Chapter Text
Like how most stories begin, there is once a child, with grey eyes and her mother's smile.
There is once a child, with a sword and a curse, and a village full of people who fear what they do not understand.
There is once a child and like most stories, sometimes a child is all it takes.
There is once a child.
And the world burns to the ground.
. . .
Hatake Kakashi returns to Konoha on a Tuesday afternoon after a particularly grueling ANBU mission, and thinks of how his father died.
There are still dried flecks of blood underneath his fingernails even as Kakashi reports at the Hokage’s office, and the stench of burning flesh has caught on to his uniform, judging by the way the other shinobi inside the office keep glancing at him in mild disgust. It should be funny, Kakashi thinks, how people become so uncomfortable with the little reminders of death, and yet so unfazed when in the middle of it.
Like how his father’s teammates—the ones Sakumo had saved personally, had risked his life and reputation on—had looked down on his father’s corpse with little more than a frown, but refused to look at all once Sakumo had been inside a coffin. Or how he could stand to pick up his sensei’s lifeless body in the aftermath of the Nine Tail’s attack but still can’t seem to bring himself to meet the blonde child who was left behind in the wake of the destruction.
It should be funny, except it isn’t funny at all.
“—assume everything went well?”
Kakashi blinks away the thought. The Third Hokage is looking at him expectantly, the way he does, the way everyone always does when it’s Kakashi they’re looking at. Blankly, Kakashi nods. “Yes, Hokage-sama. Everything went to plan.”
“And the mercenaries?”
“All taken care of, Hokage-sama.”
Kakashi thinks of how his father died a bloody mess, with his body curled around himself even after death, as if still in pain. He thinks of the empty ache inside of himself and wonders whether it’s the same pain that made his father commit suicide. Wonders whether he’s likely to die in the same way, in the same bloody manner, and whether people would look at his corpse the way they had looked at his father’s body—without a care in the world and with little more than a mindless frown, but perhaps with just a bit more disappointment.
“Alright, then. I won’t keep you longer.” The Third gives him a proud, meaningless smile, and dismisses him with a tilt of his head. “Off you go, until the next mission.”
“Yes, Hokage-sama.”
Rinse, Kakashi thinks, putting thoughts of his father out of his mind for now. He walks out of the office with soundless steps, leaving behind the stench of death. The others grimace after him.
...and repeat.
. . .
The travel back to his apartment is quiet, with the sun just about to disappear from the horizon and the breeze cold enough to sting. Behind him, the noise of the village starts to fade as the vendors close their shops one by one and the people return to their houses. A shower would be nice, Kakashi muses, exhaustion clinging to his bones like a second skin. A shower and a year-long nap.
In the middle of the road, Kakashi hums an old, forgotten lullaby under his breath and the trees embrace the sound.
For a moment, everything is blessedly silent.
And then in his next step, the air drowns with the scent of blood, thick enough to suffocate. From a distance, chakra spikes up and spreads like a dam breaking. The forest crackles with the energy surge, trees exploding not too far away from where Kakashi stands.
What the hell?
Kakashi barely thinks twice as he brandishes a kunai, opening a summoning scroll and slicing his finger open to bleed on its surface. There’s a puff of smoke, and then a small dog appears, immediately recoiling from the stench. “Pakkun!”
“Kakashi—what the hell?” Pakkun echoes his thoughts perfectly and takes a reflexive step back, the dog’s ears flattening against his head in alarm. “What is that?”
“I don’t know,” Kakashi admits. Something that strong shouldn’t have made it pass the border, at least not without causing an uproar. More importantly, something that strong shouldn’t have been able to creep up on him like it did. Another group of trees explode, edging closer to where he is with each passing second. “No time,” he tells Pakkun, pushing his ANBU mask down. His left eye stings as it turns swirling red and black. “The Hokage’s Office. Go.”
“Get backup, boss!” Pakkun barks at him.
“I’ve got this. Go, now!”
Kakashi doesn’t wait for Pakkun to leave. He runs into the forest, to where his Sharingan can see the chakra bleeding out the most, staining the air black like a virus and spreading like it has a mind of its own. It’s a disturbing sight to behold. Kakashi searches his brain for a jutsu, a seal, anything at all that might begin to explain this, and comes up empty.
With a quick set of hand seals, he gathers electricity in his palm as he runs, and lets it shape itself into a knife. The source of the chakra is getting closer, hidden behind the thick foliage. The Sharingan makes out the vaguest shape in the middle of the murky energy but that’s all Kakashi needs.
He leaps up with his arm pulled back, ready to strike—
—and his heart stops at what he sees.
“NO!”
Kakashi misses his target by the barest of inches and lets his fist collide against wood, sending splinters flying everywhere as a tree snaps into pieces. Another scream, and his ears ring with the explosion. Breathing heavily, Kakashi blinks slow and braces himself, turning to prove what he saw.
A child stares back at him, shaking with the force of her tears.
What the hell, Kakashi asks, not for the first time. A quick sweep of the forest confirms that there are no other people save for the two of them. Thoughtlessly, he raises his hand to break the genjutsu—there has to be a genjutsu, there has to be—and the girl in front of him flinches.
“Kai—"
The tree beside him explodes.
“Go away!” The child shouts brokenly as Kakashi covers his head out of instinct.
When he glances back, the same sight welcomes him. There is no illusion broken, no genjutsu casted. Kakashi is almost tempted to do the hand seal again out of pure disbelief, but his Sharingan has never lied to him before. The chakra around her is dark, heavy and vibrating with power--something that shouldn’t have been possible for a small girl to carry.
A host, he thinks immediately but it doesn’t make sense. A jinchuuriki on the run would have sent everyone into chaos, and the villages would have heard of the news beforehand. A spy, then, Kakashi settles despite the bitter aftertaste of the word in his mind. The kid looks like she’s only about four or so, but then again, there is no such thing as too young in the shinobi world.
Kakashi himself had only been six when he first killed a man.
He takes a step forward with the kunai in his grip, intent on getting answers no matter what, but the child crawls away from him instead, staring at him with wide eyes.
“No,” she says as her eyes start watering. She sounds like she’s been screaming for days. Her tiny body shakes, and Kakashi realizes a little late that she’s bleeding everywhere, open wounds littering her dark skin. “Stop it.”
She scoots backwards clumsily, holding onto a sheathed weapon that’s clearly too big for her. A sword, Kakashi takes note as he follows her with another step, sending her stumbling away from him. “D-Don’t!” Another tree explodes, somewhere far away this time, and the child swallows back a sob. Something uneasy lurches in Kakashi’s gut, forcing him to pause in his steps.
She can’t control it, Kakashi thinks, and on hindsight, it should have been obvious. The tears and the way she shouts herself hoarse should have been a dead giveaway but in his defense, there’s never been a situation like this before.
“Alright,” Kakashi grounds out, more to himself than to the girl.
There’s no protocol for something like this, but even that does not change the fact that Kakashi is ANBU and the child, for all intents and purposes, is a trespasser with enough power to take out a whole squad of jounin. The best course of action would be to knock her unconscious, at least until they have her contained and ready for questioning, but Kakashi can’t imagine doing that without much bloodshed. If it comes down to it, he might end up killing her. Kakashi clenches his jaw, swallows down the stone in his throat. “Alright, what—”
“N-No,” the girl chokes out.
She shakes her head defiantly at him, even as fat tears well up and run down the sides of her bruised face. Kakashi watches as she pushes herself up on unsteady legs, knees skinned and busted, using the sword support herself. The child takes a shuddering breath and tries to stare him down, lower lip trembling.
“No,” she tells him again despite the painful way her voice cracks, and there’s something desperate in her expression, something angry and wild and—
Afraid.
Kakashi stops.
Takes a measured breath and steels himself but the way his grip slowly loosens around the kunai betrays him.
He can’t do it.
Years of shinobi training and countless bloodbaths, and he can’t kill a one kid.
“Okay,” Kakashi tells her even as his brain refuses to accept his decision because there has to be a trick somewhere. There has to be a catch. He’s going to regret this, he knows it. “Okay.”
This time, when Kakashi lifts up a hand, he does so carefully, breaking at least fifteen rules as takes off his ANBU mask. The Sharingan fades away as he shows most of his face. Kakashi holds his breath steady as the girl hiccups, staring at his eyes, and he meets her gaze as he crouches to her level.
“Look,” Kakashi says, voice hushed. He holds his palms up, open in front of him, and throws the kunai to his side. It hits the ground with a dull thud, far away from him. The girl swallows, glancing at the discarded weapon. “See? It’s okay.”
The girl glares through her tears and takes an angry breath, watching him.
It feels like an eternity of waiting but Kakashi stays where he is with his hands open, staring back into the child’s grey eyes. Slowly, Kakashi could feel the chakra in the air fading away, dispersing little by little. The forest around them grows quiet once more. “It’s okay,” he says again, nodding as the chakra around her begins to disappear as well. “It’s okay.”
He waits for the other shoe to drop, for the child to turn into something monstrous in a snap but no such thing happens. Instead, the kid in front of him inhales shakily. “Okay,” she echoes in a whisper, so soft that Kakashi has to strain his ears to hear it. There are still tears caught up in her eyelashes, and she blinks them away. Her lip wobbles. “Don’t hurt me.”
“I’m not going to.”
The girl nods jerkily, and then coughs, once, twice, and then there’s blood, spurting out of her mouth in rivers, dribbling down her chin as her eyes clamp shut in agony, and she’s bleeding everywhere, pitching forward in a speed that could crack her skull open—
—and Kakashi catches her, seconds before she hits the ground. Blood soaks through his gloves and stains his uniform a fresh crimson. In his arms, she feels smaller than she looked, limp and barely weighing anything at all if not for the sword she has with her. Kakashi takes a sharp breath, willing his heart to slow. Not too far away, he thinks he could hear footsteps and Pakkun’s voice. They’re close, but waiting for them begs for time that Kakashi doesn’t think the kid can afford, not at the pace in which she’s bleeding out on him.
There’s no catch to all of it. She’s just a child.
“Fuck,” Kakashi swears under his breath, regretting everything anyway, and doesn’t think anything else as he runs. She’s just a child.
. . .
He brings her to the hospital and creates a contained panic among the staff as he stands in all his battlefield glory, reeking of fresh blood with a child in his hands. Other patients gawk at him. The mothers present in the hallways are horrified, the doctors pale-faced as they take over. They whisk her away from him and into a room, and tell him to sit down and wait.
Kakashi sits down looking at the crimson in his hands, and thinks of how his father died.
Thinks of the once empty ache in his chest that’s now replaced with the anxious drum of his heart. He hasn’t felt that in a while.
Kakashi thinks of how his father died, and he hopes this child won’t.
Kakashi sits, and he waits.