Chapter Text
Kakashi Hatake pulls his finger out of his mouth and holds it to the frigid air. The wind howls in response, and the left side of his finger prickles. He looks back at his first mate, “Wind’s now blowing starboard, Iruka.”
The man, dark skinned with a prominent scar over his nose, adjust the steering wheel with an “Aye, cap.” He slowly weaves through huge sand rocks, careful to not even touch even one.
Kakashi turns his eyes back forward to the shifting frozen sand. The only color for miles is blue, an awry blue that clashes with the cerulean sky, and in the seemingly middle of nowhere their black warship slowly chugs alongside the waves.
His ship is of a simple Earthen design, black rocky metal that bears the wear and tear of sand surrounding a wooden frame and deck. Silver trim lines the sides and sharpens the whole look; a painted over seal is barely conspicuous on the side. The ship’s composition is just right so that if they have need, the earth bender crew can force it to travel much quicker than the engine can. This particular ship wears a legacy of blood, and Kakashi often wonders if he’ll ever be freed of it.
The bloodstains on the deck that refuse to fade would probably say no.
He coughs, despite the fact he has a mask over his face blocking any dust, simply bothered by an old feeling of caustic air lingering in his lungs.
From the eagle nest meters above in the sky, a young boy Yukuo quickly scales down the ladder and jumps as soon as he knows his ankles won’t snap. “Captain,” Kakashi feels himself freeze at the address as the boy catches his breath, “there’s something in the sands ahead. I’ve never seen anything like it. It almost looks like solid ice.”
Iruka’s better at this type of interaction—just because Kakashi might have accepted this boy into his crew after losing a bet doesn’t negate the fact that the last child he’d dealt with he’d done so by slitting his neck. Sensing his apprehension, Iruka hands off the wheel and strides up to them. He laughs warmly at the boy, “Maybe we should pick up Yukuo some glasses next time we stop in Ba Sing Se.” He ruffles Yukuo’s hair and Yukuo swats at him.
“I know what I saw,” he puffs out his cheeks, and Kakashi’s reminded of another boy from another time, with different hair but the same bright eyes. “Perfect ice without a single blemish, just barely visible over the sand. Like the ice my father bought from one of the Southern Water Tribes for his wedding.”
Kakashi knows he won’t see it with the waves acting alive, but he still squints at the horizon, ignoring the boy’s face. “How far away?” He asks curtly.
“Two and a half Air Nation warships away,” the boy replies, and oh if he only knew what his foolish mouth was saying.
Kakashi can’t suppress the images that flood into his mind; his minds eyes replays the recorded scenes like a broken record—giant warships that blot out the entire sun and sky, with huge wings that the Airbenders use to jump down from onto their unsuspecting enemies’ heads...
And then suddenly he’s standing on one of those wings in the sky, an air bender on either side holding his arms and the worst one of all in front of him. The man has a bandage over his left eye and arm, but his right still works perfectly. With the speed and grace only Airbenders possess, the man takes a Kunai and scratches out Kakashi’s left eye.
He screams, nerve betraying him, because never in his life has Kakashi Hatake, youngest captain of the Earth Kingdom Imperial Fleet ever, not been able to see a way out. His teammates are lying beside him in equally concerning pools of blood and all Kakashi can see is red, red, red. Obito’s eyes are gouged out and two black holes stare lifelessly into the sky. Rin’s stomach is blown open, budding tattoos a haunting reminder, and Kakashi wants to murder them all.
Then— sudden weightlessness. He’s been thrown overboard and the only end imaginable is excruciating pain as every bone in his body breaks...
He turns to Iruka with the smallest of flinches, concealing his inner turmoil, “Tell Gurui to prepare to stop. I’m checking it out.”
Because if there’s one thing Kakashi knows, providence is for the weak.
The warship slows down and the soon Kakashi can see the anomaly in the sand. He’s not sure why, but his heart is pounding in his chest and it’s no longer a choice to go forward. With once prestigious robes billowing behind him, Kakashi and Iruka board a small two-man rowing boat and earthbend their way towards the ice sphere.
Before even touching it he knows it’s some how ice, perfect in the way natural ice simply cannot be. It’s looks like glass, perfectly-see through with a dark core. He touches it anyway and the ice seems to thrum with an ancient whisper. “What is this? A battle scar left on the sand from the war?
Which doesn’t make sense, because there shouldn’t have been any battles fought here, let alone Waterbenders in the shared sand ocean between the Earth Kingdoms and the Fire Clans.
Iruka has no answers, and together they start scrambling up the ice, digging their soldier boots into the ice to find the smallest traction.
It’s only when Kakashi stands on top of the sphere, able to see his warship to the south, the sun to the east, and Iruka to the left, does his blood freeze.
Underneath them, buried in the center of a perfect ice sphere, is a truth so asphyxiating that his entire being starts fluctuating somewhere between irrationality and fear. The gravity of this situation tears through his mind, a certain death in his pulse.
It’s a body. A child no more than six, with skin so pale it looks blue and long midnight hair. Closed eyes make him (her?) look like a sleeping princess from a fairy tale, and oh God, is this a tomb?
Iruka’s breath hitches, “Dragons above...?"
Kakashi starts backing up slowly, let the dead rest, and is about to turn tail and take his chances landing a ten meter jump onto the boat when the first crack forms with a groan, cleanly bisecting the sphere into two hemispheres. The crack, like the ice, is too perfect to be natural—as if a god took a sword and cut through steamed tofu. There’s a concerning blue light that starts streaming from the child and escaping through the crack, sending a message to the heavens and broadcasting their location to anyone within a few kilometers.
This time Kakashi grabs Iruka’s arm and jumps, mind carefully filtered not to even think about that day years ago. They land on the boat, rocking it violently, and retreat away a careful few meters. The ice has started to splinter wildly, and they dodge icicles that fancy a new profession as lethal senbon.
As quickly as it starts, it seems to end. The delicate webbing of cracks holds and the horrible sound stops, but they’d be foolish to expect nothing else to go wrong.
The sphere gives one last groan before the entire thing seems to disintegrate before Kakashi’s very eye. The small pieces of ice fall into the sands below, melding and sifting, before being swept away with the tides.
Kakashi would find it a little melancholy if not for the pale body that simply falls to the sands below and rapidly begins to be pulled under. One of the greatest warnings the Earth Kingdom instills upon their children is the dangers of the sand sea. It’s supposedly one of the most painful ways of dying, as freezing sand forces it’s way into your mouth and floods through your lungs, slowly suffocating you until it explodes your stomach from inside out.
Impossible to escape...
Kakashi has no illusions of grandeur or martyr complex, but without hesitation he finds himself frantically vaulting out of the boat and onto the sands, precariously balancing as he attempts to wrestle control of the sand and bend. Astonishingly quickly, he acclimates enough to feel a shred of confidence, and lurches forwards, ignoring Iruka’s worried “Kakashi!”
The sand chafes against his uncovered skin, and the sand at his feet fights against him with every step. Kakashi hasn’t struggled this much against his own damn element since the academy, and since he’d prefer not to think about the academy he simply rages harder at the tiny pieces of earth.
“He’s dead anyway!” Iruka yells, “I swear if you’re just trying to commit some sort of noble suicide, I will end you! ” It probably would have been funny if Kakashi wasn’t actually worried about losing his concentration and being exploded one grain of sand at a time.
He almost loses his balance and falls in the exact place the child had, but at the last second he gives up a little control. The sand rushes over his ankles and planets him in the ground, but that’s as far as Kakashi allows it to go. He scans beneath him, desperately hoping to see a flash of white or black or any color besides the all consuming blue.
There! His sharp eye locks on to single black hair swaying in the air, and Kakashi immediately plunges his arms into the sand, careful to keep the sand around his feet the consistency of concrete. His fingertips scrape against fabric and with a triumphant sound he winds his fingers the sleeves of a robe. His eye widens at the feeling of the material, luxurious silk that hasn’t been created since the Fire Clans were massacred.
Tenuously bending the sand around the small body, Kakashi slowly draws the child to him. His heart beats erratically, and more than once he almost loses his grip. Biting his tongue, he pulls and pulls and his arms feel like they’re tearing at the joints. When ebony tufts of hair finally peak through the sands Kakashi’s fight returns with even more vigor.
What he doesn’t expect, however, is a pale fist the size of his palm latching on to the green tunic beneath his armor —pulling him down.
Somewhere between the blue sky of the living and the blue sands of the dead, Kakashi must’ve blacked out, because the next thing he remembers is the feeling of weightlessness. Except, it’s not like free fall or being in water; it feels like his body is being agonizingly compressed from single every angle possible. He feels like he’s being buried alive, and then realizes, Huh, I kind of am.
Vaguely he feels a strenuous pressure holding on to his ankle, suspending him upside down under the sand and keeping him from sinking down to whatever bottom exists. He sends a silent thanks to Iruka, who must’ve maneuvered as quickly as possible to his location and caught his leg before he fell in.
He shakes his head, trying to get this terrible nightmare out of his head. And then his eye snaps open because he’s literally underwater except it’s sand and there’s no way he should be able to shake his head. And because nothing makes sense anymore, instead of his last remaining eye being gouged out by sand, all he sees is black. Kakashi takes a tentative breath and when biting air floods his lungs he realizes he’s in some sort of air pocket.
Then there’s a faint blue glow pulsing through the sand and as it comes closer soon the entire little pocket is being illuminated in blue. Kakashi realizes it’s the child poking through with eyes still glued shut and —wait— glowing?
A prickle of fear twinges in his spine and the hair on the back of his neck would be risen if not for the sand. Because while Kakashi has fought hundreds of benders and killed fearsome child warriors, never has he faced anything close to a child’s corpse that bleeds blue from the eyes.
But before he can fling out the rock dagger hidden under his jawline and mask, the blue of those eyes seems to swirl away from the body like an aurora from the night sky. It settles down right across from him, at the opposite edge of the air pocket.
And then suddenly he’s staring at the blue wispy figure of Rin Nohara.
She looks at Kakashi with sad eyes and he feels like he’s been knifed in the gut. And the first thing she says isn’t to acknowledge Kakashi’s existence or even herself. Instead she simply reaches out her blue hand and touches the child on the forehead, whispering, “So this is my little successor.”
Tears are flooding to Kakashi’s eye, and even the ruined one manages to tear up. Something in his chest burns like he’s been branded and his breath catches.
“He’s so young,” she murmurs, and then glances at Kakashi, “Do you ever remember being that young?”
“Rin,” he chokes out. “Rin.”
She looks amused for a second, eyes crinkling and oh God, how could he ever have thought she was ugly? She’s too vibrant, too beautiful and full of life.
“Kakashi.”
“What is— why —how... how are you here?”
“This is me,” she nods at the boy. “And I am him.”
“Rin... Rin...” He can’t stop saying her name. “Rin...”
“Hey Kakashi.” And suddenly she’s right in front of him, taking his wet face between her hands and her smile is brighter than a thousand suns. “Treat him well. Your time’s not over yet.”
She’s fading now and way to quickly and everything is going to fast and— “I love you!”
Kakashi’s voice cracks with no one to hear.
And suddenly the sands above them seem to split and the blue sky is born in front of Kakashi’s eyes. The boy is safely tucked between his arms and Kakashi can feel Iruka pulling hard on his ankle. Soon a second pair of hands joins and with their combined strength they manage to pull Kakashi out of the sands and into the boat.
Both Iruka and Gurui notice something is off, and his tears have yet to dry, but neither makes a comment.
“Thank you,” Kakashi rasps out softly to both of them.
Iruka smiles, “No problem Captain. I’m just happy I don’t have to kill you.”
Gurui simply inclines his head, “So who’s this that makes our captain jump ship?” He takes a step forward and brushes the hair out of the boy’s face, and then shock has him jumping back. “An Uchiha?”
No. This cannot be happening. Anyone else. Please. Haven’t the fates played with his life enough?
Kakashi turns the boy to face him and is hit with such nostalgia he might as well never have a nightmare again because real life is infinitely worse. Familiar, long black hair the color of onyx frames a doll face the color of snow; he’s draped in white mourning silk robes and a black and red sash that looks like fire over a lake and child sized armor that should never ever be made in the first place.
Kakashi almost drops the boy in shock before Rin’s words have him holding on even tighter.
“Uchiha,” he breathes out, agreeing. And it’s almost a curse — because Uchiha is synonymous with Firebender and Firebender is synonymous with dead.
“What am I supposed to do?” He ask both of them, panic in his usually stoic voice. Firebenders were wiped out about a hundred years ago. What the hell is he supposed to do?
Iruka tries to be optimistic, “We’ll figure out something.”
"He’s the Avatar," Kakashi screams.
“OK,” Gurui says, “Calm down. We probably won’t figure something out, actually.” Kakashi glares. “But we’re not about to leave you, Cap. Whatever happens—even if you were to take in some degenerate Airbender. We’d still follow you into the pits of the Air Nation and back.”
Iruka puts a hand on his back. “He’s right, you know? There are worse things than finding the literal manifestation of our bending and the last Firebender in the entire world.”
Kakashi doesn’t know if Iruka is being serious or not, because no, he’s pretty sure there’s literally nothing worse than finding this kid, but their words of faith mean a lot to him, he realizes.
“You guys better not chance your mind when the Air Nation paints a target on our backs,” he drawls shakily and the three of them laugh.
Soon the warship pulls next to them and Yukuo waves from the eagle’s nest. As Kakashi climbs up the ladder, the boy over his shoulder and facing away from the ship, a little tug on the back of his tunic makes him jump.
A voice older than time but curbed with the softness and pitch of an a child rings out with surprising authority, only slightly accented, “Where is the ocean, Kakashi?” The words are sad and lonely, out of place in a child’s mouth.
When he reaches on the deck, Kakashi lets the boy down. Kakashi squats down so he’s level with the boy and meets blood red eyes flashing with slight annoyance. “Gone. Our ocean dried up a long time ago.”
“Just like my people,” the boy stares past Kakashi at the dried ocean, eyes dejected. And for the first time in a long time, Kakashi finds himself hungry for someone else’s vengeance. “Rin told me who you are. My name is Sasuke Uchiha, second son of the late Firelord.”
His eyes flicker towards Kakashi again, tomoes that are found only in the royal family’s bloodline spin into focus and Kakashi’s blood chills again.
“But the Uchiha are all dead,” he closes his eyes. “So you can just call me Sasuke.”