Work Text:
It happened again. Another comrade was dead by his hand, the sound of bird song filled the air, and a blazing flash of lightning lit up the night sky. Kakashi could recall it all down to the price position of the raindrops in the air. As the blank ANBU mask of a Root shinobi crumbled to reveal the face of a child Kakashi’s age, a child he recognised from the academy. They enrolled at the same time and were in the same class. Horror spread through Kakashi’s body, it was just like that night, in his mind, Kakashi was replaying the event over and over again but instead of the blank mask of a Root ANBU it was Rin’s face immortalised in perfect clarity by Obito’s sharingan, it was the one-year anniversary.
The forest around him turns to black in the night and time seems to blur and before Kakashi realised it, every muscle aching, he found himself on the doorstep of Senesi's house. The chakra pathways surrounding his left eye throbbing, a tell-tale sign that the young shinobi had overused Obito’s eye, again.
Kakashi wondered what he was doing here in the pouring rain, his silver hair plastered to his forehead, soaked to be the bone shivering on his Senesi’s doorstep. He couldn’t quite remember how he arrived here having raced back to the village with the memories of Rin's death having morphed into more faded ones of a collapsed cave with a dying boy in it and a pool of blood surrounding a silver hair man in the pre-dawn light. Kakashi noticed that his hand is raised and about to knock on Minato sensei’s door, and a war began ragging inside his mind to visit sensei or not. As after all Minato sensei didn’t need him anymore he had Naruto, a son who is a little ball of sunshine, always happy always smiling. Naruto wasn’t a friend killer twice over a bloodline thief. Everything he touched didn’t turn to ash and dust. Death doesn’t follow him around, not like it follows Kakashi around.
These thoughts whirl around Kakashi’s head with dizzying speed, until at last Kakashi lowers his hand and begins to turn away from the door As it is flung open, the warm light from inside the house illuminates Minato who stands there in the doorway bearing a soft smile on his face wearing his jonin blues. “Hey Kakashi come in and have some tea with me” stated Minato. Before grabbing his student by the arm and lightly forcing him into his home.
As Kakashi sits down at Minato’s dining table not quite remembering how he travelled from the doorstep to the kitchen, a cup of steaming sencha tea is placed before him as Minato slides into the seat across from him before asking “What happen Kakashi? What’s wrong?”. Kakashi sits there for a moment unmoving before responding “Noting, everything is fine Senesi”, in a robotic unfeeling voice. “You know I don’t believe that Kakashi.” Claimed Minato, before staring deep into his student's single visible eye as if trying to peer into Kakashi's very soul and demand that it give him the answers to those questions. “It was a Root ANBU. They tried to take his eye. I killed him. We went to the academy together; it was just like with Rin”. The story came tumbling out of Kakashi's mouth, he had no control over it. Minato sat there in silence not quite sure that to say for a moment, before looking as though he was about to start talking when the ear-piercing shrieks of a crying baby broke the sombre atmosphere shattering the tension. Minato was gone in a yellow flash, teleporting off to go calm his crying son.
Before walking back into the room with a now quiet Naruto dressed in a pair of dark blue pyjamas his blond hair pointed out in every direction a mirror image of his father’s. The grey blur of a body flickering shinobi appeared. “The ANBU commander requests your present Lord 4th “reported the ANBU. Minato transformed from the kind sensei and caring father into a ruthless Hokage in the time it takes him to place Naruto in the arms of a shocked Kakashi before flashing out of the room.
Kakashi stands there in the kitchen looking down at Naruto whose eyes start to open and are peering up at Kakashi's face almost asking who are you, your not my father, before becoming tearful and leaving Kakashi holding a screaming baby with no idea who to make him stop crying. Kakashi tries to remember what his father did to comfort him as a child, but those memories where gone, hidden and suppressed to spare himself the pain of remembering. As Naruto's crying is getting louder and louder Kakashi starts to panic, before a fleeting memory of Obito babysitting his cousin came to mind, images of Obito humming softly and gently rocking his cousin Itachi. So with no other knowledge on knowledge of caring for an infant Kakashi begins to gently rock Naruto and hum a soft meaningless tune under his breath and began to slowly walk across the room to a faded red sofa. Kakashi gently collapses into the corner of the sofa and curls up into a little ball with knees brought up to his chest with a now calm Naruto gently rests there, as Kakashi tilts his head back against the corner of the couch the world begins to fall away as sleep final claims Kakashi.
Minato silently slips into his kitchen through the open window before turning to his left and seeing Kakashi holding Naruto tightly to his chest asleep on the couch and feels a warm smile break out on his face. Softly gliding over towards the two of them Minato picks up a blanket and quietly drapes it over the both before heading off to sleep content with life and the fact that Kakashi was finally opening up and accepting Naruto as his little brother.