Chapter Text
Kakashi is 18 when he adopts his sixth dog.
Akino is a mutt, looks vaguely like a shiba inu mix, and falls in love with Kakashi within seconds. He’d walked into the adoption center and made his rounds, poking his finger through the fences and stifling the flicker of anger at the state of the kennels - the town doesn’t have much money, and what there is doesn’t go toward luxury hotels for dogs. It doesn’t take much for Kakashi to tamp down on the emotion. He’s grown good at it, throws the wet towel over the fire without so much as a thought.
He leaves with Akino on a leash, panting happily and looking up at him with admiration, the way most dogs do, because dogs have all the love in the world in their heart and aim it at the nearest person they can find. Some miniscule warmth spreads from Kakashi’s heart to his ribs, filling in the serrated hole, but it doesn’t last long. It never does.
Uhei is the seventh, Guruko the eighth, and finally Kakashi gives up.
~
“ Eight dogs? Eight!” Kushina chastises Kakashi, piling more mashed potatoes onto his plate. “Eat, you’re too skinny these days!”
“You and Minato have five, ” Kakashi says in a voice he hardly recognizes, its so humorous and loud. He looks down at the toddler in his lap. “And Naruto! Practically six!”
Only at the Uzumaki’s house does the warmth that two years ago disappeared permeate his whole being, again. He bounces three year old Naruto on one knee, playing keep away with a spoon as Naruto’s grubby fists reach and reach, sounds of toddler frustration spilling from his mouth. His blonde hair sticks in all directions, and Kakashi is fairly sure he sees a cheerio in there, too. Kakashi knows Kushina’s main source of frustration is Naruto’s thick head of hair - inherited from Minato. At this point, she just lets Naruto put whatever he wants in his hair, and hopes it washes out at the end of the day.
Kakashi slyly picks the cheerio out and tosses it into the trash can when Kushina’s back is turned. Naruto shouts in glee, and Kakashi grins and blows a raspberry on his stomach.
“There’s two of us to take care of them,” Kushina says back, after she’s done carefully lifting food out of the oven. Her playful glare turns to an apologetic look immediately when she realizes her implication. Kakashi turns to his potatoes, attempting to swallow the knot in his throat. Naruto is fist deep, smearing the potatoes across Kakashi’s plate, yelling nonsense. He hasn’t got a great handle on words yet. Kakashi nods and makes an expressive face at Naruto, who shouts in response.
“Kakashi is perfectly capable of taking care of his dogs,” Minato says as he comes into the kitchen, washing his hands before relieving Kakashi of Naruto with a hearty slap on the shoulder. He sits down on the other side of the table and begins snapping Naruto into his high chair. Kakashi shoots him a grateful look and Minato winks. “He’s always had a knack for that whistle - the one where you pinch your lip with your fingers. Wish I knew how to do that.”
Kakashi grins wryly, then braves a bit of dinner. Kushina cooks so much, and Kakashi’s appetite hasn’t been what it was since he was 16. She continues to shoot him concerned looks, but Kakashi visits regularly, so he’s used to it. He ignores it in favor of talking to Minato about Minato’s new job at the local mill and making funny faces at Naruto, who shrieks in glee.
When he leaves, Kushina helps Naruto give Kakashi a wet, smacking kiss. He yells, “‘Kashi!” and Kakashi waves and smiles bigger than he has in the last month. If he thinks about it enough, he’ll realize that the last time he smiled this big was when he last visited Kushina and Minato’s house. As he walks home, the warmth in his chest fades like a light being dimmed.
He doesn’t think about it.
~
Kakashi is the first - and only - one at the hospital, less than 15 minutes after he gets the news. He’d been reading, only the lamp in the living room on, all of the dogs settled in their respective dog beds on the living room floor. The sound of the phone ringing had been jarring - Kakashi didn’t get many calls anymore. Dread had filled him immediately.
“Excuse me,” He flags down a harried looking nurse, who gives him an exasperated face but stops regardless, holding a pile of bedclothes. “There was an accident, my aunt and uncle, their son-”
“Emergency room,” The nurse interrupts, “Down this hallway, to the right, you can’t miss the sign.”
“Thank you,” Kakashi breathes, but she’s gone already.
He rushes down the hallway, finds that the nurse was right, and pushes open the doors. The desk clerk regards him for a moment as he doggedly explains his relation to Minato and Kushina, then begs to see them.
“I’m their only living relative in the state,” He pleads. “Naruto - he must be scared - please .”
The desk clerk shakes her head. “I’m sorry, you aren’t on the family sheet - only your father is. I can’t allow you back there, you’ll have to wait.”
Kakashi ignores the tearing in his heart - the hole he’s so carefully sutured with steel thread, ripping open - at the word “father.” Beneath that feeling is a horribly familiar emptiness, the kind that came after Rin and Obito, healed, then returned with the loss of his father. He’d thought, maybe, that Kushina, Minato, and Naruto could help heal it again - he’d thought that he could push it away if only he visited them enough. Now… he forces himself not to think about yet another loss. He’s fairly sure it’ll rip him in half if he does.
“Fine,” He snaps, then takes a seat in the middle of the room, which is empty but for a few families, none of them visibly shaken or upset. Kakashi can feel aching anger flare, and ignores it.
Hours pass, but the definite sunken feeling of his heart tells Kakashi what he already knows before a nurse comes out, a remorseful look on her face. He schools his expression into a cool, expressionless mask. Inside his chest, the hole gapes, aches. A chill spreads over his body, sending tingling into his numb fingertips.
“I’m sorry-” She starts, but Kakashi holds up a hand.
“Naruto,” He says flatly, his mind tripping over the idea of his young cousin being gone. He’s sure he’d know - he would be able to feel Naruto’s absence, if he were dead.
“Naruto is in intensive care, critical but stable,” The nurse replies, hugging a clipboard to her chest. Kakashi’s heart ratchets up 50 beats per minute, and he steps closer on instinct. The nurse takes a step back.
“I have to see him, please,” He begs, “I’m his last living relative, I have a right. I don’t want to make a scene but I will if I have to.”
The nurse seems to take pity on him, despite his baseless claim. She gestures for him to follow her down the long, sterile hallway. His heart rate doesn’t slow down, and a thousand grotesque imagines flash through his mind - the truck had been wrapped around a tree, the officer had said when he called. Kakashi isn’t sure he’ll recognize the boy when he walks in, not sure Naruto will ever look the same as he did before. He’s glad Minato and Kushina had ID, because he certainly wouldn’t have been able to identify their corpses.
Corpses, Jesus Christ, his aunt and uncle are dead , he’ll never go to their house when the loneliness is crushing his heart so badly that not even letting all the dogs sleep in his bed helps. Kushina, his lively, stubborn aunt. Minato, his understanding, soft uncle. Brief flashes from the morgue, of his father’s still body, flicker behind his eyelids, and Kakashi can feel panic closing like a vice around his lungs. He’s going to need a hospital room, he thinks to himself, but then the nurse opens the door to a room and every thought flies out of his head, the panic stopped dead in its tracks.
Naruto is painfully small in the center of the adult sized hospital bed. His mop of blonde hair is subdued under the bandages wrapped around his head - tinged pink. More wires and tubes than Kakashi has ever seen before are connected to the small boy, but Kakashi breathes a desperate sigh of relief when he sees Naruto’s chest rise and fall minutely.
“I’ll leave you for a few minutes, but you’ll have to leave soon. He’s not supposed to have visitors, he’s a ward of the state and will have to remain so until the social worker from the neighboring town can come in and settle things,” The nurse says quietly. Kakashi doesn’t reply, only stares brokenly. The nurse leaves, Kakashi only faintly registering the door clicking shut behind her.
“Naruto,” Kakashi feels himself whisper, grief stricken. He inches closer, afraid to wake the boy, though he’s fairly sure a train horn couldn’t do that right now.
When he’s close enough, he takes one of Naruto’s small, chubby hands in his. He can see Naruto’s face, despite the multitude of wires, one eye bruised shut and a busted lip. With each passing year he’d come to resemble a more and more accurate amalgamation of his parents, Kushina’s lively face and Minato’s thick head of hair. Kakashi isn’t sure when the tears start coming, but he’s surprised when they begin to drip onto his and Naruto’s joined hands.
He hadn’t cried when he’d been called the the police station to identify Rin and Obito. Hadn’t cried when his father had died. Hadn’t even cried at his father’s funeral. This, though. Somehow, this ripped something open in Kakashi that he hadn’t even been aware of. Death, loss, Kakashi was used to that. He’d been cursed to lose everyone he loved. He’d accepted at this point - the loss of Minato and Kushina, his last saviors, had only assured him of that. He couldn’t accept that Naruto would feel the same one day.
Naruto had been born into a perfect nuclear family, a family Kakashi knew would have nurtured him to be so much more than their small town, and he’d been robbed of it. Bouncing, sunny Naruto whom Kakashi had known since he was born - always smiling, always ready to bestow Kakashi with a wet kiss on the cheek and yell bye after Kakashi had come over for dinner, hopping from adult to adult and preening under their attention.
Naruto, who deserved a better life and better family than what the system could offer him.
Kakashi sniffed roughly, scrubbed his face clear, and made a decision.