Chapter Text
Dear Hokage-sama,
Uh, the mission went kinda… bad. Badly, that is. Basically, what we thought was a C-rank turned out to be… not that. We’re staying here in the Land of Waves a little longer to pick up the pieces. Sasuke was injured worst, but he seems to be on the mend. Oh, and he managed to activate his Sharingan, by the way.
Also, it’s come to my attention that I'm a little out of shape. In a couple of senses. I guess I’ve kinda let myself get sloppy, you know, what with one thing or another, and after all the many years of my teammates dying in terrible, horrible ways, and my sensei dying in a terrible, horrible way, and me being put into ANBU when I was barely a kid, and then pulled out of ANBU a decade later for no real reason. After all that, and after all the countless assassinations and morally dubious if not downright unethical S-rank missions and my life in general just kinda falling apart piece by piece, I guess I ended up getting a little bit depressed for a while there. But I honestly think I'm doing much better out here in Waves. Luckily we found some high-quality sparring partners here, who have been helping all of us train our skills and get back into peak condition.
Yours,
Kakashi
Dear Kakashi,
What wonderful news it is to hear that you and your genin have subdued the rogue nin Momochi Zabuza and his young companion, and that it is within your ability to bring them in and surrender them to the custody of Konoha’s prison wardens.
While I am happy to hear about your newfound peace of mind, your improved mental and physical health does not add to the safety and security of our Village as a whole so long as you are hiding away in Land of Waves. And to speak plainly, if you aren’t quite feeling like yourself, perhaps it would be best for you to relinquish management of your trio of genin to a more qualified jounin instructor. I’m certain you must understand how critically important it is to train them to remain unquestioningly loyal to this Village.
Kindly return with your team and your prisoners to Konoha at your earliest convenience, in accordance with all relevant protocols.
With regards,
Sarutobi Hiruzen
Dear Sandaime-sama,
With respect, how dare you question my judgment. "More qualified"? A "more qualified" jounin instructor?? You were the one who put me in charge of these three genin in the first place, knowing full well how ‘critically important’ their guidance and oversight would be.
They’re under my care now. They’re safer here with me than they would be in the Village, which is the first place anyone trying to hurt them would go to look for them.
If you don’t like my decision, you can send a team to come for us, but just know that I’ll always have one eye watching. And to be perfectly candid, I don’t think you can muster anyone up who’s actually got the balls to try to stop me.
Hatake Kakashi
Dear Former ANBU Captain and Current Jouinin Sensei Hatake Kakashi,
Last warning. Bring your genin back to Konoha immediately, and bring your ‘sparring partners’ with you for questioning and imprisonment. We will await your arrival within the next two weeks. Do not delay.
Sarutobi Hiruzen,
Sandaime Hokage
Dear Hiruzen,
Sorry, but We’re staying here in the Land of Waves. Suck it. Cry about it. Kiss my ass.
Up yours,
Kakashi
P.S.: Sakura requests that you remind her parents to water the orchid in her bedroom once every couple of weeks.
Kakashi frowned a little bit as he reviewed the short missive. It was hard to pick a favorite among all the insults he wanted to include, so in the end he just wrote all of them. “I’ll probably regret this later,” he sighed, then shrugged to himself as he sealed the letter and attached it to the pigeon’s foot.
Humming and whistling a little tune under his breath as he set the messenger bird on its way and ambled back over to the produce market where the others were waiting for him.
“Yes, I told them, Sakura-chan! Oi, Haku! Tell Naruto and Sasuke not to forget the eggplant!”
That day on the bridge, the day of their second fight, right before Kakashi speared his lightning-covered hand through Zabuza’s beating heart, like he had done to so many others before, Haku had frozen Kakashi’s arm with a ice blast followed by flinging four of his senbon at Kakashi’s pressure points. While Zabuza grinned in triumph, Haku frowned at them both, with a reproving tilt to his face and a look in his young but wise eyes that seemed to say, No more violent murdering for you, Copy Nin. And none for you either, Demon of the Mist.
Kakashi, pinned in place, had yelled at his ninken to leave Zabuza to him and to go kill Haku.
Seven of the ninken had taken one look and started to whine nervously.
The eighth one, Pakkun, had shot a raised-eyebrow glare at Kakashi that may as well have said, Seriously, Boss? That’s just a puppy.
And Kakashi’s eyebrows had popped up at their resistance and insubordination, but secretly he had fully agreed.
“…Fine, just keep Zabuza busy over there, and I’ll take care of the little guy,” he had snarled at them, receiving even more anxious whines and chiding barks from all eight of them.
But by the time he had finished chopping himself free of Haku’s ice blocks and ripping out the needles, Naruto had recovered enough to catch up to them. And true to the peaceful, diplomatic spirit of his father before him, with big tears running down his face the whole time, Naruto had somehow managed to talk them all down from their murderous rampages. Haku, Kakashi, everyone.
Even, by some miracle, the Blood Demon of the Mist, Momochi Zabuza.
“Zabuza, you bastard, if this is all just about money for you, and if you love killing so much, why are you letting yourself get bossed around by some idiot in a suit, if you know what I mean?! Why bother fighting us, twice, and almost getting killed, when instead of that, we could just all team up to help you kill that Gato creep and his cronies when he comes back, and then you can just take his money for yourself and be on your merry way, if ya know what I mean!!!”
(…Kakashi wasn’t quite sure about the morality of it all, but apparently, Zabuza had found the argument quite persuasive).
Team 7 had only been planning on staying with Tazuna and his family for maybe four to eight weeks following the battle. Just to get their strength back, and their bearings, and then they would all be moving on. That had been the original plan, anyway.
It had now been nearly eight months since the battle of the bridge.
Sasuke had needed a week in bed to recover from Haku’s attack, and Naruto and Sakura had needed a week glued to his side, reassuring themselves he was still alive, and Kakashi had needed maybe a month or two at a hot springs after all the yelling and screaming and crying from his genin about how traumatic the whole ‘almost-losing-Sasuke-on-our-first-mission’ thing had been, but at this point, everyone had fully recovered, and then some.
And so they would have gone back to Konoha except, well, first there was so much to do, helping out around Tazuna’s village with infrastructure repairs and maintenance, and organizing food assistance for those who had gone hungry for far too long, and shoring up the restored legitimacy of the democratically-elected local governing body.
After that, some fifty to sixty renegade bandits had decided to try their luck challenging Tazuna and the local council for control of the town, which had resulted in a several-weeks-long, very-narrowly-won siege. Kakashi wasn’t about to tell anyone (least of all the Sandaime) how close it had come to disaster, but a week after they had run out of food and the council had started seriously talking about rationing out shoes for people to eat, they had very nearly capitulated to the bad guy's demands. Thankfully, Zabuza and Haku had returned from their secret hideout spot in the nearby woods to help out at the last second. The very last possible second, it should be noted.
(Haku’s idea, Zabuza snorted dismissively over his shoulder when asked about it as he mowed down four opponents at once with his greatsword Kubikiribocho. Don't waste your breath thanking ME).
Then a week or two after that, Tsunami had bought chickens, a half a dozen of them, and needed help with naming and raising them. Naruto insisted on being the point-person for that job, claiming he had always wanted to raise chickens, even though Sakura and Sasuke accused him of only wanting the eggs so he could add them to his ramen.
So then they couldn’t leave for another eight weeks, at least.
Then a few months after that, a traveling doctor came through who needed a part-time apprentice to help him mix potions and antidotes. Sakura had signed herself up before Kakashi even knew she was interested. Haku also decided to join in the fun, although it turned out that he knew even more about the subject than the traveling doctor did. For the next several weeks after that, Sakura and Haku spent hours together in their ‘lab,’ tucked away in the rafters of the attic of Tazuna’s house, doing experiments and research and god only knew what else.
And then, one day, Sasuke was followed home by a stray “tomcat,” which he immediately claimed he didn’t care about keeping and wasn’t attached to at all in any manner, and yet when questioned about it promptly answered that the cat was named Taro. Soon after, Kakashi found out that Sasuke was allowing and even encouraging Taro to sleep in his bed at night, and carefully ladling out not just cat food but also the “appropriate amount” of fatty tuna and sashimi and nigiri and other “occasional treats” into Taro’s food bowl every morning and night, before Kakashi even had a chance to ascertain where Sasuke had found a cat food bowl with Taro’s name etched onto it in the first place. Or how he was getting his hands on so many high-quality and rather fattening cat treats, for that matter.
About a week after that, they discovered that Taro was in fact a very female ‘tomcat,’ which happened about the same time they realized that the weight Taro had been putting on wasn’t just a matter of overeating expensive cat treats, because as it turned out, Taro was a very pregnant female tomcat.
So then they couldn’t go anywhere until ten weeks after Taro had given birth, when all seven of the her healthy, calico kittens had been weaned and placed in proper homes. Of course, Sasuke insisted on going to do all the check-up visits in person, even though two of the kittens had been placed in a home at a farm thirty miles away from Tazuna’s village.
Oh well, Kakashi reflected as he pulled on the thick winter coat Tsunami had recently gotten out for him, urging Sasuke not to forget his scarf as Inari begged to be allowed to come along. The upside was that at least the two of them were building lots of stamina and putting on a fair amount of muscle in their legs, running there and back every single afternoon. Udon and Soba, on the other paw, were putting on a healthy amount of fat due to all the milk and tuna their owners were feeding them that Kakashi was pretty sure Sasuke was paying for. (Pretty damn sure. He just hadn't figured out how to prove it yet).
And now, with the weather slowly but steadily turning not just crispy but cold, and Tsunami airing out an assortment of winter coats for them to borrow, and icicles starting to appear on the edges of the rooftops and platforms, and powdery snow starting to clump on the ground, making the platforms slippery with ice, and Konoha still sending the occasional ANBU team to remind them to just come home already, but with three out of the four members of Team 7 having no one in particular to return home to, well, it just seemed that none of them were in that much of a hurry to return to Konoha. Sakura’s parents were eager to see her at some point, but they had visited twice over the summer, and had reassured her that for now, she should focus on her training, and her letters would suffice.
And then, besides all that, there was the matter of Zabuza.
Chapter Text
“Zabuza-san, I just have two questions today,” asked Naruto on their way to the market on a warm, sunny Friday in May. “Or we just have two questions, if you know what I mean. First, is it true that some vegetables are actually good for you?”
“And that you start to actually like how they taste, when you grow up?” added Inari in evident disbelief.
“And also, what’s the best vegetable, if you know what I mean? Like, if I only make myself eat one, what’s the one I should eat so that when I grow up, I’m as strong as you, or stronger?”
Down the other end of the aisle of produce from where Kakashi was standing, Zabuza snorted. Hard. His eyes flicked over to meet Kakashi’s for a fraction of a second before answering:
“Answer to the third question, Naruto, is that there is no such thing as a good vegetable, no more than there is such a thing as a jounin from Konoha with a brain in his head. Answer to the fourth is that you should stop worrying about the vegetables and just eat more meat. I basically lived on beef teriyaki from the time I was your size to — well, until the beautiful Tsunami here made me realize the benefits of a sea-food diet. And as to the first two questions: Who told you those lies, and why did you believe him?”
“You know, Zabuza-kun, I think more people would actually like you if you didn’t insist on being so inanely and incredibly wrong about everything all the damn time,” said Kakashi. Correctly, it should be noted. “And Naruto, Inari, you shouldn’t ask nutrition advice from a man who calls a double order of beef teriyaki with a side of karaage and curry rice a ‘well-balanced meal.’”
“Also, while we’re doling out unsolicited advice, you shouldn’t believe everything someone says, just because they have -sensei tacked onto the end of their name,” Zabuza said. “Especially not when it comes to the proper amount of time to let the rice sit before you stir it—”
“Let’s play another round of Separate Corners, shall we?” Tsunami said brusquely from the center of their group. “For the tenth time today,” she added in a low mutter under her breath, massaging her forehead.
At Kakashi’s side, Naruto made a thinking sound, peering around at the various produce stalls set up in the open-air market, then said, “Nami-neechan, if they did that, they would have to go to separate corners of the world, since we’re outside.”
“Fine by me,” said Zabuza, glaring at Kakashi over Haku’s shoulder.
“And me,” said Kakashi, shooting a glare of his own right back over Naruto’s.
“Oh my god, they just agreed on something!” Haku said, his hand flying to his mouth.
“Quick, Inari!” urged Tsunami. “Take a picture!”
About a thousand arguments a day broke out between Zabuza and Kakashi, but sometimes it felt more like ten thousand. Over the stupidest, tiniest, most trivial matters. What was the proper angle to hold the whetstone for sharpening a blade to perfection. Is the training field too icy and muddy, or not icy enough to imitate realistic conditions. Shall we quit at sundown or at dusk or at twilight today. Who got to use which mug for coffee in the morning. Did you just cut Sakura’s bangs way too short. What was the name of that constellation again. Whether Inari’s new pair of geta that Haku had helped pick out for him actually fit him right. Did Sasuke need his vision checked. Was it stupid to assume that countrywide geopolitical events like violent regime change had little to no bearing on the lives of everyday people. Shouldn’t someone go with Tsunami to the market today in case what she needed to buy for Tazuna’s birthday dinner was too heavy for one person to carry back alone. Was the way Kakashi had taught Naruto to wield that giant shuriken for a block correct, since back in the Land of Mist, they always did it this way.
Zabuza was wrong, of course. Always. For every ‘yes, I’m telling you, it’s THIS way’ from Kakashi, it was a ‘no, you’re completely wrong, it’s definitely THAT way’ from Zabuza, or vice versa. Kakashi had never met anyone who insisted on being so chronically wrong about everything, and then to make matters worse, Zabuza also had the gall to also be irritating about it, too, more irritating than anyone Kakashi had ever met in his entire life, and that was really saying something (He’d spent years of his life as Maito it doesn’t matter that it’s 4am, youth waits for no man Gai’s eternal rival, and had once been assigned to the same genin team as Uchiha fart jokes are the height of comedy Obito, after all).
Kakashi was a patient man and had already been through a lot in his twenty-six years of life, so he always managed to keep an attitude of placid and unbothered calm, utterly unflappable in the face of all of Zabuza’s idiotic ideas and inane arguments, and yet forcefully defending his own (correct) opinions whenever Zabuza tried to run roughshod all over his own (correct) point of view. Zabuza, on the other hand, was just plain forceful, and often became more stubborn and mulishly so whenever someone pointed out that he was wrong, which, just to reiterate, he always was. Which Kakashi always pointed out, blithely, without the slightest compunction or hesitation, since it seemed no one else had the courage to do so.
Their constant arguments stressed out Tsunami to no end, and made the kids all roll their eyes one after another, and often made Tazuna howl with laughter, just like he had the night before the day at the produce market when the disagreement about the rice first came up. His laughter had faded into slow-rolling chuckles as he re-lit his pipe and settled into his seat at the kotatsu, offering to let Sasuke and Inari and Sakura join forces against him in a card game (which was the only way they had a shot in hell at beating him, he said with a smirk) while Tsunami and Haku and Naruto put the finished touches on the sponge cake they were having for dessert, and Kakashi and Zabuza just continued to glare daggers at each other from opposite corners of the room.
(With Zabuza throwing him the occasional victorious smirk, not that he had anything to be victorious about. So what if the rice was maybe the tiniest bit fluffier if you stirred it gently at three minute intervals instead of five. That didn’t make Zabuza right).
Yep. Zabuza was an absolute pain in the ass. Out of all of them (Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Haku, Inari, Tsunami, Tazuna, and Kakashi), only Kakashi seemed to be able to see it. Just being in the same room with him was enough to set Kakashi’s teeth on edge.
And yet, there was no avoiding him. About the only thing they actually agreed on was their mutual appreciation for the “game” of Separate Corners, which Inari had made up one night a few weeks ago, with his hands pressed over his ears, the better to block out a pair of “He started it”s from Zabuza and Kakashi, and a round of huge relieved sighs from everyone else in the room.
Zabuza really had started it though. From day one. And every day onwards, from thence forward. Unfortunately, even when Kakashi and Zabuza weren’t training their flock of genin plus Haku plus letting Inari watch admiringly from the sidelines, the pair of them had to go almost everywhere together, bickering constantly all the while. They had to, since they were both drawing a paycheck from the same newly-wealthy man. Whenever he didn’t have his pipe to distract him, Tazuna complained nonstop about having to not just pay Kakashi and Zabuza but also house and feed them and “their gaggle of useless kids who are all somehow more mature than you two idiots,” but everyone knew he was getting the better end of the deal. It turned out that business went very smoothly and people nearly always honored the terms of their contracts when you had a pair of jounin-level ninja attend every meeting with you, and simply glare menacingly at prospective double-dealers now and then from the corners of the room.
(Separate corners, of course).
Kakashi wasn't going to let it get to him, though. There was no way in hell he was going to let an arrogant, self-centered, smugly-wrong-about-everything idiot like Zabuza get to him. He just carried on with his life and did his best to ignore the ex-Mist jounin, except for the times when Zabuza said something so stupidly wrong he just had to intervene. He was still the sensei, after all, and he couldn't have Zabuza lead his genin down the wrong path in life.
He had overheard his Konoha kids starting to wonder among themselves about the absence of his customary Icha Icha books, though, and took the liberty of eavesdropping on them a couple of times while the three of them were cooking up theories as to why Jiraiya’s books hadn’t made a reappearance in a while (although Sakura for one wasn’t complaining, it was just weird to see him without them). In fact, according to Naruto, instead of lazily reading while teaching them or supervising them, Kakashi always seemed to be watching Zabuza. In a non-obvious, narrow-eyed, deeply suspicious way.
“We have to make sure he doesn’t try anything stupid, that's all,” was all Kakashi would tell any of them when they questioned him about it.
(But the thing was, Zabuza did stupid things a lot, which meant Kakashi was required to do a lot of watching).
And apparently, according to his host’s daughter, who cornered him alone on the balcony one night after dinner, Kakashi also did lots of things that, in Tsunami’s respectful but informed opinion, if one didn’t know any better, seemed, well, a bit stupid, or at least intentionally designed to irk the ex-Kiri nin.
“I have no idea what you're talking about,” Kakashi told her mildly, although his mind was already flashing back to the three growling Stop's he'd heard that day alone.
“Stop,” Zabuza had snapped at him when he found Kakashi out at training around 10:30am, putting a sword-wielding clone through the paces with Kubikiribocho, prompting Kakashi to whine, “I’m just borrowing it. The balance sucks by the way, and the grip needs to be re-wrapped—”
“Stop,” said Zabuza in a clipped voice when Kakashi went rifling through Zabuza’s things a little after 2:30, trying to find his copy of Makeout Tactics, which had recently gone missing.
(“See, I knew you stole it, you thieving Misty scum, I knew—oh, wait, actually, this one is yours; mine has the author’s signature on the inside cover. Uh, my bad.”)
“Just stop already, you donkey, you pain in the ass, you absolute pest,” Zabuza had fired off hotly at sunset, when Kakashi had just finished pinning him to the ground of the training field, his hands around Zabuza’s wrists like a vice as he sat heavily on top of Zabuza’s heaving chest, with a blithe crescent-moon-eyed smile spreading across his sweating face and a “See, I told you my taijutsu is better than yours” perched on the tip of his tongue.
“Make me,” Kakashi switched out at the last second with a smirk, and without exhibiting any signs of the normal, healthy amount of fear one would experience when challenging a man who had slaughtered his entire graduating class and laughed about it afterwards.
“Maybe I will,” Zabuza returned in a voice as sharp as a knife blade held against an exposed throat. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Copy Nin?”
“You’ll die wondering,” Kakashi returned, still very mildly, as he kawarimi’ed with a nearby log and headed off to finish the shopping with Tsunami before the market closed for the night.
It was… well, it was unnerving, Tsunami told him as they went inside together, and it was making everyone antsy and nervous, to say the least, waiting for the next shoe to fall, the next sword to chop. Everyone except Haku, anyway, who just smiled his usual, unperturbed, cherubic smile whenever the latest ‘batshit crazy jounin incident’ occurred.
But even Kakashi could admit that their antagonism did have a subtle but real effect on everyone else. By the time the nine of them had spent about six months together, strains had started to appear on Haku’s usually calm face, whenever a fight broke out between Kakashi and Zabuza. Sakura had long since stopped picking fights with Naruto, and even Naruto and Sasuke had stopped bickering a few months back, after Tsunami pointed out that they were setting a bad example (for Inari, surely, though Kakashi couldn’t see why; Inari rarely bickered with anyone anymore, and had become fast friends with Naruto, the person he bickered with most when they first arrived). It was like the closer the nine people in the household grew as a group (well, ten, counting Taro the cat), the more the two of them fought. Because the more irritating Zabuza decided to become.
“Sasuke, do you want to train today?” Kakashi asked his black-haired student one afternoon as Sasuke crouched to feed Taro.
“Not particularly.”
“Do you want me to train you, Uchiha-kun?” asked a hair-raisingly annoying voice from just behind Kakashi’s shoulder (and no, Zabuza hadn’t snuck up on him; yes, Kakashi had definitely heard him coming). “I can show you the basics of water-walking on rapids.”
Eyes narrowing, Kakashi turned on him and said sourly, “He’s my student, Zabuza-kun. Not yours.”
“What difference does that make?”
“Sasuke has to master flat-water running first, before he tries the rapids. In Konoha, we always make sure our genin master the fundamentals of chakra circulation, before we even start them on water-walking—”
“Which is why all of you suck at it so bad, Kakashi-kun. What’s your opinion, Sasuke-kun? Think you’re ready for Zabuza-sensei to show you the big leagues?”
“Tsch. I’m definitely ready to learn on the rapids—”
“Don’t answer to Sasuke-kun, Sasuke. And don’t call him -sensei, either. And last time I checked, you’re still my student, so you need to follow my training program—”
“Which is moving far too slowly, if it’s even moving you along at all,” Zabuza interjected.
“God, can the two of you just stop fighting for a second—”
“It’s not slow,” Kakashi argued, correctly. “It’s perfectly paced to accommodate his natural talents—”
“It’s like molasses!” Zabuza argued back. “The boy’s talented, and for whatever twisted reason, you’re holding him back on purpose, you know you are—”
“I’m following the same training regime that all Konoha genin—”
“Konoha this, Konoha that,” snarled Zabuza in a throaty growl. “Such a loyal dog, aren’t you, Kakashi-kun? I’m guessing thinking for oneself doesn’t show up anywhere on that training regime, does it?”
“Shut up—”
“Thinking for oneself is all well and good until it starts getting innocent people killed, Zabuza-kun! Maybe I’m moving him incrementally, but at least I’m not a maniacal mass murderer, turning against my own classmates, not to mention my own kage—”
“GOD, would the two of you just drop it —”
“Turning against them for damn good reasons!” Zabuza snapped. “Not that you’d understand; you’re such a kiss-ass, Kakashi, I bet you’ll leave the Land of Waves and go running back to Leaf Village the second your Konoha masters call for you.”
“My what—”
“I DON’T WANT TO TRAIN ANYMORE!” Sasuke interjected before Kakashi could finish his retort, looking pink-faced and surprisingly heated as both Zabuza and Kakashi blinked down at him in surprise. “You both suck! I’m going to stay inside with Taro and read!”
At one point, Naruto got fed up with it and challenged Zabuza to a duel, “on Kakashi’s behalf,” apparently, which was quite sweet, although that mystifying little detail was only revealed to Kakashi later, by Haku and Sakura, with matching sneaky smiles on their faces, but whatever, the two of them hadn’t even been there for the initial part of the duel since they’d been working in their lab together all afternoon and only darted downstairs when they heard the commotion, so they didn’t know what they were talking about. Kakashi himself had only barely arrived in time for the start of it, confusion on his face as he drew level with Inari and his Uchiha student while the Uzumaki one bounded off, proclaiming his intent to destroy Zabuza with a single blow.
“What’s he talking about?” Kakashi demanded curiously. “What technique could Naruto possibly know that could take down someone at Zabuza’s level?”
“Don’t worry about it, Kakashi,” smirked Sasuke as Naruto squared off with a huge hrnnn of a frown on his face. “Trust me. This’ll be short.”
And it was.
Naruto used his sexy jutsu combined with his shadow clone jutsu to create a sexy harem jutsu.
While Kakashi sank his head into his hands in embarrassment and dismay, praying that the spirits of Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina were slumbering soundly in their eternal homes rather than watching over their progeny from the land of the departed, Zabuza just stared around blandly at the dozen or so arched-back, big-titted, nearly-naked women surrounding him.
“This has no effect on me,” he shrugged.
“Wait, what?” Sakura asked, clearly baffled, as drew up next to them to see what happened, panting hard from her sprint from the house. “Since when does Zabuza-sensei have some sort of crazy power that neutralizes the effects of enemy jutsu??”
“Don't call him ‘sensei’, Sakura-chan,” Kakashi scolded her, not for the first time.
“I’ve think I’ve read about this,” said Sasuke, nodding thoughtfully. “If I remember right, it’s called the Rinnegan.”
“No, it’s not that,” said Haku with a shake of his head as he joined them. “Unless that’s what you guys are calling it in Konoha these days.”
“It what? Calling what ‘it’?”
“Don’t worry about it, Inari,” said Sakura, putting a hand over the little kid’s eyes as one of Naruto’s sexy clones ‘tripped’ and another one slowly bent over to pick her up, only to collapse onto each other in a way that was definitely not permitted in public, but which strangely enough, still had no effect on Zabuza.
Interesting, thought Kakashi, pulling out his book but not bothering to turn to the correct page. He had to keep an eye on Zabuza, after all. In case he did something stupid.
The day of the accidental-on-purpose sensei-on-sensei kissing a few weeks later made it clear to the genin what the ‘it’ Haku had been referring to was, although for Kakashi’s part, Zabuza was being just as mystifyingly dumb as ever.
Kakashi was minding his own business, sitting up in a tree and reading as Zabuza led Sasuke through some basic kenjutsu training forms on the ground below. In contrast to how Haku and Sakura reported it to Tsunami later, Kakashi was doing absolutely nothing to provoke anyone, although he did call down to Zabuza with some occasional pointers on how he wasn’t balancing his weight properly as he finished his initial kata. You wouldn’t be able to see it if you weren’t watching from above. Sakura was down at the base of the tree waiting for her turn after Sasuke finished, and in the meantime telling Haku about the day Naruto accidentally kissed Sasuke back at the Academy, and had tragically stolen Sasuke’s first kiss from him without permission.
“Was it open-mouthed, or closed?” Haku asked with an owlish blink.
“You don’t need to know that!” Sasuke said as he wobbled in his form, blushing deeply.
“Actually, I’m curious too,” Sakura said. “It looked open-mouthed from where I was standing—”
“Closed,” said Sasuke through gritted teeth, as Naruto wiped his nose and said, “Open.”
“Closed, Thin Hammer!”
“It was open, Teme!”
“Maybe for you.”
“It was open for both of us! You’re saying you don’t remember??”
“I blocked it from my memory. On purpose.”
“Well, then, Sasuke, you haven’t really had your first kiss, either open mouth or closed, if you don’t remember—”
“Shut up about it, Haku. You don’t need to know.”
“Don’t be rude to my lab partner, Sasuke-kun!” Sakura chided, throwing a rock at his head that he deflected easily.
“Also, Haku, a kiss is still a kiss even without the tongue involved,” Zabuza said over all their bickering, causing Kakashi to shake his head from where he was listening while reading, further up in the tree.
“That shows how little you know, Zabuza-kun,” he sang-song out, idly flipping a page.
“Oh?”
“It has to have tongue to really count. Otherwise, it’s just mashing lips, and what fun is that.”
(He knew he was being irresponsible, telling a bunch of impressionable pre-teens about the fun of tongue-kissing. Didn't particularly care at the moment, though, so long as he was able to needle his way under Zabuza’s smug skin).
“Or is that how you all have fun out in Mist?” he smiled down patronizingly. “Bumping mouths against each other like a pair of potatoes?”
“Get your lazy butt down here and I’ll show you how much fun we have, Copy Nin,” Zabuza challenged him, taking a familiar one-handed, fight-ready stance with Kubikiribocho and making a come and get it fighting gesture at him with the other hand.
Kakashi, bored with his book and never one to back down from a fight, leapt lightly down, and—
Zabuza immediately dropped his sword in order to shove Kakashi up against the tree and kiss him hard, over the mask, in front of all his students and Haku, pinning him in place with his forearm on Kakashi’s collarbone.
“That’s how we do it in Mist, when we want to have a bit of fun without sickening ourselves with the vile taste of Konoha scum such as yourself,” he said triumphantly, pushing Kakashi back until his back hit the tree trunk.
Kakashi was furious, to say the least.
“You call that fun, huh?” he tried as all of the kids broke out in astonished hoots and yowls.
“Yes, I call that fun,” said Zabuza with a broad smirk and a whirl of his blade as he picked up the sword and resumed his ready-stance. “And now that you’re finally up off your lazy ass, Copy-Nin, hurry up and get ready to spar with me, so we can show your little genin how to have some real fun.”
As Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke simultaneously urgh-ed and covered their eyes with their hands, Naruto emitting a high-pitched I don't want to have to see that, datte-bayo! and Haku sent them a mild thumbs-up, Kakashi summoned his katana. Not because he’d been told to, certainly not because Zabuza had told him to, and not because he was trying to draw attention away from their impromptu masked makeout session, but only because he actually very much did want to wipe the floor with Zabuza’s smirking face, and now was as good a time as any. He spun his old familiar katana in his hand a few times before taking up an attack position as well and calling over his shoulder, “Haku, would you be so good as to write that little speech down for me? Word for word, so we can read it aloud when I beat Zabuza-kun here so badly that he starts crying and begging me for mercy.”
They were all getting stronger, gradually but steadily. All except Sasuke, who briefly quit ninja work after being caught in the middle of too many fights, and then decided to be a ruthless shinobi for only five days out of the week and started doing veterinarian training with the local animal clinic the other two days. Kakashi was a little surprised by this decision, but not worried. Frankly, Sasuke’s ninjutsu and taijutsu skills were so much better than his other two genin, it didn’t really matter.
Should really seek him out one of these days, Kakashi, he reminded himself as he hurried off to meet Zabuza and Tazuna for a strategy meeting at the council hall (only a little bit late, thank you very much, Zabuza-kun, yes I do know how to be on time for things when I feel like it). Have a nice long talk about things, serious things like life and death and grief and loss and the value of human life and human experience, the way he had with Inari that first night, and with Naruto and Sakura not long after, as Sasuke lay in bed recovering.
Really should do that at some point down the line.
He was definitely not putting it off. Just seeking the right circumstances, waiting for the best time and opportunity.
Kakashi, though, was focusing almost as much on his own training as anyone else’s. He hadn’t been lying when he’d written to Hiruzen about wanting to get back in perfect shape. Something unnameable besides just the desire to improve was driving him, and it was driving him hard, pushing him in a way he hadn’t felt for years. Propelling him, really. Couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was or it where it was coming from.
But it was powerful. Every morning, he woke in the dark of their communal sleeping quarters with a breathless start before any of the others, listening to the quiet hum of snores and sleeping around him. Then rose, dressed, and went out to train. Sprinted across the flat early morning tides of the bay until he reached land, then ran the tall ridge outside of town before dawn, his quads and calves burning, and his breath puffing out in little clouds as he pushed himself to move faster. Scaled the sheer rock face at the summit with one hand tied behind his back, usually the right one. Trained with Zabuza and Haku and the genin for hours after returning back home, deepening not just their knowledge and chakra control, but his own, too, as Haku showed him the forms for the small but still significant number of ice release techniques that you didn’t need to have a genetic predisposition to learn, which Kakashi had never had opportunity to try before. Sat watching the others spar with the lid of his Sharingan open for five minutes at a time, gradually working his way up to ten minutes, then fifteen, feats that would have been impossible for him at any point after he had been forcibly retired from ANBU a few years earlier, when he had been doing his best to forget about all things Sharingan, forever.
Had been slowly but surely increasing his stamina. Had made a habit of doing hundreds of finger push-ups whenever he could fit them in, oftentimes just before breakfast, lunch, and dinnertime, oftentimes with half the household on his back. Tazuna, Tsunami, Inari…
“Come on, Sasuke!” Inari cooed an excited invitation from where he sat perched on Kakashi’s trapezius muscles as Sasuke and Haku and Zabuza passed to the kitchen to get ingredients for making a salad for lunch. “Come join us!”
“No,” Sasuke sneered as he began to chop lettuce, Taro twining between his legs, looking for a hand-out.
“Why not?”
“The only open spot is the butt, and I hate sitting on Sensei’s butt. It’s stupid. And weird.”
“Come on, Sasuke, everyone is doing it!” called Sakura from where she was perched next to Naruto on Kakashi’s legs as Kakashi lowered himself into push-up four-hundred-and-fifty-two.
“Terrible reason,” Sasuke snorted without looking up.
“Everyone’s welcome,” Kakashi said, blinking mildly as sweat trailed down into his eye, without breaking his focus on push-up four-hundred-and-fifty-three.
“May I join, then?” Haku asked with a little smile in his voice.
“Climb aboard!” Naruto and Inari shouted together, both of them extending a hand to haul Haku up onto Kakashi’s butt as Kakashi adjusted his fingers slightly to accommodate the weight of the last of the bunch.
Well, or, almost the last.
“AUGGGHH,” Kakashi yowled from down at the bottom of the stack, his yell echoed by the others as half of the people sitting on him abruptly slid off and the other half fell nearly half a foot. “ZABU-ZAAAGHHH!!”
“You said everyone, so I naturally thought that I was included, too,” Zabuza said with a shrug, shifting his weight casually on Kakashi’s back and making them all nearly collapse all over again.
If there was one thing besides push-ups and morning sprints and building stamina that Kakashi was actually very serious about, it was training Sasuke with the Sharingan. And having that talk, too. He really was gonna get around to it. Soon. One of these days.
He was definitely not putting it off, but right at this particular moment, Sasuke was busy working at the veterinarian’s, and he, Kakashi, was too busy training on his own, his Sharingan eye peeled open, throwing punch after punch into the training dummy he had drawn a henohenomoheji onto, although he was currently imagining Zabuza’s smug face on it, trying to improve his stamina as the Sharingan pulled at his chakra system like hundred-pound weights on his arms and legs. Forcing himself to keep his eyelid open, using his imagination to superimpose stupid Zabuza’s smirking face onto the dummy in order to block out dark, unwelcome thoughts of Itachi, and Obito, and Rin, and wait, what the hell was that.
…Almost like the training dummy he’d fashioned from straw that he had been glaring at a moment before had shimmered like a hallucination, swirled for a moment, and then…
Urgh, he thought, gut lurching; his last thought before his head hit the ground was Finally got rid of that Mist-freak, at least.
…Slowly blinked his eyes back open a few seconds or minutes later.
He had passed out momentarily, it seemed; sat himself up gingerly, on the brink of losing his lunch, and found himself blinking into the bright sunlight from where he was lying flat on his back near the training dummy.
Or near where it had been, anyway.
In spite of the sudden precipitous drop in his chakra levels, Kakashi jumped to his feet and sprinted over to inspect:
Emptiness.
The Zabuza henohenomoheji straw dummy had…
Disappeared into thin air?
…Well, that was very weird.
But Kakashi wasn’t the only one with some new tricks up his sleeve. A few months after the first duel, on an unseasonably warm day in October, Naruto challenged Zabuza to a rematch during their afternoon training session, held at the beach this time, with Tsunami and Inari sitting on a large picnic blanket nearby. This time, though, Naruto planned to use a brand new jutsu, one which Haku had helped him think up, which he was calling the Reverse Harem jutsu, and was for sure going to obliterate that Mist bastard of a sensei, datte bayo.
(“Don't call him ‘sensei’, Naruto,” Kakashi scolded for the umpteenth time, barely bothering to raise his head from the book he was using to hide the fact that he was still watching Zabuza for signs of trouble).
Although this time, as it turned out, Naruto's prediction was right on the money.
The moment he deployed his jutsu, Zabuza’s face went beet red.
“Th-this h-has n-no ef-f-f-ect on m-me!!” he proclaimed loudly. But everyone could see him frantically spin around in the sand to face the other way as the dozen or so naked young men around him began to blow kisses and extend their hands invitingly, urging Zabuza to come bathe in the ocean with them and help them apply sunscreen to the hard-to-reach spots they couldn’t quite manage alone. Well, everyone saw Zabuza blush and turn around except Sakura, whose gaze was transfixed, and Kakashi, who was pointedly looking out somewhere between the skyline and the sea instead of at the people around him.
“As I thought, it’s quite a strong jutsu,” Haku remarked placidly as Sakura wiped frantically at her nosebleed. “Basically a one-hit k.o., isn’t it? What do you think about it, Kakashi-Sensei?”
“Yeah… very, uh, interesting…” shrugged Kakashi like he was commenting on the weather.
“What’s so interesting about it?” asked Inari with a pointed frown. “It's just a bunch of naked men, isn’t it?”
“Oh… I don’t know,” he hummed back, his gaze going back to his book, the contents of which suddenly seemed a bit dry, carefully not looking anywhere near Zabuza as Naruto’s sexy clones began to tug at the man’s clothing, urging him to set down his big, strong sword and to go lie down and relax on the nice warm sand with them and let the others take a turn at caring for such a large and devastating weapon. “…Can’t really explain.”
(He sensed Tsunami and Haku lock eyes behind his back and sigh in unison, but they did that so often, and for no apparent reason, that he had long since stopped paying it any real attention).
Then one day a few months later, at the beginning of winter, Kakashi was out with Sasuke and Sakura and Inari, stopping at the kittens’ house and gathering winter berries from the far edge of the nearby forest. Inari was riding on Kakashi’s back, as he always did when he decided to join them. Due to the surprising amount of skills he had in foraging, Naruto had hit his berry quota hours ago, and was now inside playing Go with Haku, who was too nice to obliterate him like everyone else did, even though he was more than capable of it, and instead patiently taught Naruto the rules over and over when he forgot them, and reminded him that he needn’t storm off whenever he lost, that it was all good practice. When they had left, Zabuza was sitting in the big armchair, “minding the children” (smoking a pipe) with Tazuna, and flirting a little on and off with Tsunami, which she accepted good-naturedly, returning fire occasionally in spite of Kakashi's repeated warnings to everyone about not feeding Zabuza's already obscenely large ego.
“So how long have you guys known that Naruto had a giant demon fox inside him, anyway?” asked Inari out of the blue, from his perch on Kakashi’s back as they leapt through the trees.
“We sorta all knew,” Sakura answered swiftly. “We just didn’t have first-hand experience, until…”
“I was unconscious the first time it happened, so I only found out the day his eyes turned red and he started smoking at the ears for no real reason,” said Sasuke, mumbling the words around his scarf.
“‘No real reason’?” repeated Sakura.
“Yeah.”
She giggled, muffling the sound only partially with her pink-mittened hand. “Sasuke-kun, no offense, but you can be kinda clueless sometimes.”
Kakashi raised an eyebrow: Inner Sakura had just slipped out. She gasped and covered her mouth and as her face turned as pink as her namesake.
But instead of giving her a scowl of hatred, Sasuke just gave her a long, considering look and then eventually said heh and faced forward again, totally unbothered. Kakashi gave them both an eye smile. Good teamwork, lately, between these two. I was right not to take them back to Konoha just yet.
“What about you, Kakashi-Sensei?” asked Inari.
“They told me before I even got assigned the team, of course.”
“Didn’t you know before that, too?” demanded Sasuke.
“Maa,” he hummed, bouncing his head from side to side. “Like Sakura said. Everyone knew, but no one was officially allowed to know.”
“How does that make sense,” demanded Inari.
“It really doesn’t,” Kakashi sighed. I was definitely right not to take any of them back to Konoha just yet.
“You know, Sensei,” Sakura interjected all of a sudden. “There’s… there’s something that’s been weighing on my mind, pretty much ever since we left Konoha, and… Well, I should have said it a long time ago, but I talked myself out of it again and again, and anyway, I just wanted to say…”
A moment later, to Kakashi’s deep surprise, Sakura blurted out an apology to Kakashi for criticizing him so much and not giving him credit as a good teacher when they first met and during those first several weeks of Team 7’s existence. To Kakashi’s even deeper surprise, before he could respond to Sakura’s sudden admission, Sasuke sullenly volunteered a similar opinion, adding in a mumble that his older brother had once had such teachers. Lazy, arrogant, unconcerned with anything but their own reputation, that sort of thing, and that at first, Sasuke too had thought Kakashi was just another one of that type of teacher.
Taken rather off-guard, Kakashi did everything he could to stop himself from side-eyeing them both. “Maa, well,” he stalled as he searched for an answer.
“Maa, well, that’s all you’re gonna say?” Sakura snapped at him.
He gave her a big eye-smile, still fumbling for words, doubly so when he caught sight of the dark, accusatory glare in Sasuke’s eyes. Could basically read the thought in little Sasuke’s head: you always avoid talking about it, but I know you two had to have known each other.
That we did, Sasuke, he would have replied if he were capable of answering him honestly, if even passing mentions of Itachi and his acts didn’t tie his stomach into hundreds of burning knots of shame and regret. That we did—
“Haku and Zabuza are right, you are emotionally repressed, Sensei.”
Kakashi’s eyebrows popped up. I should definitely have taken my genin back to Konoha and removed them from outside influences. “Zabuza is absolutely, categorically wrong about everything, Sakura-chan,” he responded firmly. “We’ve discussed this. Also, when did he say that? What was the context?”
She sniffed and rolled her eyes, and shortly after that, Inari got a little too curious about Itachi, and who he was, and how come Sasuke had never mentioned him before, and Sasuke, predictably enough, bit his head off about minding his own business, and then clearly felt bad enough about it afterwards that he offered to let Inari feed Udon and Soba their fatty tuna treats, which he almost never did.
Kakashi, as was his wont, just said nothing.
On the way back, Kakashi threw out his hand to halt the group in a large pine tree about five miles away from the farmhouse. They had taken the less usual route home, since the normal one had iced over in the hour they had spent with Udon and Soba.
“What is it?” Inari asked from Kakashi’s back only to be met with a chorus of shh!s from the other three.
“It’s bad news,” Kakashi murmured, carefully helping the kid slide from his back without jostling any of the pine needles on the boughs.
Down below, in a field just off the main road, were what Kakashi knew had to be enemy nin, though they had disguised themselves as beggars and gypsies. A few were talking amongst themselves; most were laying some very unpleasant-looking traps in the deepening snow. At least a dozen men. Maybe twenty of them total, but more could be concealed nearby.
“Are they more of Gato’s men, coming for vengeance?” whispered Sakura with a nervous shiver; when he glanced up from spying on the enemy encampment, Kakashi could practically see her thinking again about how much she didn’t want to have to eat her own shoes, let alone anyone else’s. “Do you think they’ll start another blockade?”
“No,” Kakashi answered her in a voice that even he could tell sounded somewhat strained and unnatural. “Those are Kiri ANBU.” He didn’t, at the moment, have the capacity to tell them how he knew.
She shot him a quick, discerning look.
“So is it a raid of some sort?”
Kakashi shook his head at her follow-up question. “Don’t think so. I think it’s more likely they’re Hunter Nin, like we thought Haku was the first time we met him.”
“…That feels so long ago now,” murmured Sakura.
“What’s the plan?” demanded Sasuke, his eyes flashing red as he grabbed a couple of kunai from his pack.
Kakashi gave each of the three of them a thoughtful, considering look before pulling some ninja wire from his pack. “Sakura-chan, you run ahead. Sprint back to the Village and bring back help as fast as you can. Don’t turn back.”
“What about you and Sasuke?”
“Kakashi is already engaging in combat,” Sasuke murmured, nudging Sakura’s elbow and directing her attention to the clone of their sensei who was calling out a friendly yo! to the hunter nin below. “Aren’t you?”
Kakashi shrugged. “Just a shadow clone, but Sasuke and I will wait for him to be dispelled before anyone jumps in. Well, that is, if you want to fight, Sasuke—”
Sasuke nodded, spinning his kunai and visibly steeling himself. Of course I’ll fight with you, said the determined set of his chin.
Which was not exactly the plan that Kakashi had in mind, however. He had already sent out the initial clone to assess their enemy’s objectives, basic attack patterns, and skills. Hopefully his clone would last long enough, he could drag that part out long enough to…
“Hold up,” he ordered, throwing out an arm against Sasuke’s chest as the Uchiha moved to join in the fun below. “Let’s just see how the clone manages first. Sakura-chan, leave now and run as fast as you possibly can. That’s an order.”
“Un!” she nodded, springing lightly and soundlessly from their branch, taking to the treetops.
Good, he thought. She fell for it.
Sasuke, meanwhile, was digging out a few more kunai, looping the handles around his knuckles like he’d been practicing, so he would be ready to leap down into battle at Kakashi’s side, but before he could go anywhere, Kakashi had tied him up against the thick tree trunk with more than a few loops of almost slicingly sharp ninja wire.
“What is this!” Sasuke snarled up at Kakashi, enraged.
“Maa,” Kakashi patted Sasuke’s shoulder apologetically as he quickly finished the ties. “Sorry, Sasuke, but for my plan to work, I need you to stay hidden up here, with Inari. The wire is just here to make sure you do.”
“Plan?! That’s bullshit, Kakashi, you don’t have a plan—”
(Unfortunately, the kid was right, but Kakashi wasn’t about to let him know it; he finished off the ties securing Sasuke to the tree and interrupted sternly:)
“If it were anyone else, I would let you try your strength against them, but Kiri nin are like magpies; they’re known for plucking the eyes out of people’s heads if they see something glittery and interesting that they want to take back home with them.”
“You have one of those ‘glittery eyes’ too, you know, Idiot-Sensei,” Sasuke snapped at him, punctuated by a strong nod from Inari.
Squinting down at his clone, who was currently leading the Kiri nin on an elaborately merry chase, Kakashi smirked a bit, then turned to the two dark-haired kids in the tree, putting on a show of bravado for them. “Ah, well, that’s true, but I think I can probably manage this crew without them finding out about that. Leave them to me, alright?”
He paused for a moment, hoping that would be enough to reassure them, then turned to the younger of the two, whose eyes had grown very round and whose face was rather white.
“Inari, the first chance you get, follow Sakura back to the Village. Make sure no one sees you. Run to get help and don’t stop no matter what, alright? And absolutely do not untie Sasuke before you go, or I’ll make you eat all of Naruto's vegetables for a month.”
Inari’s eyes grew even wider as Kakashi poked him in the sternum. He didn’t nod, but he didn’t shake his head either.
“Good kid,” Kakashi crooned at him, patting the top of his hat. “Be brave, but be smart too, hmm? Both of you, stay silent, and stay out of sight.”
“Kakashi—”
He was gone before Sasuke had finished growling out the second syllable of his name.
Notes:
I had fun writing this chapter.