Work Text:
One Jounin with alarmingly low chakra and three dirt and blood covered kids stood inside training ground 9. They had gathered here immediately after entering the village.
"Well, kids, that was a lesson worth learning. Can anyone tell me what you can take from this mission?"
Sakura was the only one who appeared to be making an effort to think, Naruto was still too distraught by the death and the poverty he witnessed, Kakashi will have to talk to him about it, and Sasuke seemed to be doing his best impersonation of a statue.
Not that Sasuke didn't appear as stone-faced and callous as a statue everyday, but usually the statue wasn't trying to burn a hole in Kakashi with his staring. Gods, the staring.
"Um, sensei," Sakura started and then fell quiet as nothing seemed to come to her mind.
Kakashi ran his eye over her, she seemed visibly agitated since Zabuza and Haku had first attacked, and Kakashi wondered if he would be seeing her drop out after coming to terms with how grave the life of a shinobi could be.
He hoped not, her chakra control and intelligence was good, and he could work with that.
"Naruto, do you have any ideas?"
Naruto frowned, "Uh, maybe it taught us not to die?"
"Did you need to be taught that!" Sakura snapped, "Naruto! Of course, we should not be dying, you idiot!"
"Hey hey! Sasuke-teme hasn't answered either, y'know!"
Sasuke didn't say anything.
A tense silence settled over the clearing of the training ground.
Kakashi clapped his hands and smiled, "Wrong, all three of you. It taught us that the life of a shinobi is full of the unexpected. A shinobi worth his salt should always be prepared for the worst."
He waited for the words to settle over his tired, beaten kids before continuing, "Now, you can have today and tomorrow morning off. I will be writing the mission report and we'll meet at 4 p.m. tomorrow. Clear?"
Naruto let out a half-hearted cheer.
Kakashi nodded, "Good. Now go, clean up and rest. Come to me if you have any injury that requires medical assistance, or if you need me."
Team 7 mumbled out their acknowledgments, Kakashi cleared his throat as Sasuke shifted, "Not you, Sasuke."
Sakura and Naruto exchanged anxious glances and hesitated before leaving, Kakashi stared at them until they got the message and after one last look in Sasuke's brooding direction, left.
Teamwork, hm, good.
Kakashi let uncomfortable silence fester as he examined an awkward Sasuke, the young boy tried to tamper down his fidgeting as minutes passed. Kakashi counted until ten minutes had slipped by before speaking.
"Now I'm sure you have some questions, but we will be talking about that after you're cleaned up."
Sasuke nodded tersely.
"I don't mean the compound, you're not going back there right now."
"It's my home," Sasuke said.
"Yes, but you're coming with me to my apartment. Right now," Kakashi added when Sasuke seemed to protest.
Kakashi turned around and with the young Uchiha in tow, left for his apartment. He knew first hand what living in an empty place full of ghosts can do to you, and he refused to let Sasuke go back there after a mission like that.
And if he also needed the boy to know that it was not theft but a gift, that it was also a curse, not something he wanted, [not over Obito, never], then that was his business.
__
As Sasuke silently observed the S-level seals Kakashi had placed on his doorway, [peace time hadn't reduced his paranoia], the Jounin-sensei wondered again just what the hell he was playing at.
Comforting a traumatized child, when T&I wept at the thought of his own pages long mental diagnosis reports from his ANBU days, was laughable at best and a disaster at worst.
For some reason, he couldn't let the kid continue like this though, not without trying to help. He ignored the voice in his mind that muttered about debts and how Obito would've been Sasuke's uncle, Sasuke who was the last left of his clan in Konoha.
And didn't that sound similar.
"The shower is through that hall, on the right. Clean up, I'll put some clothes outside the door."
Sasuke nodded and Kakashi didn't comment on the way he obsessively observed his surroundings. The mission had left its mark on all of his kids.
Now what to make for dinner, Kakashi mused.
___
When Sasuke stepped out in loose grey clothes, Kakashi had set the table with ordered in katsudon, ramen, dango and rice. He waited patiently as Sasuke eyed all the exists before settling in.
"You can ask questions if you eat dinner with me," offered Kakashi.
Sasuke looked affronted that he would need to eat and wasn't just guaranteed the answers, but started loading his bowl with rice still.
They ate the first few minutes in silence which suited them both just fine, with them being introverts at heart.
Kakashi let out an amused huff and when Sasuke looked at him, he elaborated, "Maa, I was just wondering how amusing it is for you to be in a team with two loud kids like Naruto and Sakura."
Sasuke glared at him and Kakashi giggled softly.
The small exchange seemed to have settled the atmosphere though, and Sasuke relaxed more as he ate with Kakashi.
"Sensei?"
Ah, so his curiosity finally won out.
"Hm?" Kakashi prompted with a closed-eye smile.
"Your eye," Sasuke shifted, his shoulders tensing, "The sharingan, I thought I was... the only one left." Except Itachi, he didn't say but Kakashi understood.
Kakashi simply hummed.
Sasuke looked annoyed, "Why didn't you tell me you have one?"
"Maa, you never asked," Kakashi waved his hand, "Why did you think I was chosen as Team Seven's teacher? Someone had to teach you how to use your eyes."
Also, to keep the Kyuubi near a Sharingan wielder, but Sasuke didn't need to know that.
"Well, yes, but how do you have it? Only the Uchiha have the Sharingan."
And the Uchiha clan exists no more, was left unsaid.
Kakashi sighed.
Sasuke tensed further but didn't take back his question. His hand had shifted closer to where Kakashi knew he had hidden his kunai, and Kakashi wondered with amusement if he thought he could take him on if 'The Copy-Nin' truly wanted to hurt him.
"Ne, relax, Sasuke, I'm not going to gouge your eyes out, and take them for myself, you know?"
The black-haired boy flinched, and Kakashi cursed himself, Minato-sensei would've known what to do in this situation. What was he thinking, jokingly threatening the boy.
"Sasuke, I will not hurt you," Kakashi said, repeating words he had heard long ago, "I am your Sensei, which means that you are my responsibility. So, I will protect you, guide you and care for you."
Sasuke avoided his eyes, head bowed.
"The Sharingan I have was a gift," Sasuke's eyes darted up to his in surprise, "Yes, it was a gift from my teammate who died protecting me. He would've been your uncle."
Sasuke looked thunder-stuck.
"So, you didn't," he croaked, "d-didn't steal it?"
"No, Sasuke."
Kakashi stared at the table to give the sniffling boy some privacy, he felt raw in a way he wasn't used to himself, it had been a long time since he talked about Obito to someone.
A hand creeped into his vision, slowly grabbing his hand, Kakashi let it happen and wove his fingers with the much smaller hand in astonishment.
He looked up into Sharingan red.
"Y-you're family," Sasuke muttered, looking to the side, his ears were pink.
"What?"
"You were given a Sharingan by an Uchiha, you're family," Sasuke stressed.
Kakashi hadn't heard that word used for him in a long, long time.
"Sasuke," he gentled his voice, "I am a Hatake, I know it feels difficult but I am not what you're looking for. I'm not an Uchiha."
Now it was Sasuke's turn to look confused.
"I know, but you were given a Sharingan."
Kakashi forcefully stopped the urge to fidget, "Sasuke, I don't understand, what does that have to do with this?"
Sasuke tightened his grip on his hand like he refused to let go even for a moment, "Giving a Sharingan is a message of devotion and love," he said. "For a clan who treasures its eyes the most, to give them away is seen as the biggest act of worship or love."
Kakashi felt his insides turn to ice, his mind slowing down.
;
"If whoever gave you his eye was still alive then, um, f-father would have admitted you into the outer circle of the clan, you would have been family."
"So that's why I'm family," Kakashi concluded, voice blank.
Sasuke simply nodded.
Kakashi suppressed the urge to cackle like a mad man, fucking Obito, changing the meaning of Kakashi's existence even after his death, what the fuck was he supposed to do now.
Apparently, Kakashi was something like an honoree Uchiha and no one thought to tell him. Hah.
Sasuke's grip loosening had him snapping out of his thoughts, the kid looked mortified now, and Kakashi forcibly calmed down the panic attack he could feel at the edges of his mind.
His kid needed him right now.
His kid, Kakashi thought deliriously, because he was the last family the kid had left in Konoha.
"Sasuke, thank you for clearing that up," Kakashi said.
Sasuke nodded tensely, looking ready for a blow.
Kakashi already knew he was going to say something insane but didn't stop his mouth from moving, "You know, I have an empty room in here."
Sasuke stilled. Kakashi followed. They existed in a silence that felt deafening, it suffocated him, spreading throughout his body.
"What," the word was barely a whisper.
Kakashi cleared his throat, "If you want, you can stay here. Permanently. Uh, here. With me."
Fucking disaster of a situation, Kakashi laughed at himself. What was he to do though, be the last family the kid has and send him back to an empty compound inhabited only by ghosts?
"Live with you," Sasuke parroted.
Kakashi nodded.
Sasuke still looked like he wanted to run, or worse, cry. His hand on Kakashi's tight enough that someone would have to cut it off if they wanted to seperate them, but he only answered, "I guess."
Kakashi tried smiling, "Well, that's decided then."
"Hn," he said and then started eating his cut up tomato again.
Fuck, that's it then.
Kakashi went back to his ramen with a strange mixture of calm and panic settling over him, this was going to be a disaster, he was sure to fuck up, and no sleep would be coming to him today.
He couldn't find any part of him wanting to take back the offer though. Sasuke thought of him as family, and Kakashi had long since thought of Team 7 as pack here and there.
He wasn't cruel enough to take away his family from the kid all over again.
Sasuke was pack now.
___