Chapter Text
Kakashi still thinks of it as The Sharingan, although the bar hasn’t been called that for a number of years. It seemed off color, after everything, so the wooden sign had been taken down. All the regulars had offered up suggestions to the owner for the new name. Kakashi’s vote had been for anything that wasn’t The Byakugan; it would’ve continued the theme, but he would’ve had to stop coming to the bar out of clan pride (there is no Hatake clan pride, so arrogant or not, Kakashi just considers his personal pride the clan’s, and the Hyuuga are irritating enough that it counts). They’d probably be offended and try to sue too. Eventually, the owner had simply put up a blank slate and a bowl of chalk and the name changed every other day, then every other week, then settled into a couple rotating names. For the past couple months, it has been The Hanged Man.
Kakashi sits in his usual spot at a table in the far right corner of the bar, book in hand, ignoring the clock on the opposite wall that clearly says it isn’t evening yet. Daydrinking is a time-honored shinobi tradition. And so is listening to his friends, ruthless workaholics to a one, moan about how they’ve been saddled with three brats each. Kurenai had only stopped to request her usual from the bartender before sitting down next to Kakashi and letting out a stream of curses.
“I heard you’re supposed to be setting a good example these days,” Kakashi replies, turning a page.
“Fuck that. I’m too young to have the wrinkles these kids are going to give me,” Kurenai groans. She plucks the Icha Icha book from Kakashi’s hand and sets it down on the table. “I need your full attention for this.”
“I think Asuma’s a bad influence on you,” Kakashi says with a sigh.
“I have a Hyuuga.”
“I have an Uchiha,” Kakashi counters. He takes a sip of his beer and watches Kurenai fume.
“You don’t have anyone at the moment. I didn’t see you picking your team up four hours ago.”
“Mah, I have time.”
“And your Uchiha doesn’t have—” Parents to complain to, Kakashi has no doubt she’d meant to say before Kurenai cuts herself off with a flush. “Ah, you know what I meant. I have a meeting with her father tomorrow on how she must conduct herself and where she’s not allowed to take missions. The man’s retired but I’m pretty sure he could take me.”
“There, there. I heard she barely speaks anyway, so I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
“I’m sure he’ll blame me for not getting her out of her shell, too.” Kurenai’s forehead hits the table once, then another time for good measure.
As Kakashi wonders if he has an obligation to get her out of her funk—on one hand, he’s a friend, on the other hand, he’s completely unqualified to deal with people’s emotional states—he feels a familiar chakra signature outside the bar. Success: he can pass the situation off to Asuma. Unfortunately, Asuma goes straight for the sake when he enters the bar, so it’s fifty/fifty whether he’ll console his girlfriend or start in on his own issues. Kakashi idly considers drinking from home, but that sounds sad even in his head.
“I hate all three of them,” Asuma says, sitting down roughly.
“Haven’t they been friends since birth or something? They’d have to have known they’d be placed on a team together,” Kurenai says. She seems to be trying to decide whether to stab everyone who’d had input in her team assignments.
“Friends? No. They’ve had twelve years to develop ridiculous strategies that allow them to be the laziest versions of themselves possible.” Asuma gets out his pack of cigarettes, which are impaled by a senbon in short order.
“No smoking inside,” the bartender drawls. “I’ve told you that sixteen times, Asuma.”
“See? They’re driving me mad already,” Asuma whines.
That’s it. Kakashi is going to become a missing nin. If regular genin have reduced his generally stable friends to this, then it’s for the best that Kakashi simply bows out now. He already has gray hair. He doesn’t want to know what his sensei’s brat and the last Uchiha would do to his remaining sanity.
There’s a commotion at the entrance of the bar, but no one’s chakra spikes, so Kakashi isn’t worried as he turns toward the noise. There are three kids at the door. Three terribly familiar kids, the ones whose academy files he’d seen a couple weeks back when the Hokage had strong-armed him into giving them a chance to pass his test. The kids are looking around and once they find him, the blond one bursts into a wide grin.
“There he is!” calls his sensei’s kid. Kakashi knows his name, but fuck it if he can think of him in any other way. That fucking hair on Kushina’s round face. Someone should’ve stopped those two from getting hitched; it would’ve hurt a lot less that way.
“Don’t yell, Naruto, we’re at a… private establishment,” the pink-haired girl next to him says.
“Just call it a bar,” says the Uchiha.
“I can’t call it a bar, my momma made me promise I wouldn’t go to one until I’m at least twenty. So it’s a private establishment instead.”
Next to Kakashi, Kurenai huffs. “Cute kids.”
“Very cute,” Kakashi says. The headache forming in the center of his forehead is two parts nostalgia, one part laziness. Raising his voice a little, he calls out, “What are you doing here?”
“We’re here for you, of course!” the girl says, coming toward him with a skip in her step. “We’re your new squad!”
“What are you doing here?” Kakashi repeats. He isn’t nearly drunk enough for this—or drunk at all. Damn that sense of responsibility (or fear of the Hokage, same difference) that had kept him to one not yet empty bottle of beer.
“You didn’t find us, so we found you. You’re late,” the Uchiha brat says. “We don’t appreciate lateness.”
Naruto pokes him in the side. “What he means is that we’re really excited to start being real ninja and we know you’re excited too—”
“No, I’m not—” Kakashi tries to say.
“—so we found you so that we could get started already. But if you’re not ready, we can just wait here for you. I mean, we can still learn loads of stuff just by observing you.”
“Exactly!” The girl pulls out a notebook and pen. She flips it open, takes the cap off, and settles down in a chair. “All set! Sasuke: observations.”
“Hatake Kakashi, jonin, future sensei to squad seven, voted most attractive shinobi three years ago and rumored to have starred in a sexy shinobi swimsuit edition of Konoha Style, a leading civilian magazine, although no one can seem to find verification of this fact—”
Actually, this is the first Kakashi is hearing of it. Either he’s very out of touch or Uchiha Sasuke can lie with the best of them. He’s adopted a bored tone and is now reciting how various shinobi on the street had described his sensei’s eye color. The kid sounds like he can write a novel.
“My eyes are not cerulean blue,” Kakashi says, because it’s better than the long, looping stream of what the fuck going through his head.
“We told her that, but she wouldn’t listen,” Naruto says with a shrug. “Onward, Sasuke!”
Kakashi listens to a few more minutes of very creative nonsense, but he finally has enough when the brats start speculating on his favorite brand of toothpaste. “Would that information ever be necessary?”
“What if we needed to impersonate you, huh?” asks Naruto. “We couldn’t do that without knowing all these things.”
“And you’d need to impersonate me…?”
“Well, if you don’t show up to train us, one of us would obviously have to fill your shoes. And we’ve just learned the henge, so.” Naruto waves a hand. “Well, actually, they did. I learned the kage bunshin!”
“I do a very good henge,” Sakura assures him. “It’s just that I’d be worried about getting your behavior right. I don’t think I could ever be—” her voice turns to a horrified whisper “—late to something. And I don’t think I could wear so little pink in my outfit.”
His students are threatening him. Kakashi feels strangely charmed.
“All right, let’s get a move on to me failing you,” he drawls, sighing at the way Sakura and Naruto grin at him. Even Sasuke manages a brief turn of his lips. Kakashi herds them out of the bar, hoping that Sakura’s parents never find out their kid having been inside. From behind him, Asuma and Kurenai yell good luck with too much laughter in their voices. Going back to ANBU is sounding better by the second.
As the bar’s door closes behind the four of them, the kids turn toward him in unison. Kakashi feels like a hunted animal, which is absurd, and then it’s completely rational. These kids, who’ve known of him for a few hours, decide to hug him. Naruto ambushes him from the front, while Sasuke and Sakura take both sides, wrapping half around Naruto and half around Kakashi. It’s weird, uncomfortable, and warm. Kakashi very forcefully doesn’t think about how long it’s been since he’d last been hugged.
“Kakashi-sensei,” Naruto sighs.
Awkwardly, Kakashi pats him on his head. Then he does the same with his two other leeches. “I wasn’t planning on abandoning you.”
“We know,” Sakura says, her voice muffled by his flack jacket. “You’re not allowed to abandon us.”
Even Sasuke gives a murmur of assent.
“Alright,” Kakashi says. “I’ve never been fond of abandonment anyway.”
When they let go, Kakashi leads them to his old team’s training grounds, nostalgia a heady thing when faced with another generation’s squad seven. He remembers meeting Obito and Rin here for the first time and being about as obnoxious as these little brats are, although he’d gone for sullenly obnoxious rather than cheerfully.
“Man I haven’t been here in—”
Sasuke jabs Naruto with his elbow. “Dobe.”
Naruto scowls at him, though he doesn’t manage it for more than a second. “I was going to say ages, jeez, show some respect.”
“To whom?” Sasuke asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Your future Hokage!” the blond booms. A few birds fly off from their perches in the surrounding trees.
“Boys, boys,” Sakura says, stepping between them and linking her arms with theirs. “Don’t fight. It’s obvious that I’m going to be Hokage.” She holds her head high as she walks, and Kakashi can almost imagine the huge Hokage’s hat balancing on her head.
“Psh, you’d go mad with power in a week,” Sasuke says amid Naruto’s dramatic cries of betrayal.
“Children,” Kakashi says, jumping onto one of the posts and taking a seat. “None of you are going to be Hokage if you fail to even become genin.” He gets three cute little scowls from his students as they flop onto the grass. They sit down so close that their shoulders almost touch. It’s a kind of camaraderie Kakashi rarely sees in teams straight from the academy. The kids must have had crazy good luck in getting placed on a team with their friends—or maybe the Hokage had indulged them. “But before that, tell me about yourselves. It seems you know a lot about me—much of it incorrect—but I know very little about you.”
“What are we supposed to say?” Sakura asks, blinking, her eyes too wide.
Naruto’s snort of laughter isn’t hidden fast enough. “Dreams for the future!”
“Hobbies,” Sasuke says. His voice is monotone but Kakashi could swear there’s something laughing in his eyes.
“Things you like, things you hate, things like that,” Kakashi adds to the list. He isn’t even going to try to understand what his team finds so amusing. Maybe he’s getting old; he certainly isn’t up to date on hip academy student lingo and their inside jokes.
“I’ll go first!” Naruto says, sitting up straight. “I love the ramen at the Ichiraku Noodle Shop. Have you been there, sensei, because if you haven’t, you really should. I also love the way Sasuke makes ramen for me sometimes when I’m really sick. He’s only done it a few times but I think he should set up his own ramen shop. He and old man Ichiraku could be rivals!”
“No,” comes from the boy in question.
“You’re no fun. I hate— well, I don’t hate Sasuke. Or Sakura. I could never hate either of them, you know?”
That seems to be an actual question. Kakashi inclines his head.
“I hate having to wait for ramen after you pour the water in or after I hand my money over. This one time I waited for an hour, but that was because there was stuff that came up. Still, an hour! I also hate people who try to hurt my precious people.” Naruto’s expressive face shutters for a moment, but he’s back to his usual self with his next words. “My hobby is making people understand how much good there is in the world. And trying different kinds of ramen. When we go on missions, we have to stop at every ramen shop we see. Oh, and I’m going to be Hokage. That’s not a dream, it’s a promise. Believe it!”
Kakashi sighs. Too much enthusiasm right there, way too much. “Next.”
“I’m Haruno Sakura,” the girl says, waving at all of them. When Naruto waves back, she gives him a high five. “I like Naruto. And I like Sasuke. Oh, and Ino and my parents and you, Kakashi-sensei.”
“Unnecessary, but thank you,” Kakashi replies.
“I hate people who lie about their injuries and people who don’t take me seriously. My hobbies are spending time with my loved ones—I used to be a stalker, but now that Sasuke and I are friends, I can do it legitimately—and making sure they don’t do anything stupid without me.” She specifically looks at Naruto for that part.
Naruto huffs. “The rule is that if we’re doing something stupid, she has to be there so she can laugh at us.”
“At you,” Sasuke cuts in. “I’ve never made a bad decision in my life.”
Naruto gives him a look that speaks volumes.
“Ever,” Sasuke adds.
“My dream…” Sakura trails off, glancing at her teammates and then back at Kakashi. “My dream is to meet several people one day—especially Tsunade of the sanin.”
“Good luck with that,” Kakashi says, trying to land for somewhere in the realm of encouraging. It’s good for kids to have dreams, even if Tsunade hasn’t stepped foot in the village in over a decade. Jiraiya has visited only thrice as far as Kakashi knows, and it would be the worst of days to meet Orochimaru again. Kakashi remembers him from before he’d been cast out of the village, though only barely. The sanin are legends both together and in their own right, but their legends arose from lack of any sightings of them in the past decade. Turning toward Sasuke, he says, “Last one.”
Sasuke sighs deeply. “My name is Uchiha Sasuke, as everyone in this village knows. I hate a lot of things and would say I hate many more things than I like.”
Sakura pokes him in the shoulder. “That’s just depressing, Sasuke.”
Kakashi is of one mind, though he can’t expect much else from the last Uchiha.
“I like several people,” Sasuke concedes.
“Is one of them me?” Naruto asks, leaning toward him expectantly.
“I’m not admitting to anything,” Sasuke replies, loftily. “My hobbies involve training and being better than Naruto. My dream is to ruthlessly murder a certain man one day.”
Subtlety, thy name is not Uchiha. Kakashi wonders if the Hokage expects him to attempt to discourage Sasuke’s ambition to get himself killed while trying to kill Itachi. He hopes not; there is little he can do, even as the kid’s sensei. As he watches Naruto and Sakura reach over to give their friend a hug, not allowing Sasuke to squirm away from them, he hopes the kids will be able to do what he can’t. A life focused only on revenge—Kakashi can’t recommend it to anyone, any more so than a life inhabited entirely by ghosts.
“Right. You are all very… unique,” Kakashi says, for lack of anything better.
“But what about you, Kakashi-sensei?” Sakura asks. “You haven’t introduced yourself.”
“Yeah!” Naruto yells. “We need to know everything about you.”
“Everything, hm,” Kakashi says, raising an eyebrow. “I’m Hatake Kakashi. I don’t feel like telling you about the things I like and things I hate. My dreams for the future… never really thought about it. As for my hobbies, I have lots of hobbies.”
“Disappointing, Kakashi-sensei,” Sakura chides, but oddly enough, she sounds anything but.
Next to her, Naruto mutters something along the lines of, “Classic Kakashi-sensei!” with a grin.
What am I going to do with you lot, Kakashi thinks to himself. But the sun is still high in the sky and they’re already at a training ground, so Kakashi makes a decision. “Since the three of you interrupted my plans for today, I suppose I can test you a day early. Although the three of you have graduated from the academy, you are not yet officially my students. To become so, you must pass a test that I have given to four prospective teams in the past. All four of them have failed.” He eyes them solemnly, then jumps off of the post and feels for the pouch on his right side. “Your assignment is to…” Kakashi trails off. It’s too early for him to be going senile, no matter his hair color, but he could’ve sworn he’d placed the bell set in his pouch this morning in preparation for the test.
His students scamper up to their feet with matching evil grins.
“Looking for these, Kakashi-sensei?” Naruto asks, taking a pair of bells from his pocket.
“I am, actually.” Kakashi gives them each an unimpressed look while he tries to remember when they’d stolen the bells. It had obviously been during the hug and Sasuke had been closest to his pouch, but Kakashi’s coming up blank. He’d been so thrown that he hadn’t been paying enough attention to anything but the surprising embrace. “Thievery between teammates is generally looked down upon.”
“Kakashi-sensei, you’ve turned down four teams with this test. We were all worried that we wouldn’t be able to pass without trickery,” Sakura says, pouting.
Kakashi wonders which of his former prospective students had snitched. Most of them can be found in the village and at least last year’s trio harbor a grudge against him. He knows the answer, but he still makes an attempt with, “And if I offered to only pass whichever two of you were least involved in the theft?”
Naruto shakes his hand, handing the bells to Kakashi. “We stole them together.”
“All three of you?”
“All three of us,” Sasuke confirms.
Sakura nods. “It’s either squad seven or back to the academy, but we’ll do it together.”
Kakashi gives each of them a grave look, but his students stand firm, refusing to turn one of of their squad in. A quorum in complete consensus. Kakashi gives into his fate. “Then I suppose… you pass.”
A quarter of an hour later, Kakashi finds himself sitting at one of the stools at Ichiraku’s ramen stand with a steaming bowl of ramen sitting in front of him.
“What am I doing here?” Kakashi wonders to himself. He’d meant to make a discreet exit after telling the kids to meet him at the training ground at six in the morning tomorrow, but somehow he’d been pulled into this instead. Sakura is on his left while Naruto is on his right, two little guards keeping him from fleeing.
Sakura pats his arm. “You’re being inducted into the cult of Naruto. Just accept it now, it’s easier that way.”
“The kamaboko or the person?”
“Don’t tell him, but I don’t actually like naruto,” Sakura says with a sigh. “I tried, because I mean really, but kamaboko’s just not my thing.”
“Irony at its finest,” Kakashi says, eying his ramen. It does look good, but he has a feeling that ramen is just the first step on his slide to hell. One day he’s going to review his memories and point to this day and say, ah yes, that’s when it all went wrong. With a sigh, he waits until the perfect moment and slurps down the delicious meal.
Beside him, his students don’t even try to peek under his mask. Kakashi is both grateful and unnerved.
On his way back an hour later, Kakashi swings the bells between his fingers. They aren’t the original bells that his own sensei once used, but Kakashi’s had them ever since the Hokage had first tried to get him to accept a team. It’s possible that three academy graduates would have managed to take advantage of his distraction and steal them from him. Kakashi isn’t one for egotism, but he’s one of the most accomplished shinobi in the village. It is possible, but it is very, very unlikely. But there’s no doubt that Uzumaki Naruto is exactly who he says he is; Kakashi had become very familiar with that chakra signature ever since Naruto’s birth. Sasuke too is under the occasional surveillance as the last of his clan. And he doubts Sakura is an enemy infiltrator. Which leaves, what? Him being off his game?
Maybe the Hokage would let him slink back to ANBU. The idea of the newest iteration of Team Seven managing to find him deep in the ANBU bunkers amuses him much more than it probably should.
Kakashi sighs, dropping the bells into a nearby trash can. Back at the Hanged Man, Kakashi commiserates with his fellow new jonin sensei and tries to put into words how strange he finds his kids, though his complaints don’t make much sense when said aloud. Too much teamwork? His students being good friends? Good intelligence-gathering skills? Aren’t all those things what he wants out of a genin team anyway? When his head reaches his pillow that night, Kakashi resolves to accept that he’s still likely getting used to his new position. It isn’t as though he’s had much contact with genin in the past decade.