Chapter Text
Kakashi Hatake has been called many things in his life.
Prodigal son. Orphan. Copycat Nin.
He’s taken lives and taken the names that the survivors call him. Sometimes he’s a hero, other times he’s a monster, but most times he’s an enemy.
Coward. Bastard. Murderer.
His reputation is larger than he is, and the easiest way to avoid it – while incidentally adding to it – is to pretend that it doesn’t exist. So, he’s the lazy sensei to three unruly genin; the mysterious silver-haired man in the civilian market; the sun-bathing shinobi laying on the roofs all over the village, reading questionable books; the dark silhouette standing over the granite cenotaph in the early hours of the morning.
He’s all of these things and none of these things too, a litany of identities he’s collected and organized over the years and offers up the best fitting one to whoever happens across him.
But he’s silent about one thing across all identities, letting the mystery thrum freely with his reputation across the Great Nations without taking much effort to silence it, the one act of kindness he can pretend to offer to the person behind the name tattooed to the inside of his bicep. He thinks he’s doing you a favor, in both hiding your name from enemies who would revel in taking one more thing away from him, and by removing himself from your life before he can inevitably ruin it with the death that follows him as loyally as his own ninken do.
“I don’t have one,” is the lie he tells when Genma is drunk and bold enough to ask him where his soulmate tattoo is.
“Never got it,” is his answer to the flirting girls in foreign villages who don’t realize how dangerous he is and hope blindly that just maybe their name is inked to his skin.
“I have no idea,” he shrugs when his genin beg him to tell them what his soulmate’s name is.
It’s a kindness, he reminds himself even as he stares at the black ink of your name on his arm in the mirror, his hands coated with dried blood and dirt streaked across his face. It’s a kindness.
One that you must appreciate anyway, since he’s never seen his name printed on anyone else in all his years alive.
…
“Do you think Konohagakure has ever seen snow?” Yūta wondered aloud beside you, raising his palm up and frowning at the open blue sky.
You puffed a breath and pulled at the collar of your inner shirt, letting air against your throat. “I doubt anywhere in Fire Country has seen snow, Yūta.”
He chuckled and stretched, his arms nearly knocking against the hilts of the two katanas strapped across his shoulders. “Just makes me miss home even more.”
You gave him a flat look that spoke to the sarcasm in his voice, but was cut off from making some kind of smart remark back when one of the guards at the gates of Konohagakure called you and Yūta forward from the awaiting line.
“Afternoon,” the taller shinobi greeted, a white bandage across the bridge of his nose. His expression was kind, but you could see him and his partner sizing both you and Yūta up, from the bags on both your shoulders to the weapons bound in various places to your persons. “You comin’ for a relative visit?”
Yūta snorted softly and you stepped in front of him before he could make another sarcastic comment.
“Ah, no,” you answered, offering out your shinobi transcripts to him. Yūta gave his to the slightly shorter second guard, a man who wore the village’s hitai-ate almost in a hat-like fashion over his hair. You watched as both the guards’ brows furrowed and then they traded looks with one another.
“You’re from the Land of Ice in the northwest?” the shorter one asked.
“If that’s what the papers say,” Yūta grumbled, and you shot him another look.
“We’re here to request citizenship,” you told the guards. “We sent a request ahead while we were traveling with the message that we would be moving through western countries at an irregular pace, so we wouldn’t be able to receive any message back about your Hokage’s decision.”
The two Leaf nin exchanged another look and then the taller one shrugged and raised his hand to his mouth.
“I’ll send Haruto up with them,” he said, and then bit his finger until he bled. There was a pulse of chakra and your breath caught at the sight of a russet-colored scops owl as it puffed itself up, steadying itself on the guard’s closed fist.
Yūta snorted. “You named your owl ‘flying’?”
The shorter nin smirked, “You shoulda heard what he tried to name a cat that was hanging out around the gate last week before some genin took it up to the shelter.”
“Neko isn’t a bad name,” the taller nin retorted, casting his partner a dark look. Before the shorter nin could say anything else, the taller nin looked back to the owl on his hand. “Haruto, escort these two nin up the Godaime’s office and stay there until she dismisses you, alright?”
The owl tilted its head and ruffled its feathers before its slate-grey eyes shifted to you and Yūta.
“It’ll listen to you?” Yūta asked.
The taller nin nodded as Haruto leapt from his hand and shot into the sky, beginning to circle overhead.
“Mostly,” the nin answered. “Unless he’s hungry.”
“Then he’ll bite your fingers if you get too close,” the shorter nin spoke up, smirking at the taller nin.
The taller nin scoffed and then gave a low whistle before he jerked his chin toward the gate. “Go ahead through. You won’t get lost as long as you follow Haruto.”
You hesitated. “You…don’t want us to leave our weapons?”
Yūta’s perplexed expression shared the same sentiment, but the two gate guards shrugged again.
“There’s enough nin in village today that you can’t breathe the wrong way without catching their attention,” the shorter one replied. “If you try anything, it’ll be a race between them to see who can stop you first.”
Yūta blinked and you cleared your throat.
“Alright then,” you decided to say and shouldered your travel pack before giving the guards another nod. “Thanks.”
They returned the gesture.
“Look forward to seeing you around if the Godaime decides to keep ya,” the taller one called after you.
Yūta flashed them a backward wave and then looked up at the owl flying ten feet above your heads.
“I’ll laugh myself to tears if that bird shits on you,” he said.
“You’re an ass,” was the only retort you could think of as you followed Haruto onto what appeared to be the main avenue of the village.
“And yet here you are, traveling across the world with me,” Yūta replied in a lilting voice, his hand dropping lazily to the hilt of the katana at his waist. “I wonder about your decision-making skills sometimes, (Y/N).”
You elbowed Yūta in the ribs and then had to maneuver around an elderly civilian woman before you bumped into her. “You know as well as I do –”
The words died in your throat when you were practically body-slammed into Yūta by a flash of orange and pink, your friend having barely a second to catch your shoulder as you grabbed the arms of the children who’d run into you to keep them from falling too.
“Sumimasen!” the pink-haired girl in your left hand yelped, one of her hands wrapped around the fabric of your robe and the other holding tight to one of the flaps of the open orange jacket the blond-haired boy in your right hand was wearing.
“What Sakura said!” the boy chirped, starting to wriggle around in your grip, trying to free himself from the girl – Sakura.
“Haven’t even been here ten minutes,” Yūta muttered to you, still holding onto your shoulder even as you let the kids go.
The boy instantly shot off into the crowd on the street, shouting at the other pedestrians to watch out, but the girl hesitated, glancing between the unfamiliar clothes and shoulder packs both you and Yūta were wearing.
“Gomen,” she finally said, and then huffed darkly, glaring in the direction the boy had run off in. “He stole the snacks!”
She took off after her blonde-haired companion, leaving you and Yūta to exchange bemused looks.
“Well,” he finally said. “At least Konohagakure’s kids aren’t scared shitless of the shinobi.”
You sighed and looked up for the guide owl, finding Haruto perched on the roof of one of the nearby shops. “Come on.”
The rest of the walk to the Hokage’s office was less eventful, though you’d been marginally intrigued by the number of stares that had followed after you and Yūta to the red and brown building at the end of the main thoroughfare. Behind the building rose a great cliff, hewn with the faces of five unfamiliar people that you assumed were the previous leaders of the village. It was an impressive sight, but your stomach roiled as you thought of the last administration building that you’d been in.
“This one’s not covered in blood,” Yūta mumbled to you, his thoughts evidently not far from your own.
You chose to ignore him, and then bit back a yelp when the guard nin’s owl summons suddenly landed on Yūta’s shoulder, startling you as his wing-tips brushed the side of your face and ear.
“Holy hell, this thing is heavy,” Yūta grunted, giving the owl on his shoulder a side-eye look. “What the hell is that guard nin feeding you?”
“Somehow I think his diet is more than field mice,” you agreed, realizing just how big the bird was up close, much larger than its uncontracted counterparts.
Someone cleared their throat and you turned with Yūta, met with the sight of another nin in front of you. She was wearing a long, navy kimono and her hair fell short, just above her shoulders. She wasn’t wearing a hitai-ate and you couldn’t see any signs of weapons on her person, but you could Sense her matured chakra signature as she gauged both you and Yūta.
“My name is Shizune,” she introduced herself, looking from the guard nin’s owl to you. “You’re here to see Tsunade-sama about citizenship, right?”
Yūta nodded as you answered, “We are.”
Shizune nodded and then turned, gesturing you to follow her with a small smile. “I’ll take you to her office. She’s between meetings right now.”
“Thank you,” both you and Yūta replied.
Shizune kept a polite pace ahead of you and Yūta on the stairs up to the third floor and made no attempt at conversation until you were standing in front of a pair of doors marked with the kanji symbol for fire.
“Shishō,” Shizune spoke up, rapping her knuckles on the door once. You felt a faint spike in chakra – a permissive acknowledgement – and then Shizune was opening the right-side door, giving you and Yūta another polite smile. “She’ll see you now.”
Yūta nodded with his chin for you to enter first when you both hesitated, but then you gave a soft nod and went ahead of him into the unfamiliar room to meet the village leader whose chakra signature felt near enough to the sensation of standing behind a roaring waterfall.
The Godaime Hokage of Konohagakure sat behind a brown desk that was covered in paperwork and scrolls, the only partially open space being directly in front of her, only occupied by a saucer whose adjoining cup was currently in one of her hands. A piece of parchment that you vaguely recognized as having once been your own was in her other hand, and when Yūta joined your side in front of her desk, she met each of your eyes.
“Haruto, you may leave,” she said. The bird disappeared with a puff of smoke, and Yūta stood shifted the bag on his shoulder.
Even though she was sitting, she commanded the room. Hokage indeed.
“Yūta Agawa,” Tsunade Senju spoke, “(Y/N) (L/N). Refugee shinobi from the Land of Ice.”
You stood straighter, Yūta the same.
“I won’t pretend to know what politics are like out past the Land of Earth, but I can assume from the tone of distaste around the words ‘coup d’état’ and ‘dictatorship’ in your letter that you two don’t share the same political sentiments as your country’s radicals?”
“No, Hokage-sama,” both you and Yūta replied.
“The splinter faction murdered our country’s equivalent to a Hokage, ma’am,” Yūta elaborated. “Most of the democratic leaders and their families were ambushed and killed as well and the coup decimated presumably all of the capital’s shinobi population.”
The Hokage raised an eyebrow. “And yet you two live?”
You cleared your throat. “We were on a mission with another comrade who tried to murder us as part of the coup,” you explained, ignoring the growing tension in Yūta’s chakra signature. “Almost all of the high-ranking shinobi in our country were assassinated as well and many of the young recruits of the democratic faction were –”
“Eliminated,” Yūta interrupted, voice like stone. “Ice Country was converted into a civilian state overnight, Hokage-sama. There’s nothing to return to or restore – we’re not even sure if there are other shinobi survivors except for the radicals who denounced the shinobi way almost as soon as they took power from our leader.”
The Hokage nodded and then set both the letter you’d written her and the cup in her hand back on the table in front of her. She steepled her fingers and set her mouth behind them.
“You’re not here to petition Konohagakure to send shinobi to Ice Country and restore your shinobi and democratic state?” she clarified.
Yūta’s shoulders lost some of their solidity and he glanced to you.
“No, Hokage-sama,” you answered, and then swallowed. “We have no family in Ice Country to return to or rescue either – Yūta’s died years before the coup, and I was an orphan in the shinobi program from a young age.”
The Hokage slowly nodded her head again and then sat back in her chair. “I’ll accept your citizenship on two conditions,” she said, raising the same number of fingers.
You exchanged a look with Yūta before you both nodded to her.
“First,” she said, dropping one digit, “you both will undergo an evaluation by one of our shinobi instructors to determine your ranks by the standards of the Great Nations.”
“Agreed,” both you and Yūta answered.
“Second,” she held up two fingers again, “you both will apply to be on the active shinobi roster if your ranks are appropriate and you’ll recognize Konohagakure as your only allegiance.”
You felt Yūta hesitate beside you but then he nodded as you did.
“Good,” the Hokage smiled and then leaned forward again, raising the teacup in a mock salute. “Welcome to Konoha."