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Kakashi was both six years old and a chunin the first time he went hungry.
He’d never been seriously hungry before. His upbringing had been unconventional, to say the least (the big hint there was a six year old being made a chunin), but the staying fed side of things had always been covered by his father. The cabinets, at the least, had held boxes of granola bars and the fridge was always stocked with eggs and milk. If the milk was a little questionable, that only helped Kakashi develop an iron stomach. There were other essential bits of childhood, though, that had definitely been more of a learning curve for him.
For example, he remembered being around three years old the first time it had been brought to his attention that most children had more than one parent. “Where’s your mom?” a blonde boy lisped at him one day at the park.
“What’s a mom?” Kakashi replied, totally lost. He privately wondered if a “mom” was a type of play equipment, which he likely wouldn’t get to use after today anyway.
(The only reason he was at a park at all was because Gai’s father was looking after Kakashi while Sakumo was on an infiltration mission. Kakashi had thought that the playground was a new type of training field and had been winding up to fling a kunai at the tire swing before Maito Dai had leapt in to stop him. Gai had been forced to demonstrate what to do on the slide while Kakashi burned with humiliation at his ignorance.)
Usually he knew all the answers; it was kind of his thing. Strangers whispered about him and said prodigy and genius in grave, respectful tones whenever it looked like he wasn’t paying attention to them. He wasn’t used to people telling him things he didn't know. He considered it especially rude that the other little boy had laughed at his bewildered response. Not able to bear the indignity of being taught anything by someone younger than him, Kakashi had ground the blonde boy’s face into the mud, then stalked away haughtily while Dai and Gai scrambled to catch up with him.
He repeated his question to his father, though, once he had returned from his mission. His father never made fun of him. He treated Kakashi seriously, like a shinobi.
His father had looked sad upon being asked to define the word “mom.” “A mom is a female identifying parent, like I’m a male identifying parent,” Sakumo said, rubbing his eyes the way he did whenever he was very tired. “You see, Kakashi, a lot of families have both a mother and a father, although there are some with two mothers and some with two fathers. Some families have more than that, and some families don’t have any parents at all, and are made up of relatives or friends that become family. Some families, like ours, only have one parent. No kind of family is better or worse than another. They’re just a little different.”
“Oh,” Kakashi said slowly, trying to imagine what it would be like to have a woman living with him and his father. He had a hard enough time with one parent bugging him to make his bed and eat his vegetables, and always yelling, Stop throwing weapons indoors! If there was a mother-person around as well, he’d be outnumbered. It would be a tactical nightmare. “Did I ever have a mother?” he asked, as a matter of curiosity.
“Yes!” Sakumo replied, looking stricken. “I thought you knew that. I’m sorry, Kakashi, I guess I’ve really messed this up. Your mother is the woman in that picture over there.” He jutted his chin at a photograph hanging on the wall. It showed a beautiful dark haired kunoichi holding a dog up and laughing as the puppy tried to lick her nose. Kakashi had noticed the picture before, because he noticed everything, but he had never been particularly interested in her identity. It had never seemed to matter. Judging from Sakumo’s reaction, though, that had clearly been an error in judgement.
“Oh,” Kakashi said. He felt as though he had made some kind of mistake and now needed to fix it, like when he messed up the timing on an exploding tag. His father always expected him to learn from his mistakes and never, ever repeat them. “What...what was she like?”
Sakumo had the exact same expression that he wore whenever he went on missions that required lots of blades and whispered conferences with the Hokage. “She was an Inuzuka,” he answered, as if that should explain everything. “This house was crawling with dogs once. She even had a summon contract with them, so that they could fight with her.”
“Like Sandaime and his monkey?” Kakashi said, moving to sit beside Sakumo on the couch. His father appeared to be in need of comfort.
“Exactly,” his father answered, looking pleased at Kakashi’s actions. He put his arm around Kakashi’s shoulders and drew him closer, and Kakashi snuggled in. Open affection like this was a rare event. His father was more of a brisk-pat-on-the-head type, and then only when Kakashi did something really impressive. “You’ll be able to sign a contract like hers someday, if you want to, and have ninken of your own. I think she would have liked that, you being like her. You already are.”
“How am I like her?” Kakashi asked, looking at the picture on the wall more critically. He supposed he had the same nose as his mother. Otherwise, he thought he favored his father more.
“You both like to read,” Sakumo said, rolling his eyes fondly. “She could get lost in books for hours on end. And you train like her, so focused and fierce. She was a good fighter and I respected her for it. I certainly would have never wanted to be pitted against her.
“But there was more to her than that.” His father’s voice went wistful, kind of shadowy. “She loved cherry cake. She couldn’t make them herself because everything she tried to cook always burned, but whenever someone brought us one as a gift, she would eat the whole thing by herself. If I tried to take a slice, she’d throw a kunai at my head. That’s how I got this,” Sakumo laughed, pointing ruefully to a small scar on the back of his hand, near his thumb.
Kakashi drew his finger across the raised line lightly. Scars were something he understood far too well. “So she liked dogs and cherries. What else?” he prompted, wanting to prolong the conversation for as long as possible.
“Hmmm. She was obsessed with peonies,” Sakumo replied easily enough. His smile was sad. “She said they were nature’s lace. She had peonies embroidered on all her clothes, even on the inside of her tactical vests. And she always smelled like them, despite the fact that she spent a lot of her time covered in mud and dog hair. All of the flowerbeds in the Hatake compound were filled to the brim with them; she wouldn’t let me plant anything else. The dogs hated the damn things, said that the flowers made it harder to smell. But she would just laugh and try to find somewhere else to plant even more.”
“Where are all the peonies now?” Kakashi wondered aloud, hoping to get just one more answer. He’d never seen any before around their house.
Sakumo pulled himself out of their comfortable hug and stood, and Kakashi’s heart twisted. What had he done wrong? Was he being too much of a baby, asking all these silly questions? “They died,” Sakumo growled, his voice harsh and grieved, and Kakashi fought to keep himself from shrinking back. Ninjas never pulled away from violence. “All of them. The spring after we buried her, I looked for the peonies to bloom. I thought it would be like having her back, just a little. But they never bloomed again.”
Kakashi looked at his father’s back as he walked away, and his stomach clenched in a way he’d never felt before. He felt...empty, somehow. “Wait!” he cried out. “Father...what was her name?”
His father paused, and the muscles in his back shifted, as if Kakashi’s words had pricked him like a senbon. “Kaori. Your mother was Hatake Kaori.” He looked over his shoulder, and while his eyes were pained, his smile was reassuringly real. “And she loved you very much, Kakashi. Never forget it or doubt it.” Then he went outside, and Kakashi heard his father busy himself with chopping wood.
Kakashi was six when he finally understood what the sensation in his stomach had been back on the day when he’d first learned about his mother. He was on a mission with Minato-sensei, along with gentle Rin and that stupid Obito. They’d been running for a few days, trying to get back to Konoha with an urgent message for the Hokage, and his stomach ached. He finally realized that it was hunger he was feeling. What he’d thought of as hunger before now was a pale imitation of this cramping, longing pain.
It was strange. It was the exact same sensation. Why would he feel hungry when he thought about the mother he’d never met? He certainly didn’t want to eat her.
He understood it later, when he stood on the blood stained tatami in his father’s bedroom and realized that he was now an orphan. It wasn’t precisely hunger that he’d felt. The feeling was closer to longing, a craving. He’d wanted desperately to know more about the mother he’d never met. And now, standing over his father’s body, he knew that he would never walk beside this strong, talented man again, would never hear his father’s laugh or see his eyes crinkle up in pride. He ached to hear his father’s voice, to be surrounded by strong arms that smelled of sandalwood and safety.
He hurt with the hollow longing of it, and knew that this want would never be satisfied.
That spring, the peonies in the long-barren flower beds of the Hatake compound bloomed with hundreds and hundreds of flowers. The gentle scent rose heavy from the rosy blossoms that hung ghost-like from the dark green stems. The aroma was almost strong enough to wipe away the rusty, metallic smell of Sakumo’s blood from Kakashi’s memory, but not quite.
The flowers bloomed the year his father and mother were finally reunited in death, and then they never bloomed again. Kakashi moved out of the compound and never looked back, for there was nothing left to see.
…………………………………..
The years passed, and more people were added to the long parade of lost loved ones in Kakashi’s empty, aching heart. Obito with his ugly goggles and his faith and his shouts about teamwork was gone, broken beneath a boulder that seemed to crush Kakashi’s soul along with it. He swore then that he would never lose his last teammate. He couldn't stand the thought of not having Rin with her soothing hands and soft voice always beside him. And then before he could even take a breath, she was staring up at him with his own lightning piercing her kind heart, and her blood dripped heavy and hot from his fingertips. He intentionally drew away from Gai, from Kurenai and Asuma and Tenzou, because he couldn’t stand the idea of losing them as well.
He told himself that he didn’t care, that he wasn’t lonely. He had always been a good liar, especially to himself.
He thought things were turning around when Minato-sensei told him about Kushina’s pregnancy. Maybe this time someone would be added to Kakashi’s life, and not taken away. Maybe he could be good enough, deserving enough, to actually keep someone this time. It didn’t seem like too much to ask, not when he was working himself to the bone in the darkness of Anbu. Surely this time he could be enough.
Then Minato-sensei and Kushina-chan were taken by the roars of a demon, and their little boy, blonde like his father and fiery like his mother, but unacknowledged and despised by virtually everyone else, disappeared into the hungry belly of an orphanage.
The Sandaime wouldn’t allow Kakashi to even visit Naruto, let alone take care of him like he really wanted. He argued as much as he could without being executed for it, but Hiruzen said it would make the boy easier to identify if Kakashi was seen to take an interest in him. He could have killed Sandaime for that bit of cruelty, but if he did, he would lose Konoha.
If he lost Konoha, all the loss, all the wounds, would have been in vain. What would he have been fighting for all this time? What would his parents have died for, his team, his teacher, if not for the defense of the community? He couldn’t make their deaths meaningless. For all its faults, and there were many, Konoha also held Tenzou, Gai, and poor little Naruto crying alone in his secondhand crib.
So Kakashi stayed and he served, but he felt dead inside, empty of everything but that persistent, restless longing. The smell of sandalwood drifted across his nose at the oddest of times. Occasionally, he found himself craving cherries. It made him sick, and eating was sometimes too difficult to attempt. He washed his hands and killed and ached. He walked around the town that he loved and hated in equal measure and watered his plants and fed his dogs and dodged Gai’s boisterous attempts at friendship.
And all the time, ceaselessly, he felt hollow.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………...
He almost didn’t stop; he shuddered when he remembered that. He’d caught a flash of bright blue among the shattered remains of a house one rainy night as he was running a patrol and he almost didn’t stop. Nobody could have survived in this portion of the city, he reasoned, where the Kyuubi had hit first and hardest. It was probably nothing. Then something, some hint of prescience, perhaps, made him pause and take a second look.
The bit of blue seemed to be a piece of cloth upon closer inspection, and it was moving counter to the rain and wind. Was it caught on something? As he got closer, Kakashi could see that the piece of blue seemed to be an old yukata, worn by a younger boy. The boy looked up at Kakashi as he approached, his brown eyes glazed by fever and fear. He was soaking wet, his high cheekbones gaunt, and there was a scar on his nose that stood out harshly against his unhealthy pallor.
Then this boy, who wouldn’t tip the scale at a hundred pounds even if he filled his pockets with rocks, looked up at Kakashi with his fever-bright eyes and said, “May I help you, Anbu-san?” It was said politely, as if he was offering a welcome visitor a cup of tea in a warm and bright living room.
It took Kakashi an achingly long moment to answer the boy, he was knocked so off balance. This kid was offering to help him , Friend-killer Kakashi, the Hound? He’d never seen anything so pitiful as this child before in all his life. He wouldn’t treat a dog like this, and the kid didn’t even seem to know that it was wrong, that he deserved more and better. There was no telling how long he’d been suffering from the look of things, and suffering silently.
Kakashi clenched his fist in a sudden rush of rage, angry at the world for hurting this kid and making him so afraid that he felt that he couldn’t ask for help, angry that this child would offer his own politeness to a killer first in a strange kind of sacrifice. His courtesy was a shield, and Kakashi could tell by the hopeless look in the boy’s eyes that he thought it would not be enough to keep him safe.
Kakashi hadn’t (willingly) touched anyone since Rin had died. Despite his lurking, he’d never even held Naruto. He knew now that his hands were capable of offering nothing but harm, whatever his actual intentions. But he found himself gingerly placing his hand on this boy’s shoulder anyway, lightly, lest the old blood on his fingers transfer to the worn blue cloth and pale skin. The kid flinched at the touch, and Kakashi was afraid that he’d hurt him, despite his care. He kept his voice as gentle as he could. “When was the last time you ate?” he asked, feeling his own hunger for things he would never have again.
The boy swallowed hard and hesitated before answering. Kakashi watched as lies flew across the honest, sad face and then were discarded out of prudence. “I don’t know, Anbu-san,” he rasped around the dryness in his throat.
This gave Kakashi another clue about the child’s condition, and his fingers tightened a little in anxiety. “When was the last time you slept?” he asked next, looking at the circles resting above the scarred nose.
“I don’t know, Anbu-san.”
Worse and worse. Kakashi opened his sharingan behind his mask, and saw that the boy’s chakra was tamped down, nothing more than a muted candle in the darkness. He was dangerously cold and weak. “How long have you been wet?”
The boy didn’t even bother taking the time to think about it this time. “I don’t know, Anbu-san,” he said, as if he was following along to a meaningless litany. Then, strangely, with a touch of realness , he added, “It doesn’t matter.”
Kakashi crouched down to bring them eye to eye, uncaring of the rain that was seeping under his rain slicker into his dry underclothes. “Why doesn’t it matter?”
The silence was heavy. Then the boy said in a long sigh, as if the words themselves were physically heavy and had to slip down the letters to make it past his lips, “My parents are dead.”
For just the blink of an eye that somehow felt far longer, Kakashi was standing on bloodstained tatami once again, sandalwood and copper heavy in the air. He was alone and empty, knowing with a coldness in his chest that he hadn’t been enough to keep his father with him.
Then he was back in the cold rain with this boy, who had never hurt anyone in his entire life before. Why was he being punished like this? Kakashi knew why fate had treated him the way it did; he was a killer, and worse, most of the time he didn’t even mind. But this boy was innocent, purity shining through every pore. And, Kakashi wondered through a troubling thickness in his throat, how long had he been abandoned? It seemed to him that Konoha had gained two new orphans on the day the Kyuubi attacked: Naruto, and now this child.
Kakashi couldn’t help Naruto; the Sandaime wouldn’t allow it. But he could help this boy that looked up at him so muzzily with his ripped and sodden yukata and his limbs as thin as firewood kindling. Kakashi put his hand on the boy’s forehead and nearly winced at the sheer heat that was rolling off of it; he could feel it even through his glove. The boy made a noise almost like a sob at the feeling of Kakashi’s hand, his limbs shaking from cold and shock. It was clear that if the boy didn’t receive medical help soon, he would die.
His mind made up, Kakashi gathered the boy up in his arms and took him away from the demolished house, running as fast as he could back to the center of Konoha.
“What...what? Where are you taking me?” the boy cried out weakly between coughs. Kakashi heard a distinct rattle in the boy’s chest; he didn’t like that, not one bit. He could also feel the terror in the grip of the boy’s hand on his vest. “To the hospital,” he said shortly. “You’re sick and cold and malnourished.”
The boy looked up at him, his face showing the same confusion that Kakashi remembered from the day when he’d asked his father what a mother was. “But why?”
There was only one answer to give, even though a part of Kakashi knew that he didn’t fully understand it. All he knew was that this boy still had a chance to do good. “It matters,” he said, trying to impress the words on the boy’s heart. “ You matter.”
Striding into the hospital, Kakashi was glad to hand the small body over to the medic on duty. This person would take care of the boy. She would ease his fever and give him clean clothes and a warm meal and tuck him into a dry bed to sleep. Even with all that, and they were good things, important things, Kakashi knew that a healer could do nothing for the pain and loss in the boy’s heart. He ached to do more, but he had no idea what that might be. Kakashi stood and watched the boy until they took him away on a gurney, feeling as if he owed him that much. He couldn’t help anyone, not really. But he could watch and he could bear witness.
It wasn’t enough, of course, but it was all that he had to give.
………………………………..
Over the next several years, Kakashi rarely ever stayed in Konoha for longer than a day or two at a time; he’d come home, eat, feed his plants, hopefully do a load of laundry and scrub away the worst of the mildew in his bathroom, and then head back out again. Sandaime had stepped into the role of Hokage after Minato-sensei’s death, and he had immediately started giving some of the nastiest missions available to Kakashi.
The jounin knew that he wasn’t technically being punished for anything; he was given those missions because he was a prodigy, a genius, and could do the job better and faster than anyone else. It felt like some form of penance, anyway. Kakashi accepted and even welcomed the pace, the wounds, and the loneliness as his just reward for not protecting his friends and his family. Whenever he was home, though, in between the plants and the laundry, he always checked in on Naruto...and on the boy.
Despite all of the Hokage’s grand words about keeping an eye on them, both of the village’s new orphans were shamefully neglected. Naruto lived first in an orphanage where he was kept separate from the other children, as if he were diseased, and then was sent to live in a miniscule apartment with only an elderly woman to provide him with care and companionship. When the woman died of old age, she was not replaced, and Naruto lived alone from then on. Kakashi kept an eye on him whenever he could. He dropped coins in Naruto’s path. New clothes mysteriously appeared on his washing line and sandals on the mat by the front door.
He also made sure that everyone in Anbu knew that if anything happened to Naruto because they had neglected their duty, they would (or wouldn’t, whichever the case may be) live to regret it. Putting the fear of god into reluctant hearts didn’t seem to be enough for the child of his sensei, but Kakashi felt helpless to do more. Jiraiya could have done far more, damn him.
The other orphan was marginally easier to deal with, since Kakashi wasn’t being deliberately railroaded by Sandaime’s zeitgeist. Kakashi eventually learned (after breaking into the records room but nobody seemed to notice or care) that the boy’s name was Umino Iruka, a refugee from Mist. Upon his recovery from pneumonia, Iruka was chucked into an apartment in a genin dorm, where he was younger than everyone else and therefore excluded. He, like Naruto (and like Kakashi) was alone. Iruka started training at the Academy as a pre-genin, and seemed to be doing well in his classes, and to be liked by his classmates.
For supposedly being a genius, though, it took Kakashi a stupidly long time to figure out that the boy was still starving. Apparently Iruka never received any monetary assistance from the village, such as Naruto got as a monthly stipend. Iruka was already a genin by the time Kakashi figured it out, though, and he cursed his own stupidity. Kakashi immediately dipped into his savings and started setting up D-rank missions for Iruka’s team, so that the boy would have some means of earning money.
He watched closely, because he still noticed everything when he had the time and space to see it, and he saw that Iruka was clever at staying beneath notice. It was an off-shoot of the survival instinct that led a sick child to be polite to an Anbu stranger. Iruka was ridiculously talented, especially with seals (and Kakashi often thought about how pleased Minato-sensei would have been to have had such a boy as his student), but apparently no one ever noticed, not even Iruka’s rather bland jounin-sensei. Iruka’s spine could have snapped for all its straightness, as he tried desperately to keep anyone from getting close to him or realizing that he was anything less than perfection. In perfection there was obscurity. That ability for camouflage and deflection would have made him a very good assassin, but Kakashi never would have brought Iruka to the Intelligence Division’s attention. He would not allow his world to stain that shining innocence that was hidden, but still burned, in the depths of Iruka’s eyes.
Kakashi was glad that Iruka had a few connections, despite his best efforts to be unnoticed. He was as close to Asuma as their differences in age and rank would allow, and Anko, when she was home and not knee deep in a viper pit, could usually be counted on to provide a laugh and a spar. Kakashi liked Mizuki far less, but didn’t have any reason for his lurking distaste for the man. He was slimy, but lots of nin were. They had to be.
So Iruka wasn’t totally alone, not technically, but the Anbu captain that watched him was unhappy anyway. These people were scraps, but Kakashi, who lived on less, knew that they were still not enough for a boy like Iruka.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
The years passed in a blur of blood and hand signals and a growing horde of dogs. Kakashi watched and wallowed in apathy and yearned for cherry cake. He saw Naruto, obnoxiously dressed in orange and refusing to be invisible, raise havoc in a desperate bid just to be seen. He saw Iruka, polite and forever restrained, loneliness pooling in his eyes and occasionally leaking into his words, make a life for himself as well as he could. One of Kakashi’s favorite sights in the world was to walk past Ichiraku’s stall and see the normally benign teacher seated there, slurping noodles and cackling at something Anko had muttered caustically under her breath. It didn’t happen often, but Kakashi treasured those moments just the same, and rejoiced in them for Iruka’s sake.
And above all, Kakashi was aware of the fact that the boy in the blue yukata had grown up into a man, and a handsome one at that. Only Iruka, out of everyone in Konoha, didn’t seem to know it, and went around blithely unaware of the appreciative gazes he received from man and woman alike. There was something captivating in the graceful curve of Iruka’s neck, holding his head up so proudly despite the strain of his life, something enticing in the spiky exuberance of his ponytail, that called to Kakashi. He wondered what those lips could do when they were not being restrained by convention, if the pain in the eyes could be burned away by anger or passion. Kakashi wondered if there would ever come a day when he would be able to witness those changes up close.
But such things, like most good things, were not for him.
Then one night, a ward at Naruto’s apartment went off and Kakashi flickered over, already primed to destroy anyone that was messing with the kid. It had happened before; Kakashi had foiled three assassination attempts already that year, let alone the other threats handled by different members of Anbu. He was tired of this poor kid, who had literally nothing , being despised and beaten for no good reason. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep witnessing the abuse without cracking.
But it wasn’t an enemy nin or a drunken lout emboldened by alcohol and a lingering hatred for the Fox’s vessel who had tripped the ward. It was Iruka who was in the apartment, Iruka who was gazing at the barren shelves and empty refrigerator drawers in horror. Kakashi stayed rather guiltily in the shadows, angry with himself for not being able to fix this before Iruka had to be faced with the reminder of his own childhood. He did not know how to offer comfort or explanations, and he rather felt that he didn’t have a right to try.
And a few days later, when the ward pinged again at the back of Kakakahi’s neck, it was Iruka throwing away the spoiled milk and replacing it with fresh, filling the fridge with vegetables and the cabinets with rice and cereal. Each choice was well thought out, and it spoke just as much to Iruka’s experiences as a hungry orphan as anything else. There was nothing that required extensive cooking or complicated techniques, nothing that would spoil quickly. There was even a small carton of ice cream. Iruka, at least, knew that Naruto was still just a child. Kakashi was brought almost to his knees by the kindness. Almost.
He was the picture of indolence when Iruka emerged from the apartment, but his heart was beating fast. He saw that Iruka’s pulse was also thundering, revealed by that damned graceful neck. “Iruka-sensei, what were you doing in Naruto’s apartment?” he asked, playing the role of the distant protector. He was curious to see how Iruka would respond.
“I was putting groceries in his fridge,” Iruka answered defiantly, with perhaps something less than the recommended respect due to a superior. He soldiered on in spite of Kakashi’s raised eyebrow. “I’ll have you know that that boy has been living on instant ramen, Kami only knows for how long. You can take me to the Hokage for breaking in if you want, but I’m not sorry and I’ll do it again if I need to.”
And in that moment, for the first time, Kakashi saw the loneliness burn away from Umino Iruka’s eyes, wiped clean with the force of his well justified indignation. Being a teacher wasn’t just a paycheck to him, like Kakashi had been a paycheck for his teachers (or even his father, who gave him exactly what he needed to survive and rarely anything beyond it). It was...a sacred calling, higher than simple education. Iruka had a duty of care for his students, and by god, he would fulfil it, whatever it cost him.
After a little light flirting that only mostly hid the fact that Kakashi was currently having some kind of emotion induced stroke/meltdown, he flickered away. He had to attempt to preserve his image as the cool, inscrutable ninja, after all.
God, he was so weak.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Perhaps Kakashi could be forgiven, in view of everything, for nearly killing Mizuki.
Normally he would have shown more restraint and left that sort of thing to Ibiki, if only to avoid the mountains of paperwork involved with (unsanctioned) murder. Despite the threat of papercuts, Kakashi absolutely would have killed him and enjoyed himself while doing so, if the cretin hadn’t already been beaten to within an inch of his life by a multitude (Herd? Parliament? A murmuration, maybe?) of Naruto clones. Despite that, Mizuki had a few more broken ribs, a torn Achilles tendon and a skull fracture than what he’d already received from the pre-genin by the time he was dropped off to be interrogated.
The sight of Iruka, surrounded by blood and pierced with a fuma shuriken, would be a frequent visitor in Kakashi’s nightmares. He was furious with himself for not preventing the whole mess in the first place; he’d always suspected that there was something rotten about Mizuki and meant to look into it further, but kept putting it off in favor of buying new kunai and washing the piled dishes in his sink. He hadn’t even known that anything was wrong until a feral and shrieking Naruto had tackled him with a frankly prodigious flying leap and hauled him to Iruka’s side.
Shudders slid down Kakashi’s back as he remembered the tightness in the medic-nins’ voices as they worked on the teacher, the fast movements that spoke of the urgency required in order to keep Iruka alive. It had been close, far too damn close. He had almost lost the chance to learn more about Iruka than his favorite vegetables and regular tea orders. Those were things he could learn from observation (and did, like some kind of creep ). He wanted more, far more. He wanted to see what Iruka’s hair looked like first thing in the morning, to know if he preferred his eggs fried or poached, what song he sang under his breath while he was sweeping the floor and the title of the book he reread every spring.
Most of all, with a desperation that faintly frightened him, he wanted to know what Iruka had thought of the Anbu that had helped him on the worst night of his life. He wondered constantly, exhaustingly, if Iruka would ever be able to care for a person that had first saved him, but then abandoned him.
Well, he wouldn’t abandon him now, and never again in the future. Despite the sidelong glances of the curious hospital staff, Kakashi planted himself in a chair beside Iruka’s bed, and kept watch long after Naruto had fallen asleep. Let the gossip chain whirl to life as people wondered why Kakashi seemed to care so much about Iruka. It’s not like it wasn’t the truth, and if being talked about actually troubled him, he would have gone missing-nin long ago.
Iruka surged awake with an awful croaking scream as he struggled to turn over on his side, to sit up and fight for his student. Kakashi almost fell out of his chair with an undignified squawk, but he managed to collect himself and snap, “Iruka, stop! Lie still!”
He was foolishly gratified when the teacher immediately obeyed him and collapsed back against the sheets, panting from the exertion and pain. “Kakashi,” Iruka cried out, panic etched all over his face, “Naruto? Where’s Naruto?”
Kakashi gathered that Iruka was beyond being soothed by mere words, so he reached out and took Iruka’s chin in his hand ( soft, crooned his hindbrain in approval) and pointed it down so that Naruto’s sleeping form was in easy view. He couldn’t understand how Naruto had slept through the racket the two adults had made, but he was grateful. Selfishly, he wanted this time with Iruka to himself.
He explained what had happened to the bewildered and still frightened teacher, but finally he seemed to make it clear to him that Mizuki was gone and that Naruto (not himself, he waved away Kakashi’s concerns about his injuries with a flick of his hand, and wasn’t that concerning) was safe and whole. Then he gave Kakashi another shock by asking, “Are you okay, Kakashi? You look tired. What are you doing here, anyway?”
He suddenly had the realization that this was part of why, or at least a fair percentage of why, Kakashi couldn’t seem to walk away from the man who had been the boy in the blue yukata. Iruka was selfless to a degree that Kakashi had never known before, and he loved so, so fiercely. He didn’t care about his own injuries, or the long recovery that likely awaited him or the potential of lifelong chronic pain. He was concerned for Naruto, which was at least understandable; the boy had been his student and then his quasi-adopted brother. But after he had been reassured about Naruto’s safety, he had immediately pivoted into being worried about Kakashi, who on the surface had nothing whatsoever in common with the chunin. Kakashi’s swift intelligence raced to find logic and reason behind this, and was forced to give up and sulk in a corner. He couldn’t understand it.
And maybe, just maybe, that was what made Iruka so special. He was beyond explanation, and sometimes Kakashi needed to be reminded of the things he could not understand.
It was in that moment that Kakashi realized that the hollow, aching, lonely hole that lived in the core of his being could be filled. He didn’t have to be hungry and isolated anymore, not if Iruka didn’t want him to be. So he meant far more than Iruka realized when he said, “I’m here because I want to be. Somebody should be looking out for you, after all.”
He would look after Iruka. He would do it well, so that no more traitors leapt up and aimed at the soft center of Iruka’s back. Iruka wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore, and could live his life without deprivation. The jounin hoped that Iruka would love him in return, and a part of his active brain was already coming up with plans and contingency plans for his primary plans and back ups to his contingencies of ways to woo Umino Iruka. Ultimately, though, Iruka returning his love didn’t matter. What did matter was that Kakakshi was capable of more than death, and it was because of the unassuming man before him. He would protect him and care for him, the best he could, for as long as Iruka would let him.
He couldn’t wait to get started.