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The muggy autumn air has done nothing for Kakashi today. It didn’t do anything for her yesterday either, but at least she had gone to sleep immediately after dismissing her ninken, with deliberate intent to ignore their conversation.
(Boss, you’re pregnant!
…stop joking around, Bisuke.)
Stupid ninja dogs with their stupid ability to sense chakra that their human summoner couldn’t.
Her carefully timed schedule was already several degrees off, starting from this morning when she had spent ten extra minutes debating breakfast. Could pregnant women eat eggs? She tried to think back to when Kushina had been pregnant, but came up with nothing. She had been too busy wallowing in self-hatred pity to see past her own ego then.
Obito would have known, except he was off on an ANBU mission, and she had returned early from her own standard jōnin mission. Obito should have returned a week ago, but he and the rest of the team were conspicuously missing, and it had taken a significant amount of restraint to not accost Minato-sensei and demand the details of the S-ranked mission. She could have been there with him, but she hadn’t been part of ANBU for five years now, not since they brought Obito back.
(Live, Kakashi.)
Training this morning starts with spite and ends with dissatisfaction. Nothing like one centimeter off kunai throws to really highlight a disturbed state of mind. A listless, anxious energy builds underneath her skin, and no matter how much chakra Kakashi expends to tire herself out, the unease only grows.
(Rain — the absolute unerring quiet of the Hatake estate — the empty lack of chakra —)
It doesn’t surprise her to find herself on this street, hours later. The second floor light in the Namikaze-Uzumaki household bathes two shadows in warm light, one taller than the other. She can feel joy intertwined in the familiar thrum of two expressively large chakra signatures, like twin suns hovering around each other.
Her arms twitch, urging her to leave, but her legs are frozen to the dry ground. Kakashi’s never been a particularly imaginative person — not like Obito with his grand proclamations and earnest promises to her — but she can’t help but to imagine what if…
She’s so preoccupied that she doesn’t sense him until he speaks. Kakashi doesn’t jump but it’s a near thing; despite how unsettled she’s been the whole day.
“It’s warmer inside, you know.”
Kakashi sighs. “I was just passing by. I have work to do…”
“Naruto will be so glad to see you again. It’s been too long,” the Yondaime says without the slightest hint of remorse at the guilt trip. (“It’s been three days, Sensei.”) His hand wraps gently around her wrist as he steps forward, loose enough that she could shrug it off with an excuse if she so pleased.
It is warmer inside.
“Kashi-nee!” A squeaky voice yells. Kakashi holds her hands out to stop the barraging form of its owner.
“Hello to you too, Naruto,” she says, trying to keep the six year old from wrapping sticky fingers around her legs, and then failing when said child jumps in the air and wraps his legs around her calves. Kakashi debates letting him fall back (as a lesson in both manners and chakra control, Sensei) but Kushina is only four and a half steps away, and so in the interest of her own safety, she catches Naruto in her arms.
(Obito’d already learned that lesson before — painfully.)
Naruto wraps small arms around her neck, giggling amidst chants of Kashi-nee! Kashi-nee!
“Kakashi-chan! Welcome home,” Kushina greets, wiping her hands down her apron and making her way over to them. Kakashi steps back, and finds herself trapped against the door.
(Welcome home, not welcome back —)
“I was just here,” she says, exasperated, and then resists the urge to scowl when she catches Minato’s entirely too smug grin. That view disappears as Kushina wraps the two of them in a hug of her own. Kakashi sighs again, dramatically, to make it known she does not approve, but doesn’t push Kushina away.
She’d already learned that lesson before — painfully.
Dinner is a regular affair, which is to say, entirely too boisterous for Kakashi’s liking. In between a deadpan provoking comment to get Kushina riled up, Minato-sensei’s placating gestures while shooting her a I know what you’re doing and you will not escape a lecture glance, and Naruto making a mess of himself and his dinner it’s — domestic. Lively.
It’s a welcome reprieve from an empty apartment, with Obito away.
When Naruto starts nodding off, Kushina picks him up in her arms to put him to bed, with a promised I’ll be right back, so you better not sneak out, dattebane! That is, in fact, what Kakashi plans on doing, even as she sits at the table and avoids eye contact with Minato-sensei, who is brewing tea at the stove.
She really ought to leave.
When the warm tea appears in front of her, she cups her hands around it, leeching warmth. Minato takes a seat to her right, looking at her, then away, holding his own cup of tea. He doesn’t say anything, which Kakashi appreciates — has always appreciated.
They slip into a companionable silence. The thoughts running through her head are becoming difficult to entangle. Kakashi worries that if she opens her mouth to take a sip of tea, all her worst fears will come tumbling out. That, or if she takes her hands off the cup, she’d start worrying at a cuticle, which would be almost the same thing as announcing I am troubled, deeply.
Then again, Sensei had always known what she meant to say when she couldn’t say it, which proved to be both a blessing and a curse on many occasions. It hadn’t been too long ago when Kakashi had choked out a muttered thank you, and then immediately clammed up. The words she so desperately wanted to convey had lodged themself into a ball in her throat — thank you for taking me in when I was an absolute brat, for always being there, thank you for putting up with me, teaching me, loving me — but Minato had only gently hugged her and whispered I would do it again, Kashi.
It wasn’t that Obito didn’t know how to also read her (and that was equally infuriating in its own right), or that he wouldn’t be happy with the — news. It would be the opposite, and the idea of it was — too much right now.
“When...did you…” she slowly begins, then stops. All the questions she can think of make it exceedingly obvious that she’s asking for herself, and Kakashi doesn’t think she can handle the knowing, but quiet look in Minato-sensei’s eyes with whatever answer.
“Naruto’s gotten so big,” she says instead.
The smile that stretches across Minato’s face is so genuine, it’s mesmerizing. Could she also…
“He has, hasn’t he? He’s the age you were when I took you in.”
“That was a long time ago,” she murmurs, staring down her tea. “How…did you know you were ready to take care of m—someone like that?”
“I didn’t,” Minato says. “But I knew I could do it — no, I knew I had to do it.”
“You were only sixteen,” Kakashi counters. “And there is no way Jiraiya taught you anything about being a pare — guardian.”
“No,” Minato agrees. “And I wasn’t ready. I didn’t really know anything going into it. I made so many mistakes, some of which I still think about.”
That surprises Kakashi. “What? You didn’t make mistakes.”
Minato laughs, crows feet crinkling at the edges of his eyes. “I’m flattered you think that way, Kashi-chan. But I know there are a lot of things I could have done better. You deserved better than me.”
Kakashi stares open-mouthed at him. “Sensei, that’s not true!” she says, aghast. She has no idea where Minato-sensei is getting these bizarre ideas from. Jiraiya better not have made any drunk comments. “There’s no one who could’ve been better,” she insists firmly.
Minato rests his hand on his chin, smiling at her. “We didn’t exactly have the best start,” he teases. “If I remember correctly, it was…thirty one appeals to the Council of Children and Families?”
“I was a brat,” she says flatly. “I should have known better.”
“You were a child,” Minato-sensei corrects. “You weren’t expected to know better.”
Kakashi privately disagrees, but she knows she’ll never convince Minato otherwise.
“I wasn’t ready then,” Minato repeats, but he’s looking off with an impossibly fond gaze, and when he turns back to Kakashi, she has to look away. “I wasn’t ready for Naruto either. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready. You two have taught me as much about myself as I’ve taught you. It’s made me who I am, in the best way.”
Kakashi doesn’t know what to say to that, so she says nothing. The only lessons she could have taught were exercises in patience. She’s still turning over the idea that Minato-sensei thought he hadn’t been a good guardian. Never being ready? There’s no hope for her.
(Her father had been — a role model — before —)
(If he couldn’t do it —)
(And she had forsaken him — his own child, his own daughter —)
She doesn’t want to think about these things. She doesn’t want to remember. Externalized hatred had been rerouted into the appropriate self-recrimination, and Kakashi knows if she even hinted at it to Obito, he would bulldoze through it completely with his ridiculous earnest honesty and ideals.
Obito, who wasn’t here —
“I’m - pregnant,” she says abruptly.
“Oh, Kakashi,” Minato-sensei breathes. “Is that what this is about?”
The words sting, reminiscent of years ago when Minato-sensei would cut straight through a broody tantrum to the heart of the issue. She can’t help but turn away from both conversation and man. I really am just a bratty child in the end , Kakashi thinks bitterly. How could I ever be ready?
“Hey,” Minato says, softly. “I didn’t mean it like that. See? Another mistake.” He laughs awkwardly at that, and Kakashi can almost feel the nervous hand-in-hair gesture he’s doing behind her back.
She’s almost certain Obito picked it up from him.
But because Sensei is Sensei, and Obito isn’t here, Kakashi reluctantly turns back around to stare into rapidly cooling tea. Her face is distorted even in the still reflection of the liquid. She shakes it to disrupt the uncanniness but only succeeds in scrambling her features more.
“Does Obito know?” Minato asks, infuriatingly gentle.
Kakashi scowls, then sighs, then scowls for good measure again. “No,” she mutters. “Ahobito is late.”
“…I know,” Minato replies. “I can’t tell you–“
“I know,” Kakashi interrupts. “I get it. It’s…just the way it is.”
Minato taps his index finger against the table in a staccato pattern, which is a nervous tic that only comes out when he’s let his guard down. “He’ll be fine. He’s been through so much, you know? This mission…it won’t keep him from coming back to us. To you.”
“I’m not worried about him,” Kakashi lies, and Minato gives her enough grace to let it slide.
Another silence falls, and Kakashi focuses on keeping an appropriate amount of blood flowing to the fingers holding her cup. She’s never known her mother. Her father never talked about her death, only how brilliant she was when she was alive. When Kakashi was ten, she had broken into the medical records storage room and found her mother’s file. She had died the day after Kakashi was born – unforeseen complications from the pregnancy. Cheerfully complains of a headache from watching her husband stress during the delivery. The next paper in her chart ended with an announcement for time of death.
She didn’t go looking again. There were too many what-ifs haunting her hands already. Her mother living was not one she wanted to add to the list.
If Obito was gone, it would just be her and the child, the two remaining Hatake…
“Kashi, do you…want to keep the child?”
She delays answering by taking a sip of tea; it’s gone completely cold. She does have enough chakra for a body flicker. “I– yes. I do, but I – don’t know. Obito would…” She pauses. “He’d be so happy. He’d probably start crying. He’d be more emotional than I’d be the whole time.”
“Would you be happy?” Minato asks, not cruelly.
“I want to be – no, I am. It’s – it’s nothing. I’m just overthinking it.”
“You’re so brilliant. Too brilliant sometimes. All the things you think of, all the contingencies – it makes you an incredible kunoichi. But this isn’t the field. Things can be different.”
That was the root of the problem, wasn’t it? When she tried to make things different, she had made them worse. Everything about her — her lineage, her experience, her personality, her past, her present — worked against her. “I’m not the best person for this,” she mumbles. “I’m not any sort of person for this.”
Minato-sensei pulls his chair next to hers, and she allows herself to be gathered into his arms. His hands soothe her hair in a repetitive motion, something he had started doing when Kakashi would wake up screaming from nightmares of Obito’s ‘death’. She closes her eyes, letting her forehead fall against his shoulder.
“You’re not your past, Kashi, and you’re no one else’s future either. I know you’re — I know it can be scary, and unknown but — you’re not alone. You have all of us, always. And,” He pauses, tucking her head under his chin. “You’ll be an amazing mother. You’re already so calm and patient with Naruto, even when you think you’re being strict. You and Obito — the two of you have grown so much. I couldn’t be prouder. Your child will be lucky to have you two.”
Focusing her breathing into a steady rhythm is a welcome distraction. She wants to believe in him — in Sensei and in Obito and in everyone else who puts their misplaced trust in her. The amount of mistakes she’d make —
— I’ve made so many —
— the regrets she’d have —
— I could have done better —
could she trust herself to be different?
(...you came back! I knew you would!)
“Okay,” she whispers.
Kakashi’s never admitted it, and she probably never will, to either Minato-sensei or Obito, but being held like this brings her a sense of security she hasn’t felt since she was…a child. So she lets herself stay quietly in this embrace, and tries to sort through the conversation beforehand.
“I’m so happy for you,” she hears Minato say above her, with so much affection that she has to squeeze her eyes shut tightly.
An indeterminate amount of time later, she hears Kushina make her way down the steps of the stairs.
“What’s with this mood?” Kushina asks with such a perplexed look on her face, that Kakashi can’t help the snort of laughter that escapes her. The sound catches Kushina’s attention, and she brightens with so much intensity that Kakashi is lucky she doesn’t have the byakugan.
“Kakashi!” Kushina exclaims, and Kakashi realizes too late the look on her face wasn’t perplexion, but anticipation. “Kurama says you’re pregnant and he’s known since you stepped through the door!”
“Kushina! ” Minato says, appalled and resigned in equal turns. “You can’t just start the conversation like that!”
“Did she already tell you? Ugh, I knew I missed something important! Kashi-chan, tell me everything.”
Kakashi really does hate nosy ninja companions.