Chapter Text
The Sandaime’s eyes were dark and calculating, half hidden in smoke of his pipe. His office was sealed tight - windows closed, seal barriers in place - and the smoke was thick in the confined space.
He was wearing 3 layers of masks, but ANBU Hound could still smell it. It was unsettling, leaving him practically nose-blind. Like he was caught in a fog, back unprotected, eyes to the ground, hands absent of a weapon. Unguarded, unsafe, for all that the Hokage’s office was meant to be the best guarded place in the village.
Not that Hound could have been settled, not with adrenaline still rushing through him. It left him twitchy, even with the reassurance of full body-storage scrolls lining his hip - he could swear they felt warm; warm like fresh-spilled blood, warm like hot breath against him, warm like sparking blades. His head uncomfortably foggy from blood-loss, limbs cold. Little spasms ran through his injured leg as he knelt, beyond his control and infuriating for it.
A cold, disembodied voice had given his initial report already. It sounded like Tou-san had at the end. Empty, empty, empty. The Hokage listened blankly, cross referencing a corresponding scroll of mission notes. He’d set it aside minutes ago and now just sat, watching Hound and sucking on his pipe.
“We have our new Academy graduating class,” said the Sandaime, as if it weren’t a threat.
The man tapped out his pipe ashes and packed it again. “To be selected as a sensei is a symbol of trust and respect from the village. Most jōnin see it as a rite of passage, they jump at the chance.” A spark of Katon, the smell of tobacco grew stronger. “Jōnin Hatake Kakashi has rejected 5 teams.”
Hound said nothing, it hadn’t been a question. The room was quiet again. There was just the shifting of the Hokage’s robes, the tap of his pipe on the desk.
It was designed to make him nervous, but he wouldn’t let it. It may be galling, infuriating, to be reprimanded like this - even his greatest shames were technically perfect, beyond reproach from the village even if individuals condemned him - but he pushed away the rising bubble of annoyance-guilt-longing in his stomach. Focused on even breaths, on not reacting.
“One of those failed students began ANBU training last month. Your thoughts of him?”
“Trainee Sheep. 15. Scouted as a field medic. Kenjutsu specialty, incorporates secondary-class genjutsu. Below average jutsu repertoire in variety and rank. Konoha standard taijutsu.”
“Your personal opinion, then.”
What was the point of this? A shame tactic? Hound carefully relaxed his jaw. “His specialties are contradictory and sub-optimal. He’s better at iryō-ninjutsu but cares so little for it he’ll never be a med-nin; he works hard at kenjutsu but doesn’t adapt quickly beyond his katas. Given average mission load he’ll need reconditioning within 6 months, either for insubordination or desensitization, but will continue to operate within acceptable parameters. Assuming no critical failures, he’ll remain active for 3-7 years.”
“His files note him as remarkably receptive to conditioning.” The Hokage countered, tone more curious than anything else.
“That’s correct, Hokage-sama.” A pause. Then a sigh.
“Would you trust him?”
“I believe Trainee Sheep will perform competently,” A pipe waved in Hound’s direction seemed to say that’s not an answer. “I would not seek him out for assistance, no.”
The Hokage took a deep huff of his pipe. “His instructors gave him a fair bit more credit than you do, it seems. He’s very well liked.” That didn’t surprise Hound, Sheep was a very likable guy. He was complimentary and quiet, easy to be around. “I wonder what it is you see in people.”
Too much, Hound thought. He saw too much.
Where others saw friends and teammates for who they were now, Hound tended to see them as the mistakes they would become. Walking ghosts. A teammate that hadn’t gone rouge quite yet, a sparring partner who dodged too carelessly to have a long shelf-life. He sounded out every new name, wondering how it would look carved on the memorial stone. The sharingan made it worse, catching every flash of emotion, every hidden exchange. It was sort of funny how he was so isolated from people - given he knew them so intimately.
Sheep was unobtrusive and worked hard, but he idolized ANBU – even if not consciously. Held his porcelain mask proudly, traced where he might paint his markings along its face, and eyed S-class missions greedily. He treated wounds like failures - the kind of medic who would heal your cuts but blame you for not moving faster, the kind of swordsman who soaked his hands in milk to lighten the scars. Like missions were a game, like ninja were concepts instead of people. With that mindset, a 15-year-old boy entering ANBU would adopt those expectations onto himself. Sheep was half child, half fantasy – a persona that wouldn’t survive its first innocent kill, first time protecting an abuser from their own mistakes, first teammate dying in his arms because his shaking arms misfired an iryō-ninjutsu.
Hound knew this would come to pass. Hound knew this as surely as he knew Minato had loved Kushina, surely as he knew he had failed Obito, surely as he knew he barely stomached his days alive anymore.
Although Hound could see the Hokage from behind his mask, the Hokage could not see him. Or even without the mask, if the Hokage saw him as he usually did, would he see anything more than he did now? By nature or by habit, Hound was never laid bare, and it was lonely.
Hokage-sama reached across his desk, pulling from some drawer a thin scroll. “I think, then,” he said, every inch a disappointed grandfather, “that it is clear Kakashi-san will never agree to take on a team. And yet -” He studied the scroll with a sort of resignation, distaste perhaps, and then held it out.
Hound rose to take it, ignoring his injuries in favor of an anticipatory sort of dread crawling up his spine.
“Yet, I am still your Hokage.” The Sandaime said, a wry sort of grimace twisting around his pipe. “So, Operative Hound, I’m giving you a long-term mission of the greatest importance. Part espionage, part protection detail, and technically, infiltration.”
The old man seemed intent on his dramatics, so Hound turned the scroll in his hands, opening it with carefully telegraphed movements. The Hokage made no move to stop him. Mission objective: Asset maintenance and military integration.
AKA: be genin sensei to a couple of flight risks.
“It’s come to this, then.” He said, detached still, but feeling particularly hollow. The Sandaime inclined his head a fraction as Hound read through the rest of the scroll. “The rest?” He was being rude, but it was justified.
The Sandaime pulled out a stack of files half a foot high. He pushed it forward, but his weathered hand lingered on top, deceptively light. Hound reluctantly removed his mask, placing it with a delicate clink on the desk, and the hand withdrew. Kakashi took the first file off the top.
His sharingan was unavoidably active, so he flipped through the pages quickly. Pages outlining how he was to manipulate children, pages outlining under what conditions he was to neutralize the threats. The names were familiar, Itachi’s brother, Minato’s son – precious people of his precious people, Konoha citizens, reduced to targets.
His pushed away that line of thought. “Direction on Haruno Sakura?”
The Sandaime raised an eyebrow, perhaps considering Kakashi’s starting point counter-intuitive, but the scroll had been particularly explicit in most parts and Kakashi needed to know where he could conserve his humanity. “She’s secondary. The best available option, as it were.”
The dismissal of an entire person might have felt distasteful if he let himself dwell on it, so he didn’t. Instead, Kakashi picked up another file. From the middle this time, after a few brief flicks through the different files said he didn’t quite approve of whatever organizational system the Hokage thought he had going for him.
“Who did the personality briefs?”
“The standard academy teachers. Saito Fumika for kunoichi lessons with Sakura. The rest were mostly Umino Iruka.”
Kakashi hummed in something like recognition, but it was a dry sound. “How accurate?” he asked, then paused, tilted his head back a bit to think. “Ma, stupid question. Can’t imagine the Hokage knows individual genin enough to say.” He trailed off, recalibrating the thought.
“You can corroborate however you wish, but Umino-san did surveillance before teaching,” the Sandaime offered. Kakashi considered one of his pages, unimpressed.
“Still, class size is what, 25?” No correction came, and Kakashi let a hand rake through his sweat-plastered hair. The Hokage gave another puff of his pipe, maybe to ward off the smell of mission-grime now that Kakashi was so close. “How long ‘till squad assignments.”
“I suppose,” the Sandaime dragged out, “tomorrow?” The third file he’d picked up sparked lightly in Kakashi’s hands, crumpling the paper, but neither commented. “Room 200, noon.”
“That’s not a lot of time.”
The Hokage shrugged, looking far too unconcerned. “I expected you back yesterday.”
Satisfaction sparked darkly in his stomach. His completion-window had been a week long and only started the day before, so Hound was well within reason to return today - even with interference as it was.
The expectation of his own excellence was…bittersweet. The pleasure of it wholly insufficient to appease him – like rationed water in Suna, leaving his mouth all the drier with each sip – sweet though it was. This ache was a familiar one, and Kakashi pushed it down as he did with other unactionable things.
“This,” Kakashi tapped the first scroll, sitting now next his growing pile of reorganized files, “didn’t mention a requisitions limit.” He was fatiguing fast, fingers locking up as he turned pages, but he’d always been one to push his advantage and, really, the Hokage would be far less favorable to him after Kakashi had time to process his options.
“It’s just a genin team.”
The old man’s liver-spots were particularly visible, Kakashi noticed, when he pinched the bridge of his nose like that. “Ma, Hokage-sama, this scroll says it’s an S-rank mission.” The false cheer didn’t even make it to his voice, but the sentiment remained (as best as Kakashi could hope for).
The Sandaime reached for his brush, he gave a long-suffering sigh. “You’ll have a third-rank authorization and the village will reimburse reasonable expenses, but this is hardly how I thought this conversation would go,” Several smooth brush strokes and a bright red stamp later, Sarutobi hesitated in handing over the paper. He studied the other nin harshly. “You’re not going to fight this harder, Kakashi?”
Sharingan tomoe dilated and Kakashi set down his last file. His hand braced against the table, against his mask. “You called for the dog, Hokage-sama, not the man. I don’t have the luxury.”
They’d had eyes on each other for a while now, but there was something darker, meaner, in Kakashi’s eye then. Sarutobi didn’t flinch or falter, it wasn’t even a close thing, but that look had him conscious of the growing softness in his limbs and the dulling blur of his eyesight.
It didn’t last long, Kakashi too worn from the day’s excitement, and soon his sharingan slid closed. Kakashi just looked tired then.
“Hokage-sama’s orders are quite comprehensive, regardless. I have a minimum of 42 instructional hours per week where I’m to – ah, how’d it go?” Kakashi affected a put-upon tone, but didn’t even glance towards the now-closed and hidden files he’d first seen only seconds ago, “engage targets physically and mentally with intent to and effects of improving proficiency in standardized fields of shinobi art, proficiency defined both as relative to a hypothetical mission-completion rate where conditions reflect appropriate progressive difficulty and as would be recognizable and satisfactory to third party experts. Instruction is not to withhold or obfuscate information which would better acclimate targets to the highest of shinobi standards and anticipate, to the best of the instructor’s ability, the targets’ emotional and educational needs – it goes on like that for 8 more pages, Sandaime-sama. Your new desk jockey really thinks I’m a pig.”
The Sandaime huffed amusedly and pulled together the papers now across his desk. “We’ll see how long it holds, I suppose.” Kakashi took the hint, reaching for one of his more benign scrolls and sealing up the precarious stack. “Dismissed.”
ANBU operated as a mostly closed system, it took missions directly from the village and details were as-needed only, so naturally it was all for vertical integration.
Standard missions debriefed and were over, ANBU missions had at least a week of follow ups. It was exhausting, but at least it meant the paperwork could wait a few days. Mission drop was hitting him hard, leaving him too on edge to properly process...everything.
Kakashi slid though a disguised gap behind the general-access record room and down into a little enclave of offices hidden there. He dropped a duplicate of his mission notes at the ANBU Commander’s office and went searching for an Operative Frog.
He found them in the break room next to a coffee pot and a half-finished sudoku - boring shift, evidently. They turned when Hound entered, head pivoting with the blatant once-over they gave him. Their hands flicked roughly through ANBU sign. Permission, Treatment? Hound gave a nod and pulled up a stool.
Frog’s hands glowed green and diligently began to prod at his hurts, stitching together muscles and sealing over skin. Hound found himself relaxing minutely as Frog sunk chakra deep to his marrow, supplementing blood production. He had a wall at his back, clear line of sight to the only entrance, and it was quiet enough he could hear the quiet shuffling of the tunnel’s other occupants – safe, for now.
Nerves in his arms and fingers still sparked erratically, muscles ached, when Frog pulled off and signed Remainder, Hospital.
Negative. Hound signed back.
Frog hesitated, but insisted. Hospital.
You, Recent. Frog recoiled a fraction, surprised. Kakashi telegraphed a half-laugh kind of huff. Treatment, he signed, and propped his arm expectantly on the table.
While ‘officially’ mission injuries should be routed to Konoha’s General Hospital, realistically that was an all-around bad idea. With so few competent medics, getting treated at the hospital was always sub-optimal - the sheer number of patients meant non-essential treatments were delayed or written-off, the constant stimuli meant it was near impossible to rest or sleep, and the various clearance levels of patient and staff left village secrets constantly exposed. For shinobi in deep cover, practicing forbidden jutsu, or whose very injuries were classified, this just didn’t cut it.
Instead of overhauling the system into something even more complicated and exploitable, ANBU initiated Operative Frog. A bit of a misnomer, the bright-green mask and code-name wasn’t a single person, a few “Operative Frogs” operated around Konoha. They weren’t fully ANBU - the iryō-nin creed prevented full-time medics from placing themselves in dangerous positions and ANBU missions couldn’t support non-combat personnel - but Frog was given clearance to hang around common offices and training grounds, was paid to treat whoever sought them out, and only had to endure the less horrific secrecy measures ANBU usually entailed.
This ensured the rest of ANBU operatives had access to more than field-healing but kept medics safe and away from the more classified information. In some ways it was a reward for the medic too – major surgeries, long term care, and other treatments which would break cover still routed through the hospital, so Operative Frog had relatively light duty most days, no paperwork, and no obligation to force treatment on an unwilling patient.
So, despite their hesitation, Frog didn’t seem to mind healing Hound. After his major damage, Frog ended up soothing the inflammation in Hound’s knuckles from rapid hand seals, massaged out his calf-cramp, and did something wonderful to his chest which eased his breathing. Frog pulled back again; hands green and open in front of them as if to say what else?
Yeah, Kakashi was too spoiled for the hospital, now.
E-y-e-s-t-r-a-i-n, he spelled out - repeating it slower when Frog seemed unfamiliar with the symbols and tapping over where mask covered his sharingan. They huffed a bit, perhaps thinking the request frivolous, but after a brief pass with Mystical Palm they clocked the strain as serious enough to stand and crowd his space – tugging their gloves off for that extra bit of dexterity and forcefully manhandling Kakashi’s face this way and that. Hound resigned himself to it.
He hated the contact, even a medic’s touch was unfamiliar and confusingly intimate, but Kakashi hated all sorts of things and they’d never let them matter before.
You couldn’t rely on a chipped kunai, you certainly wouldn’t hand one to a teammate and expect them to survive their missions with it, so Kakashi maintained himself as he would maintain a blade. It wouldn’t let his selfishness interfere again; he’d shield his village; he’d shield his teammates.
He’d shield Minato’s son.
The thought came unbidden, and he tried to believe it. He wasn’t sure he could. Images of them suddenly overlapping faces of mask-less ANBU drawing their final breaths, of young genin teams who thought fights were games, of unnamed bodies lying abandoned deep in no-mans-land and floating by on the river.
Terror, a feeling like molasses in his throat, like his chest being pumped full of laughing gas, like his bones were electrified. He stopped Frog’s fingers, grip so tight it must have hurt, and mechanically lunged towards the lounge’s kitchenette.
Pulled the tap on, cold. Jerked open the freezer door, grabbing the tub of ice inside. His fingers shook, scattering ice-cubes. Water filled the gaps in the ice, cracking, (almost like the chirps of his hand in Rin’s chest). He sat, the water sloshing, and Kakashi dunked his head into ice. It was very cold.
The sharingan brought back Psych’s instructions with perfect clarity even as he clenched his eyes shut. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Relax your eyes. Shoulders next. There you go.
The water seeped behind his mask, but the heat stayed trapped within it so Kakashi unstuck his mask once again and let the ice meet his face more closely. Frog had obviously startled at his movements and turned to watch Kakashi. He hated it. Wished they would at least pretend they weren’t seeing this.
Seeing S-rank, ANBU Captain Kakashi Hatake shaking on the floor, head in a bucket of ice, having a panic attack.
He could pretend ANBU gave him anonymity - his face was still covered by the white plastic of the ice bin - but Frog had already seen his eye and hair. Even without, they’d see each other on rotation again. He’d never been good at social things, and ANBU was primarily non-verbal so that added an entirely other set of anxieties, and maybe Frog wouldn’t be in the barracks, but some Operatives gossiped in the break rooms when the commander couldn’t hear them and what’s to say Frog would resist the allure of camaraderie when it came so easily?
Frog set a juice a half-foot from Kakashi. He could just see it from the curve of the bucket. A stool scraped the ground, legs dragging loudly as it they turned. (Stools weren’t even directioned, so the move was painfully obvious, but his pride was already trashed so he’d take it.)
The anxious thoughts still pressed incessantly against his mind, but his hands were warm and shaky and that was bad imagery, don’t think about when else they tended to feel like that (chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp), and maybe it’d be nice to hold something – it might help him remember to stop molding lightning chakra through his palms. So Kakashi grabbed the juice. Tried to grab the juice. Knocked the juice over, really. He caught it before it fell, so Frog hadn’t heard. Probably. (Chirp?) He really hoped Frog hadn’t heard.
He didn’t think Frog heard. Frogs didn’t even have ear structures, they just had ear holes. Frogs didn’t seem like they could hear well. Ear structures were very important, since they amplified sound, and frogs didn’t have them, so they didn’t amplify sound like MinatoRinObito people did. In fact, Kakashi had lots of equations about it, lots of equations about acoustics. Acoustic equations.
No, wait. Those weren’t... congruent? No. Shapes aren’t even equations, that’s not logically progressive. Not progressing logically. It didn’t fit.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Relax your eyes. Shoulders next. There you go. Focus on what you know, what you’re feeling.
Not acoustic equations. Equations, in his book about acoustics. Equations in his book about acoustics could help him understand frogs. He needed to understand frog ears.
No. He needed to understand ears to understand frogs, it was different. Why? Why was it different, Kakashi? One emphasized the ears, the other emphasized the frog. He needed the frog.
He didn’t see any frogs. That was weird. Why was he thinking about frogs? Birds? Frogs.
Operative Frog could hear him.
No he couldn’t. Frogs don’t have ear structures. Operative Frog couldn’t hear him because Kakashi hadn’t said anything. Kakashi could hear something though, like a crackle (chirp?) Stop molding lightning Kakashi.
He couldn’t feel his arm. What kind of bird had such a deep voice? He lifted his head a bit, but something cold bumped his nose.
Was his head in a bucket? Kakashi looked at his arm. He’d stopped running chakra through his arm. It was just cradled against his leg; he should turn that back on. He did. He turned it on. There it was again, the start of a crackling. Not a bird, though. He looked at his arm, at his hand.
It was plastic, the crackle-pop of plastic. Juice.
He was holding a bottle of juice. That was okay. He was Hatake Kakashi and he’d just had a very bad day – but he was okay, and he was about to have some juice. Other people weren’t okay, but he was. The ice-bucket was mostly water now, it sloshed as he pulled himself up. He poured it out into the sink, collecting the last bits of ice as it went.
He popped open his juice, it was faintly warm now and smelt of ozone but Kakashi slid his ice fragments in anyways and drank the bottle.
It tasted warm regardless. He probably should have forgone the ice - it settled weirdly in his stomach. He opened the fridge and downed another bottle just to rid himself of the feeling. He kept a light hand, so the bottle didn’t crackle.
Then Kakashi wicked himself dry with a Suiton and replaced his mask. He sat back down with Operative Frog, who was working on their sudoku. Frog didn’t look at him.
Kakashi wasn’t sure if he liked that or not, but he wasn’t sure of more things than he was sure of at the moment and therefore had decided to not feel anything until he could feel things again.
It was complicated. And not medically recommended. Or maybe it was? He was never sure on that point. We can’t control our emotions, Kakashi. We can only control our reactions to them.
Frog seemed stuck on their sudoku. Or they were waiting on Hound. Either way, they could fill in most of their 3s. Frog moved their pen to scratch in a 7, completing a row, and turned to Hound.
Kakashi’s eye flicked down to their far hand, the newly reddened fingers there.
Status? Frog signed. Their hands didn’t shake. Kakashi was surprised his didn’t either, or maybe that was supposed to be normal.
The ANBU didn’t have a sign for flashbacks, nor for pain, or grief, or anything close to what Kakashi had just experienced. Hound settled for Head, Yin, Carnage.
Self, Hand, Head, Carnage?
It took Kakashi a few seconds, Frog wiggling their fingers hesitantly at his face, and a nervous shuffling of the young operative’s feet, but Kakashi shook his head. Negative. He signed back.
They seemed relieved, pressing a hand against their chest and collapsing in their shoulders dramatically. Treatment?
Kakashi extended his arm again.
His sharingan eye kept a painful catalog of Frog’s flinches, the tenderness in their fingers. When they leaned in again to finish healing his eye, Kakashi turned his head just so – catching Frog’s scent and peeking under the mask.
Kakashi vanished soon after and Operative Frog returned to their sudoku.
Kakashi regretted it later, breaking that line of professional courtesy with Operative Frog. He had seen too much and he couldn't take it back.
He wrote down everything he remembered anyway, cataloging his indiscretion in a little coded book he’d pulled from the watertight bag in his toilet’s reservoir. He numbered and dated the page, noted facial features, scent notes, physical ticks, sudoku playstyle, brand of gear – everything remotely relevant, and then he switched ink wells.
This was only his medium grade sealing ink, but he blended it carefully – like its craft was meditation, or prayer.
Sometimes it felt like both. Sometimes it felt like desecration. Today it felt like nothing. He drew the seal as it was on every other page, the way Minato had drawn it when he first showed Kakashi, a haphazard squiggle along its last quadrant where Obito had bumped into their sensei’s brush.
Once it dried he placed two bits of folded textile on top, one crepe paper and one raw silk, and checked his calculations against the master-tables he’d long since memorized and burned.
Closest scent approximation at 6% oxidation – within usable parameters for either sample, now or within 4 hours of being unsealed. .7% of the formulation suggested non-native origins. 30% of the formulation overlapped with Root’s profile. Variance and intensity of notes suggested they were organically acquired, not deliberately placed. He noted the threat level along the page corner, marked with a colored tab, and penned the page number into his index.
Hound sealed it all away, into the book, into the bag, into the underside of a metal pipe. He washed his hands, cleaned his desk, sorted his mission scrolls by priority and type, did the laundry, swept his floors, watered his plants, took a shower. Like nothing ever changed.
His apartment was clean and compartmentalized, as he often reassured his therapist. Sturdy walls, more space than he needed. The master bedroom and en suite bath were tucked out of view at the end of the hallway, he hardly contemplated what lay through that doorway until he crossed it. He didn’t need to.
Hound had a small washing machine in the en suite. Kakashi took his laundry to the 24-hour Wash-O-Rama down the road. Hound’s desk had mission reports and experimental ninjutsu. Kakashi’s had his sensei’s old Fūinjutsu scrolls and the latest Icha-Icha. Hound had an impressive library, textbooks on anatomy, psychology, neurochemistry, physics. Kakashi had a highlighted socialization schedule, a notebook full of other jōnin’s life events, and a bunch of suggested conversation starters written on Psych Division letterhead.
This 'mission' had those lines blurring, now. Where did he sit? Was he to be the Hound or Kakashi?
Maybe neither. He knew they weren’t as separate as he pretended, he couldn’t detach himself from ANBU techniques or training. Jutsu were jutsu no matter the mission, his reflexes were the same whether he favored kunai or a tanto, but this lack of separation was...uncomfortable. Both personas were constructed, he didn’t know if there was a middle ground between them.
The second bedroom, Kakashi's bedroom, seemed foreign after all his time away, but his jōnin blues still hung in the closet so Kakashi put them on just the same. Taped down the cloth edges, zipped the flak jacket, pulled on the gloves, tightened the hitai-ate.
He stretched, feeling the unfamiliar pull of the fabric-covered flak. It added some weight, but more so it added bulk. He tapped the pockets on chest he never bothered to fill. What did people put in those?
14 hours until mission start. He should get at least 3 hours of sleep, initial reorientation to village systems would take 2 hours, verifying mission intel would be... variable. There was also food to consider. He cast a longing gaze at his fishing rod, but he had no time and would require something more substantial besides. Maybe a drink.
Yeah, he could use a drink.