, and he waits a few seconds before trying to pry himself from his bed.

His entire body weighs more than ever before, it feels like, and he silently promises to cut down on the extra meat-bun snacks between breakfast and lunch.

His legs are heavy, and his center of balance is nowhere to be found as he sways unsteadily on his own two feet. Belatedly, he reaches out to press a palm on the wall and manages to stabilize himself.

This is too much for simple exhaustion. The thought flutters through his head and he wonders if they’ve drugged him. Again.

And Rin wonders why I hate coming to the hospital so much. He grunts as he attempts a staggering step forward.

He manages the feat without falling flat on his face and counts it a success. He still waits several seconds before attempting it again.

At last, he’s at the door, leaning against the wall at just the right angle to peer through the small window into the hall. He ducks back quickly as a nurse walks towards him, but it isn’t the same one that had been with him before, and she passes as quickly as she came.

Satisfied that he has a few more minutes to himself, at least, he pushes away from the wall, swaying again without outside support.

Turning in a circle is a little tricky and he almost falls twice, but a few minutes later he’s managed to make it to the window.

The locks take a moment longer to figure out. He stares at them, at a loss, for several minutes before he remembers what he’s doing out of bed in the first place.

Then he’s out.

He isn’t sure how he made it all the way to the park, or how long he spent staring at the children playing there. He doesn’t even really notice where he was until something runs into his foot.

He stares at it blankly, not really registering what it is even as his mind files away information about it. The sleek, black curved mass of its body and the blue box fixture near the back. A small funnel sticks up somewhere in the middle, little white puffs of smoke occasionally being expelled from the top. Some part of him registers the fact that it is pushing against his leg, wheels moving desperately in a futile attempt to move forward.

“You’re in the way,” a scornful voice draws his attention to the pair of boys frowning at him.

A thin boy with messy black hair and a rounder boy with brown hair. The thin boy is obviously the one who spoke, because the round boy looks a little nervous to be standing in front of him.

He continues to stare blankly at them, not really registering what the boy said.

The thin boy sighs in irritation and reaches for the object—a train, he finally notices—muttering.

“Troublesome…”

“Is that yours?” He shifts at last, mind slowly focusing through drugs and exhaustion and blood loss. He sits up straighter and looks at the toy with renewed interest.

The thin boy frowns at him. “Obviously,” his tone was more disdainful than the teen imagines the situation warrants.

“Do you like it?” He asks.

They look about the right age. Is that the kind of thing three-year-olds like to have?

The thin boy shrugs, “Yeah, I guess.”

“… I’ll buy it from you,” he offers, reaching for his wallet only to realize he doesn’t have it.

I must have left it at the hospital, he muses distractedly. That will make things difficult. He can’t go back now—not until he’s done. They’ll probably knock him out for running away, and then he’ll miss his window of opportunity.

The boy looks at him dubiously, “How much?”

If he’d been thinking clearly, he might have estimated the worth of the toy, but instead he mumbles the first number that comes to his mind.

“Twenty ryu.” The price of the beef chews his pack likes so much.

The boy snorts and picks up the train, switching it off—the steam issuing from the funnel stops and the wheels grind to a halt. “No way,” he replies, “It’s worth a lot more than that.”

He doesn’t bother to reply because he notices someone else enter the park; a woman dressed in the standard medical uniform.

He slips into the woods and disappears without either boy even noticing until a few seconds later.

By now he is aware enough to realize he needs money, and he returns to his apartment briefly to obtain some, sneaking past the medic posted as a guard in case he returns there. He sneaks out again without ever being seen.

It is still early in the day and the toy shop is open. He is out of it enough that he doesn’t feel embarrassed, even when he notices parents with their small children staring at him.

Perusing shelves of toys and child-sized clothing, it doesn’t even occur to him to purchase a train like the one he saw the boys playing with at the park. He’s distracted before he ever sees a toy train.

There’s a bin of plastic lizards, of every color of the rainbow. He crouches down in front of them, staring. Perched on the top of the pile, a lizard stares back at him, with softly molded yellow scales.

“Kakashi!” His teacher’s voice echoes in his mind, and he can almost see his own small foot, frozen in the air, just above a small, struggling lizard, stuck on its back.

He almost smiles.

It must have fallen out of a tree or something, he remembers distractedly, but at the time he’d only known one thing.

That that tiny lizard had just tried to kill him, and he’d barely saved himself when he knocked it off his head.

He only has a vague idea of what things were said at the time. It happened so long ago, and the memories are fuzzy.

That was probably the first time I realized it, he decides. Sensei had a very odd taste in animals.

He’d thought it was very strange, as a boy, that the man preferred playing with frogs and lizards and other slimy, unpleasant things rather than dogs.

He hadn’t understood how anyone could prefer something like that lizard to a dog, because dogs were the perfect animal. Dogs were soft and warm and smart and loyal. Lizards and frogs were cold and slimy and rough and they were pretty stupid, he’d thought.

It doesn’t occur to him as he purchases the toy that maybe that child might prefer dogs to lizards, like he had. It’s only natural, after all, that the boy prefers slimy reptiles, like his teacher.

He realizes he has a problem when he stands outside the foster house. All the other times he came, the boy had been asleep, but it is still early for that, and the windows in the house are lit up, with people moving around inside. He can’t just slip inside and leave the toy beside the boy before disappearing without being seen. Not like he had last year. Not like he had the year before.

He ponders this problem for longer than should really be necessary before climbing up the side of the house to peer inside the boy’s window.

The room is abandoned, the bed messed up and empty of its owner. He experiences an unexpected thrill of pride when he notices the stuffed shuriken lying next to the pillow on the small bed. It’s followed by a twinge of embarrassment.

Sticking to the wall with his feet, he eases the window open and places the toy lizard on the sill, where the child will see it as soon as he enters the room. The sunlight on its yellow scales makes it even brighter, and he is confident that it won’t be missed.

He considers sticking around, to watch the child’s reaction when he finds it, suddenly longing to see the look of surprise and delight he imagines the boy will wear, or the happy expression his teacher might have worn if he’d given such a thing to him. But he is beginning to feel light headed and belatedly realizes that using chakra to climb up to the window was probably not his best idea.

He falls when it gives out a second later, barely managing to twist around and land quietly on his feet. He straightens unsteadily, using the wall of the house to steady himself again and not entirely sure what he is planning on doing next.

“Kakashi-san!” A voice calls before he has enough stability to move away from the wall again.

He turns automatically, and cringes under his mask as his eye lands on the medic from earlier.

Her pretty young face is twisted in a scowl as she quickly navigates towards him.

Suddenly, he has a very good idea of what to do next. Pushing against the wall, he only manages a few steps, the ground tilting wildly underneath him, before his balance finally loses its battle against gravity and he tumbles ungracefully to the ground.

Looking up, the nurse is already standing over him, and he offers her a sheepish smile, most of it invisible under his mask.

“I told you!” The young woman snaps, “You’re not recovered! You’re still suffering from chakra drain, and your body needs rest to finish healing! Are you trying to get yourself killed, Kakashi-san?”

Chastised, he shakes his head. “There was something…”

She doesn’t allow him to finish, hauling him up by his arm roughly enough to make him hiss in pain. Her expression softens slightly and she positions him more gently until she’s supporting most of his weight.

“It’s time to go back to the hospital now,” she says, her tone allowing no argument from the young Jounin.

Recognizing the futility of it, he doesn’t bother trying to argue, shuffling along beside her as she begins to guide him away.

“I swear,” she grumbles as they slowly make their way back towards the hospital, “Sometimes I think the entire lot of you are mad. Running around the village when you’re that low on chakra?” She scoffs in a decidedly unladylike manner that may have made her previous admirers reconsidering their opinions—Kakashi hardly notices. “Geniuses.”

He almost misses the day the next year. He spends the morning at the Memorial Stone, staring at her name with a heavy conscience and an unexplainable ache in his head.

He hasn’t eaten in days and he isn’t hungry now. He hasn’t done much of anything in days, not since he heard the report of her death. He still feels numb.

She can’t be dead, not really. He promised to protect her, so she can’t be dead. That’s the thought that repeats in his mind over and over. There has to be some mistake.

“I thought you might be here.”

He doesn’t turn at the voice—he recognizes it, and it poses no threat. The other teen is a new Jounin. Not really new, some part of his mind corrects, because he’s been a Jounin for almost six months now, but even so he doesn’t remember the other boy’s name.

“You need to stop moping around.”

He isn’t moping and he wishes the other boy would stop acting like his friend. It’s annoying because they’ve only met a few times and he doesn’t even like the other boy. He’s too lazy and irresponsible. He’s sure he isn’t really all that lazy, because he has made Jounin, but he does a good job of giving off that impression.

The other teen sighs, “We’re all on the same team, you know. You could act a little more friendly.”

“… Why are you here?” He finally breaks his silence. His voice is a little rough and scratchy, probably because his canteen went dry sometime the day before and he hasn’t bothered to refill it.

“Someone had to come after you,” the other boy responds moodily, “No one’s seen you in four days.”

“It’s not healthy,” the other teen adds—as though the silver-haired teen doesn’t already know that.

It irks him to hear words like that from someone he hardly knows. “Neither is smoking,” he retorts crossly.

A dry laugh sounds from the other boy. He still hasn’t looked up at him, “Maybe. I don’t care. Probably won’t live long enough for it to affect me, anyway.”

He really wishes the other boy would leave. He doesn’t need anyone to tell him he’s abusing his body like this. He already knows that.

“Why do you care, anyway?” He asks crossly. He’s been meaning to ask it for a while, ever since the guy clapped him on the shoulder when he was promoted a few months ago. He can’t remember talking to him before that day.

“You don’t remember, do you?” The boy asks.

Obviously, he leaves unspoken, wondering what the other teen is getting at now.

“We were in the Academy together,” the boy continues, “Only for a year—then you graduated. The rest of us have been trying to catch up ever since.”

He doesn’t remember anyone he was in the Academy with. None of them had been his friends, and he never looked back once he made Genin. Not once. Now he does, trying to remember if this boy was once in his class, but he can’t remember any names or faces.

“Sandaime’s pretty tolerant, given what happened,” the other teen continues—he thinks there must have been a length of time between this comment and his last, but he hasn’t really noticed it passing, “Anyway, he’s got this mission to Lightning Country that I think he’s been saving for you. He won’t order you back, though, for whatever reason.” The other sighs, obviously in disagreement with the reasoning the Hokage is using.

“I don’t care,” he finds himself retorting. He turns to leave the stone, still not looking at the other teen as he does so—it’s become too crowded.

What day is it, anyway?

“What do you mean you don’t care?” The other Jounin repeats stupidly.

He doesn’t think he can make it any clearer. “I’m busy,” he states, walking away. And he is busy, he realizes suddenly, because the afternoon is growing late by now and he’s just remembered what day it is.

“Busy with what?” The other teen demands, following him, “Going to find some other stupid rock to stare at?” It’s indiscreet and the other teen must know it, but he says it anyway.

The silver-haired teen ignores the insult and retorts coolly, “I doubt he’d like a rock.”

“Who?” The bafflement is clear in the other boy’s voice.

He doesn’t say, but he does think about what a four-year-old might like. He vaguely remembers what he’d been like at that age, because that was how old he’d been when he joined the Academy. Idly, he wonders if that child will join the Academy soon. It’s certainly possible, seeing as who he is. Who his father is.

He doesn’t particularly care that the teen is still following him as he makes his way into the bright little shop he is slowly becoming familiar with.

He wouldn’t even have considered it if the other teen hadn’t stopped to snicker at it, holding the box up for him to see when he looks back.

“Can you believe it?” The brown-haired teen asks with obvious amusement, “Hokage Action Figures.” He snickers some more, obviously more than a little amused at the tiny figure that barely resembles the Third.

He still would’ve dismissed it as he casually looks at the shelf the other teen took the object from and notices the figure comes in Shodai and Nidaime models, as well. He is turning away when he notices it; a single box haphazardly knocked back behind the others.

Curious despite himself, he reaches for it, and can only stare at the tiny figure inside.

“Hmm? Oh, Yondaime,” the other teen says, looking over his shoulder, “That one’s supposed to be popular—at least, that’s what I’ve heard.”

It’s the stupidest thing he’s seen in his life and for some reason he just starts to laugh. His teacher would love seeing this. Rin would’ve teased him mercilessly, though. He wonders if she ever saw it—he would have liked to show her, just to see her reaction. But maybe that would be too cruel to do.

I must be crazy—laughing about something like this. Sensei’s dead and Rin is dead and there’s nothing left to be laughing about.

Still, he can’t help but laugh, imagining his teammates’ reactions to seeing this. If the other teen wasn’t there, he might have let Obito take a look.

He isn’t aware of his laughter turning to tears, but the other teen pats his shoulder awkwardly, apologizing for something that isn’t his fault. He ignores him and wipes an arm across his face, feeling a bit stupid but surprisingly not as embarrassed as he would have expected.

I must really be out of it.

“Jeez,” the other boy sighs as he collects himself, “I’m sorry, I forgot he was…”

The silver-haired teen isn’t listening, instead he heads to the checkout, toy in hand. The other boy follows him and sounds a bit disbelieving when he asks, “You’re going to buy that?”

“I wonder what he’ll make of it,” he muses out loud without even realizing it.

“Who? What are you going to do with it?” The other teen asks in confusion.

He shrugs, not feeling the need to hide what he is doing from the other Jounin, “It’s a gift.”

“A… gift?” The other teen sounds even more confused, “As in… Happy Birthday?”

For some reason, that amuses him, too, and he chuckles, “Exactly like that.”

It occurs to him that he’s suffering psychological distress from the days of sleep and food he’s missed, but the thought isn’t as alarming to him as it probably should be.

When he leaves, heading to the foster house, the other teen says something that makes him pause, “Where are you going? Aren’t you even going to wrap it?”

Blinking, he comes to a halt, looking at the other boy for the first time, “Wrap what?”

The other teen frowns at him and nods his head towards the package, “That. You said it’s a gift, right?”

He stares stupidly, not really understanding what’s being suggested to him.

The other teen shrugs, “Normally, you wrap things like that in paper.”

It isn’t until then that he thinks of the presents he’s received. He can remember receiving a package from his father once, wrapped in yellowing paper with the words Happy Birthday scrawled across the top.

Similarly, he remembers at least two additional occasions when his gifts have been wrapped. He thought it was stupid, as a boy, and he said so, but his teacher had insisted they were supposed to be wrapped, so as to surprise him when he opened the paper.

Do four-year-olds like surprises? he wonders. He imagines they probably do, and shrugs, searching his pockets for paper. The other teen watches with disbelief as he produces a handful of scraps and proceeds to tie them awkwardly around the package with spare wire from another pocket.

He looks up when he is done, face expressionless as he asks, “Do you have a pen?”

Dumbly, the other teen fishes one out of a pocket.

He accepts it and writes the characters of the boy’s name with a flourish. He pockets the pen, then, and continues on his way. The other teen doesn’t ask for it back, but continues to follow him.

It’s early evening, and the boy is in the yard, sitting under a tree and apparently making a very dirty yellow lizard terrorize a colony of ants. He ducks behind the bushes lining the street in front of the house before the boy can notice him, then belatedly pulls the other teen down next to him.

“What are you doing now?” The other teen hisses in confusion.

He shoots the teen a glare and turns his attention back to the child. The lizard, he notices, has lost a third of its tail and doesn’t have all of its toes. The child doesn’t seem to mind.

A call from the house makes the child jump slightly and turn around, toy dropping to the ground.

He takes advantage of the distraction to slip in and drop the sloppily wrapped package next to the lizard, disappearing again with no one the wiser—except the other Jounin, of course.

“Let’s go,” he whispers to the other teen, already turning to leave, one hand on the other boy’s wrist to drag him along.

“Wha?” The other boy asks, confusion making his question inarticulate.

He ignores the question, a slight smile on his face as his ears catch the sound of a breathless, “Who?” as the child returns to his things, finding the newly left gift.

The colors of the buildings along the street begin to blur together as he walks, and his head swims as up is suddenly replaced with down and he can’t quite see anything clearly.

“Hey! Kakashi!”

Even if he wanted to, he’s much too tired to answer the other teen’s shout, and finally the demands of his body are too much to resist.

He’s always known someone out there likes him. He knows it isn’t Kaia-san, the woman who’s in charge at his house. He knows it isn’t Mika-san or Chiro-san or any of the others who work there.

He suspects it may be the old man who has visited him once or twice in the past, but when he finds a package, wrapped messily in used paper and tied with wire, he rethinks his assumption. It doesn’t look at all like something the old man might give him, and he doesn’t think the old man can move so fast as to leave it there in the few seconds he had his back turned.

He remembers finding the little yellow lizard on his window sill, even though it happened a year ago. He knows that someone left him the little shuriken pillow he likes to sleep with, too, although he’s had it as long as he can remember.

It wasn’t until this year that he understands why. Today is his birthday. He’s heard the women who work in the house talk about it. The other kids get a present on their birthdays, and he suspects that the things that are left for him are for his birthday, too. He wonders who it is that leaves them, though, because he knows it’s the women who give the other children their presents, but whoever leaves them for him doesn’t stay long enough for him to see.

It makes him happy, though, and he scoops up the package along with his lizard before running back to the house where he’s been called.

Kaia-san looks at him disapprovingly, and asks what he has, but when he shows her the package, she just frowns and sends him up to his room. He doesn’t mind, still happy for the present.

When he gets to his room, he carefully removes the wire from the package—the paper falls off in leafs as he does so, revealing the toy inside, which he looks at with reverence.

It’s a small person with a serious looking face and bright yellow hair that’s the same shade as his. He wonders if that’s why the person who likes him gave it to him—because it looks kind of like him.

He stacks the paper aside, wishing he could read what it said, but he’s too little to read and he doesn’t want to share what it says with anyone so he won’t ask for help. The box, too, has something written on it in large, colorful lettering, but he can’t read this either.

He ignores it and opens the box carefully, not wanting to wreck anything. He’s always very careful with his things, although the other children he lives with aren’t. He flattens the box once the small person is out, and he stacks it with the papers, then clambers onto his bed and reaches around to the back, where there’s a hole in his mattress.

He found the hole a few months ago, and it’s the perfect place for hiding things. He stuffs his paper and the box inside, careful not to bend the sheets of paper, even though they’re already very wrinkled.

He imagines that the person who likes him wrote those messages just for him, and he wants to be able to read them once he gets older. The hole is already occupied by one thing—a small, plastic kunai that he’s had as long as he can remember. He doesn’t know, but he suspects it may have been a gift from the person who likes him, as well.

He crawls off his bed again and flops down on the ground, scooping his new toy up in one hand and his old lizard in the other. Another thought occurs to him as he looks at them—maybe the small person is a mini version of the person who likes him. He smiles at the thought, and imagines that maybe that person is related to him.

He’s heard the other kids talk about parents and families that they no longer have, but no one has said anything to him about his own.

“Hello,” he quietly greets the little person, and imagines that the little person greets him back with a warm voice that belies the serious expression on his face. He smiles, but wishes he knew the person’s name so he could have a real conversation.

“My name’s Naruto,” he tells the little person, half expecting it to tell him its name in response.

“I’ll call you Niisan,” he tells it when it doesn’t respond. Two of the other kids are brother and sister, and the little girl always calls her brother that.

He smiles, deciding that he likes this game. The little person listens to him intently and seems to like him. He holds up the little lizard, and decides to introduce him, as well. “This is our friend,” he tells the little person, “His name is Kiiro.”

The little person doesn’t respond, but he thinks he might be smiling, even though his expression hasn’t changed at all.

He isn’t looking at anything particular. His hands are shoved deep in his pockets as he walks casually through the crowded streets of the New Year Festival. He wouldn’t be out at all—he hates the crowded streets at this time of year—except Pakkun ran out of his special, “Floral Green” shampoo. The dog refused to be consoled by anything less and had insisted he buy some right away.

He stops when a flash of yellow catches his eye, a spike of light hair. It’s been cut, he notices, since the last time he’s seen the boy, months ago on the child’s birthday. He contemplates speaking to him, but is wary to cross the line between silent and unknown to something a little more real in the child’s life.

The child stands beside a booth, blue eyes staring wistfully up at one of the prizes. He notices with amusement that the Yondaime Action Figure is tucked safely within the child’s left pocket, arms sticking out to keep it well balanced. A smirk crosses his masked lips as he notices the lines of the figure’s mouth have been sloppily extended with marker, curved up into a smile. He thinks it’s more fitting and his teacher would certainly approve.

In a slightly better mood, he continued on his way. The shop that sells Pakkun’s shampoo is nearby, and he peruses the shelves carefully, searching the bottles for exactly the right brand and scent that will satisfy the pug, and he frowns when he doesn’t see it, scratching the back of his head with bemusement.

He lingers, searching the shelves a second time, and then looking through the rest of the shelves in the isle, but it seems to have mysteriously disappeared from the entire store.

Pakkun was going to be pissed.

The young Jounin sighs, and drags his feet all the way to the clerk, who directs him to another shop down the street.

If anything, the streets have become more crowded as he makes his way back into them, and he contemplates taking to the rooftops. Hunching his shoulders, he braves the crowd.

The cacophony of noise around him makes his head pound with the beginnings of a headache, and he walks a little faster, eager to finish his errand. Then the girl in front of him stops abruptly, and he nearly walks into her, pulling up just short. Like a pebble in the water, people flow around him and it’s all he can do to back step, watching for his moment to slip back into the flow.

As he’s looking, he catches sight of the blond again—the little boy is still at the same booth, only now the owner is in front of him, a wide scowl on his lips and a huge finger pointing vehemently in the child’s face.

He wavers, watching, his muscles tensing automatically. Through all the noise, he can’t hear what the man’s saying, but he can see his thick lips moving, and his eyebrows lowering as he gestures animatedly.

A sudden surge of pedestrians momentarily block his view, and when they’ve moved on, his teacher’s son is picking himself up off of the ground, blue eyes dark and glaring right back at the man, who waves a hand widely in a clear gesture of annoyance.

He frowns, and he can’t justify hanging back any longer. It doesn’t matter that he wants nothing to do with the child; he can’t just ignore what he’s seen—or what he hasn’t seen.

He slips into the flow of traffic, and carefully makes his way across the street, finally stepping out between the two. “Is there a problem here?” He very carefully doesn’t look at the child, whose angry blue eyes look nothing like teacher’s, and instead, faces the owner of the booth squarely.

The bigger man’s beady black eyes screw up with a scowl, “Yeah, there is! This kid,” his beefy hand points towards the boy again, “won’t leave me alone! He doesn’t have any money and he keeps standing there, staring.”

One might think standing and staring was a crime, and the teen snorts softly. He looks down, briefly, at the child, who has retreated a few steps, and is now sporting a pout to accompany his angry blue eyes. He looks towards the owner again and shrugs.

“He isn’t hurting anyone,” he notes.

“He’s scaring away my customers,” the man growls, and then adds, again, “And he’s got no money! He’s got no business hanging around here!”

He doesn’t like him. He didn’t like him before, and the more he looks at him, the less he likes him.

“I’ll take care of this,” he mutters, and is immediately disgusted by the grateful look that washes across the bigger man’s face.

Shaking his head, he turns towards the boy, who flinches back at his look, retreating another step. He somehow manages not to wince at the child’s behavior.

He stands there, staring at the boy for several seconds, taking in his bedraggled appearance and his filthy clothes, and the pink patch of skin on one side of his face.

He’s imagined this moment, and the things he might say, if he ever had the opportunity to meet his teacher’s son properly.

“Your father was a great man.”

All of them seem stupid now, as he’s standing before the child, and a cowardly piece of him wants to turn and flee. But if he leaves now, the boy will be at the mercy of the shop keeper again, and that is something he can’t do.

It’s one thing to ignore the rumors that float around ANBU, it’s another thing entirely to ignore what he’s just seen for himself. This was not how his teacher’s flesh and blood was meant to be treated.

He has to swallow twice before he can approach the boy and force a smile—he hasn’t practiced in a long time, and he’s sure he looks stupid, but there’s nothing else he can do in the face of those familiar little features.

“Yo,” he says, at last. It’s stupider than probably anything else he could have said to commemorate the first time the two of them have actually spoken, but he can’t think of anything witty or cool like his teacher would probably have come up with. He’s just not good at this sort of thing.

The glare in those blue eyes falters, and the child’s eyebrows lower a little with confusion.

The urge to run pulls at him more strongly. What right does he have, to talk to this boy? He was supposed to be looking after him. Instead, he can count on one hand the number of times he’s even seen him in the last five years. And this was his teacher’s child! This was the offspring of the man who had practically raised him after his father’s death.

And he just knows this is going to ruin everything.

He forces back the emotions that he’s not even supposed to have. Surely, one time won’t cause the world to end and Armageddon to rain down on the poor boy’s head. Besides, he’s a shinobi, and he’s not the kind of man to run away from the world.

His smile becomes more strained, because he doesn’t even believe it himself.

The child frowns, clear blue eyes darkening with suspicion. “Who’re you?” The boy demands. At least a portion of the anger has lessened.

“Maa…” He scratches the back of his head, suddenly feeling foolish. How did he expect the child to react? He’d never spoken to the boy before. He’s nothing more than a stranger. “Just… someone,” he says lamely.

The boy’s frown deepens.

He turns his eyes away from the child-like version of his teacher and looks at the booth instead. “See something you like?” He asks, as casually as he can.

The child looks at him suspiciously, but nods. He raises an arm to point and the teen turns to look. He can’t help but smile again as he sees the thing the boy’s pointing to.

“The frog?” He asks.

The four-year-old nods seriously. “It has a place you can put your money,” he informs him. “I’m getting my own money soon—” he snaps his mouth shut suddenly, frowning suspiciously up at the teen again.

The teen chuckles and digs into a pocket, pulling his hand out again with a coin. The child watches him as he considers it, looking between the coin and the sign on the stall. Then he crouches down and holds the coin out to the boy. The boy just stares at it, making no move to take it from him.

“Here,” he encourages, “Take it. See if you can win the frog.”

The boy continues to hesitate. Suddenly, he snatches the coin from his hand, pulling it to himself protectively, continuing to eye him suspiciously all the while. The teen smiles, eyes curving at the action. The boy stares, then, tentatively, he smiles as well.

The boy’s smile makes his heart skip a beat and his breath catch in his throat and it’s all he can do not to let the pain show in his expression.

He straightens, reaching out to ruffle the child’s hair in much the same way his teacher used to do to him. The child winces slightly, then smiles again, this time with a larger grin.

“You should smile more often,” he tells the boy fondly—the smile makes him look more like his teacher again, but the memory is a sweeter one than the serious look he’d seen at first produced.

“I can really have this?” The child asks hesitantly, looking between the coin and him.

He nods. “Really,” he confirms, then raises a hand and starts to walk away, “See you.”

“Y-yeah!” The boy calls after him enthusiastically, turning to watch him walk away with a large grin, “I’ll… I’ll see you!”

He simply keeps his hand raised in farewell until he disappears into the crowd.

He doesn't need to pass the booth on his way home, but he does anyway, a small brown bag tucked under his arm with Pakkun’s shampoo safely inside. He can’t help but glance into the space next to the stall where he’d seen the child before, but the boy is nowhere to be seen. He’s a little disappointed because of it, even though he had no intention of stopping to talk again.

He glances into the stall again and notices, with a frown, that the green frog purse is still there. He knows he should walk away, there’s no reason for him to stop, but he recalls the way the boy smiled at him, when he gave him the coin to try to win it with. He supposes that the child’s off crying somewhere, or doing something equally silly and childish, after having failed to procure the item he wanted so much.

He hesitates a moment longer, then approaches the booth, digging in his pocket for a coin. He glances at the rules and smirks under his mask. Apparently, shinobi are only allowed one try.

There’s no line, and he holds a coin out for the man behind the counter to take. “I’d like one ball,” he says simply.

The man looks reluctant, but accepts his money and hands over the ball. He considers the bottles set up at the other end of the booth, then looks up at the prizes again, noticing for the first time that the little green frog purse requires two hits to win.

He smiles at the man, “If I close my eyes, can I choose from any prize?”

The man looks more pleased at this proposition. “Sure, sure,” he agrees readily, “Any prize in the booth, sir.”

He smirks under his mask and tilts his hitai-ate until it covers both eyes instead of just the one. “Like this?” He offers.

The man hesitates before answering, “Turn around once, would you?” He does so and the man agrees in a cheerful tone, “Okay, that’s fine. You’re facing it now, so go ahead and throw.”

He does as he’s told and the sound of bottles clattering to the floor meets his ears. He tilts his hitai-ate back up to where it belongs and smiles at the flabbergasted man. “I’ll take the green frog purse, please,” he intones innocently.

The man’s reluctant, but he retrieves the requested prize as promised, handing it over a bit sulkily.

Four months later he can’t help but watch from outside as the small, blond boy wakes up in his new apartment. He hasn’t seen him since that time all those months ago at the festival, but he’s watching now from his hiding place, with an unusually eager feeling in his chest.

Through the windows he can see the boy moving around. He watches him move to the door, hesitate, then return to make his bed. He moves to the door a second time, a small, eager smile on his lips, then hesitates again, standing just inside the door with a nervous, guilty expression on his face.

The child looks back at his bed—he can see the tiny action figure even from the roof of the building next door—then the boy finally pulls open the door. He can’t help but grin as the child does the same, finding the small box right outside.

He’s wrapped it better this time, and put it in an actual box—left over from the new weapon service kit he bought a few months ago. The paper’s green—he cajoled it off Gai—and he’s used packing tape instead of wire. As last time, the boy’s name is scrawled across the top, this time accompanied by the words Happy Birthday.

The child lets out a shout of joy that he thinks is really a bit much, and scoops up the package eagerly, hurriedly locking his door and moving further back into his small, one room apartment.

He continues to watch as the boy carefully removes the paper, looking the box over before opening it. He’s awarded with another grin and wide blue eyes when the boy finds the small purse inside.

The child runs to his bed and dives over the side to pull something out from under his mattress. The teen sees, as he pulls back, that the child’s pulled out a lumpy white sock. The reason becomes obvious when the boy dumps a few coins and paper bills from it, stuffing them into his brand new frog purse, instead.

The boy sets the purse on the bed in front of him and stares at it hard. He says something—the teen can tell because his mouth moves, but he’s far too far away to tell what he’s saying.

With one last look he leaves, satisfied with the reaction he’s gotten. He still has to visit the monument, after all.

The stone obelisk stands sharp and black, like a knife cutting into the heart of the clearing at the edge of Konoha’s training grounds. Overhead the sun is bright and the sky is a pale shade of blue.

He stands alone, staring with a single half-lidded black eye, lost in thought.

Obito.

His eye automatically rests on the name, and memories of the boy that once was swamp him. Everything that he’s done. Every stupid mistake he has made, the countless deviations that could have done to make things turn out differently.

In the end, his conclusion is always the same. Obito died because of him, because he had been young and naïve, and believed only in his own importance.

He has made so many mistakes, mistakes he can never afford to make again. Mistakes that could get Rat or Boar killed, or any of the countless teammates and comrades that rely on him.

A slight coolness on his hand makes him look down to see that the memorial’s shadow has shifted, and is now just beginning to converge on him. He stares at it blankly.

I’m late.

He should already be at ANBU headquarters, briefing with his team. The others were probably already there. But they know how he works, and hopefully have started going over the less consequential details of their mission already.

Still, he needs to get moving if they are going to finish the briefing on time to make it to their mission.

He turns his attention back to the stone, to his teammate’s name.

You’re still rubbing off on me, idiot.

Releasing a nearly silent sigh, the young man turns abruptly and leaps into the trees. He is running even later than usual, so he’ll have to take a shortcut.

As he reaches the first buildings at the edge of the village proper, he propels himself from the earth and veers to the left across the rooftops, varying from his usual route to cut off a little time.

If his teammates decide to kill him for his tardiness, he’ll probably still be the one they force to fill out the paperwork.

His thoughts are completely on his destination, so he’s surprised at himself when his legs suddenly stop, crouching low and looking across a wooden fence on the other side of the street, partially blocking the view of an orange-roofed building with a large, square yard behind it.

The last time he had been at the Academy was nearly ten years ago, when he’d been assigned additional teammates under his teacher. He doesn’t remember much—he’d been angry with the man at the time, and purposefully obtuse.

“What do we need stupid kids on our team for?” He remembers asking as he grudgingly followed his teacher through the door.

He doesn’t remember the man’s response—he supposes he hadn’t been in the mood to listen to anything he said, anyway.

The classroom had been empty when they entered, except the two new Genin that had been assigned to their team. He remembers feeling even angrier at their reactions when he’d followed his teacher into the room.

“Our sensei is the Yellow Flash?!” The Uchiha had been just a touch taller than him, but his goggles, wide-eyed shock, and silly looking grin had made him look younger, and he had immediately disliked him. “This is going to be awesome!”

The girl standing at his side had looked impressed, too, her cheeks red and hands fidgeting. She had averted her eyes from their famous teacher and seen him, standing just behind the man—her eyes had widened. “Are you our third teammate? Hatake Kakashi-kun, right? I’ve heard about you!”

Incongruence on the grass field behind the school pulls him out of his thoughts. Children are scattered across the yard in an uneven line, throwing kunai at targets to the cadence of their instructor, but one in particular was different.

Most of the kunai were flying a fairly straight line, hitting at the targets with fairly simultaneous thuds. Towards the back, one kunai in the line was arcing haphazardly through the air and hitting around the target several seconds after the others, sinking into the ground as often as it hit the wood.

The small, blond haired child seemed to be having a hard time of it, throwing kunai after kunai in a wobbly arc in the general direction of the target. The young man frowns, watching, as one of the instructors pauses to observe the poorly thrown kunai. The instructor turns away a moment later, without offering a word of correction.

Honestly, he doesn’t remember much of his time as a Pre-Genin student. He vaguely remembers sitting on the grass in the entrance ceremony, staring in awe as the man his father had insisted was the strongest shinobi in the entire village—even stronger than Otousan—stood in front of their class and charged them all to do their best.

He remembers his instructor had taken a personal interest in him, and had regularly given him advanced assignments—he only remembers, because his father had once offered to help him with his homework, and had expressed his surprise that he was learning these things in his first year, and then insisted on speaking with his teacher personally, shortly before he’d been graduated.

Despite the gaps in his memory, he knows wrong when he sees it, and he scowls with half the mind to jump down there this instant. Just as the thought enters his head, the motion below ceases.

He forces his fists to unclench and watches as the students slowly file into a line, heading back inside. Many of them pause before they reach the door—he notices that the blond child is among those—returning the weapons they have borrowed for their exercises.

He straightens as the instructors head inside, and leaps off to the next rooftop as the door clangs shut behind the yellow haired child.

He has shopped at Jouten’s Weapons since he was a child, hiding in the shadow of his father. Even as a Jounin, he stops in regularly to replace old, worn, and broken weapons of all kinds. The quality is top notch, and he knows he will find what he needs.

Not that he needs any of his regular replacements at the moment. His mission had been as close to planned as could reasonably be expected. There had been no casualties on his side, and they had even returned almost a full day earlier than expected.

Jouten himself is not in the room when he enters. There is no bell to jingle and announce his entrance, because the owner is as much of a shinobi as his customers, and appreciates subtly, so instead, a seal next to the door glows faintly with chakra and he knows the man will be with him shortly.

In the meantime, he searches for what he needs. He knows where all his favorites are located without a thought, but this is something different, and will take a little more looking than usual.

He peruses the shelves of the weapon’s shop with his usual care, looking over the kunai with a sharp eye. He only has a general idea of what he’s looking for, so when he sees something that looks promising, he carefully picks it up for closer examination.

Holding it level with his face, he looks critically down the blade for any indication of shoddy craftsmanship. It’s a smaller, lighter model than he prefers. Ideal for small hands and developing muscles.

He tests the tip of the blade and a drop of blood pools on the pad of his thumb. He frowns at it critically, evaluating. The blade is sharp for a child to use, but the Academy year began almost six months ago—by now the students should be instilled with a healthy sense of caution when it comes to blades.

“Can I help you find something, Hatake-san?”

He glances coolly up at the shop keeper, a middle aged man with a touch of graying hair at the temples adding a certain distinction to the otherwise regular black comb over. The man smiles, but he doesn’t smile back.

He trusts the man with his weapons, but he is not what he would consider a friend.

“… I’ll take one dozen of these,” he supplies blandly, thrusting the kunai carelessly in front of the man’s face.

Jouten blinks in surprise, taking a quick step backwards before snatching the small knife from him, looking at it critically. He frowns at the younger man.

“This model… is unusual for those of your status to purchase,” he notes, “Is there something wrong with your usual model?”

The young man shrugs. “I have need for something lighter,” he says dismissively, “Do you usually question the motives of your customers?”

The older man looks surprised, and quickly smiles again, “My apologies, Hatake-san, I was only curious. I would have a word with my provider if you’d found a flaw in his work.”

“No need for that,” he replies easily, with no further explanation. “Do you have a dozen of these or not?”

“Of course!” The man exclaims quickly, his steps are long and quick, but with a certain grace born form the battlefield as he heads to the back of the store. “Do you want them packaged or do you wish to take them on you now?”

“Package them,” he replies with disinterest, slowly moving along the shelves, looking over the items he’s never really noticed before.

“Right away, Hatake-san,” the man assures him, “I will only be a moment.”

He nods a vague sort of response without looking up and turns towards another shelf, this one containing weapon pouches. It hadn’t occurred to him before, but now that he is looking at them, he realizes the child will probably need one of these as well.

After all, a dozen kunai are not worth much without something to keep them in.

He crouches, removing one of the smaller packs from the rack, and turns it over in his hand, examining the stitching and opening it to confirm the capacity. Jouten returns with the twelve small kunai packaged safely in plastic and frowns down at him.

“Hatake-san…” He begins hesitantly, an edge of suspicion in his tone.

“That will do,” he interrupts, standing and showing his chosen item to the owner, “How much?”

It’s not that he has anything in particular to hide, but it certainly isn’t this man’s business. Once, Jouten was a friend of his father’s, but that had quickly changed, and while he’d never treated him any differently… he couldn’t bring himself to return the favor.

His expression tightens under his mask and he forces the thoughts away and reaches for his wallet.

The child is still at school when he drops by his apartment twenty minutes later. He makes short work of the lock on the window and slips inside, setting the wrapped packages on the child’s small table.

The single room looks cluttered, bedspread stained, sink full of dishes, and dirty clothes haphazardly tossed across the floor, but other than that, there really isn’t much stuff filling up the space. His fingers itch a little with the compulsion to clean.

He has always been an orderly person. His father kept a clean house, and even his teacher, as a bachelor, had been unusually tidy. He doesn’t know about the boy’s mother, but he supposes that’s where the child inherited this nasty habit.

He scrawls the boy’s name on the plain paper he’s wrapped the kunai and pouch with and then turns back to the window, stopping only to pick up a few discarded articles of clothing in his path and toss them into a hamper in the corner of the room.

His eyes land on the small, smiling doll shaped after his teacher, sitting on the bed underneath the window.

It’s almost like his teacher is still there, looking after his son.

“If you’re going to watch, you should tell him to clean up once in a while,” he reprimands the doll.

It doesn’t reply, but he assumes it would have been sarcastic anyway, so it is probably just as well. Silently, he slips back out of the window, leaving it shut and locked as though he’d never been there.