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Being born is not fun at all. It is especially shocking when you aren’t expecting it.
Well, Kakashi supposed that no one expects to be born, and it’s probably very shocking to everyone, but not being able to remember the first time this disruptive and unfortunate event occurred in his life he could not compare.
Being born a second time was very surprising to Kakashi indeed, as he had previously been under the assumption that the dark, liquid emptiness where his only sensations were distant booming sounds that might resemble speech echoing up, or down, or interdimensionally from the land of the living that he had found himself in for the past timeless stretch of time was, in fact, death.
So when, out of nowhere, Kakashi was rudely expelled from the peaceful nothingness he had taken for eternity, and roughly squished through some lady’s vagina out into the light and noise and chaos of the world, he did what all babies do, he screamed with all his lungs.
From this very first moment of life, Canis Black was not an ordinary child. But in some respects he was perfectly ordinary. He had to relearn to walk with brand new legs, to speak a new language with a new mouth. He slept when he was tired, and cried when he was hungry, and in general, did not bother to question it.
At two years old, Canis Black was not Hatake Kakashi. He was his own person, a curious, precocious child who loved his father more than anyone or anything ever, just as sincerely as Hatake Kakashi had loved his in that exact same manner. Canis was not Kakashi, and he would probably have thought that his distant memories of being all grown up and a ninja were only make-believe if he did not also remember being born, which he was quite certain most children didn’t, not having remembered it at all before. He also remembered his mother, the warmth of her arms surrounding him and the loving sound of her voice. She was killed by death eaters not long after he was born, and though it seemed unfair that both he and his past self should have lost a mother so young, he was happy at least to remember her.
Sirius Black, Canis felt absolutely certain, was the best father there ever was or could be. He could turn into a dog, for one thing, which automatically made him superior to all other fathers. (Uncle James could turn into a stag and Uncle Peter could turn into a rat, but Canis’s father could turn into a dog and that was so much cooler.) But even aside from that, Canis’s father was the best. He was funny, and he always seemed to have time to play with Canis and teach him things. He was also really smart, but in a dumb sort of way, and he helped Canis to do stupid things more often then he stopped him from doing them. But he also made sure Canis didn’t blow himself up or anything. Mostly. Canis wasn’t dead yet at least.
But Sirius never ever seemed to be too tired or too busy for his son, even though Canis knew he had to be sometimes. There was a war going on, Canis knew, it was a civil war, which was always messy, and it didn’t seem to be going very well. Canis’s father was very good at magic, and Canis had an idea that he was especially good at fighting and important in the war (and that filled his little heart with pride, warm and bright and happy, though perhaps a little more cautious than it was the first time he was two years old and had a different hero for a father). So Canis tried not to be too much trouble, but he never felt that he needed to, and he was sure that nothing in the world made his father as happy as himself and spending time with him. Canis’s father, without a doubt, loved him and treasured him and would forever and ever, not anything he did, or was, or might become, just Canis.
Canis and his father were both very sad when his mother died, but they did their best to comfort each other, and they succeeded pretty well. And for the most part, the first two years of Canis Kakashi Hatake Black’s second life were the happiest he’d ever had.