Chapter Text
Kakashi doesn’t gasp as he wakes up. He’s too well trained to give away his status so openly. He does, however, really wish that he could- the sensation of waking is like being plunged into icy water, feeling the bubbles stream past his face on their way to the surface, the needles of freezing cold hitting every patch of skin, and then the slower seeping cold as the water pushes past the barrier of his clothing, the weight increasing with every second- but he remains still, keeps his breath light and unbroken, as though he’s still asleep. He keeps his eyes shut, and listens.
He is alone in the room, no other breathing sounds, and his sense of touch tells him that he is currently sleeping on an old-fashioned futon.
That’s unusual- Kakashi has had a bed since he started living alone, and if the calculations were correct, he should currently be seven. Seven means that Hatake Sakumo is dead. Seven means he’s living alone. So, by all rights, he should be in a bed.
Unless he’s on a mission? Staying in an inn? But if that were the case, he should be able to hear Minato-sensei’s breathing- they always shared a room, after all.
He cracks his eye open slowly, play-acting at laziness, and the room is unfamiliar, but contains many familiar things. It’s old fashioned, a three tatami room with all the trimmings- fusuma on one side, shoji on the other with a cute little tsukeshoin tucked under it.
Kakashi has certainly never spent much time in a place like this- not beyond a few nights at noble houses over the course of various missions, and from the decor, this is not a guest room. But all his stuff is here- weapons neatly arranged into various containers, a well loved tanto on a stand (but not his father’s tanto? What is going on…) a few books lined up on the desk, the photo of Team Seven next to them. No Icha Icha, of course- Kakashi is far too young to read it, now- but a series of adventure novels he would have rather died than admit to reading, back in the day. No Ukki-kun, but again, that makes sense. He wouldn’t get the plant until a good few years later.
Kakashi sits up slowly, stretching, and doesn’t hear the crack-pop-crinkle of his joints for the first time in over a decade. His arms are narrow and only lightly muscled, and he is swamped by the green and pink patterned futon he was lying under.
He’s pleasantly surprised to realise that the time travel scroll had actually worked, and even more pleasantly surprised that his last ditch dive across the altar to grab the scroll from whichever tragic missing-nin Naruto was trying to save from himself this week had worked, too.
Far better, he thinks, that it is Hatake Kakashi who has been shunted back along the time line, rather than what’s-his-face from Iwa, who wanted to go back and win the Third Shinobi War.
Kakashi doesn’t know how long the effect is supposed to last- if it’s minutes, hours, days- but he cannot let lack of knowledge paralyse him. If he’s back in time, he can change things. He could save Obito, Rin, Minato-sensei- he could kill Danzo, rescue Tenzo earlier, the options are not endless, but they feel that way, spilling out in front of him in a long, unbroken list of ‘people Hatake Kakashi has failed’.
He’s too late to save his father, but that just means he still has time to help everyone else.
Kakashi bolts to his feet, ready to take his first steps to- well, not to save the world, the world has already been saved, but to perhaps make it better- and immediately trips over his own feet, landing heavily on the tatami.
Ah.
He will have to re-learn how big his body is, it appears.
And he still doesn’t know why he’s living in a traditional house, either.
He stands up again, slower this time, and takes a slow breath.
There’s the sound of feet outside the fusuma, a light rap on the door with the back of a hand.
“Kakashi? Are you alright in there?”
Kakashi’s breath catches in his throat. He knows that voice.
He looks around at the room again- it’s not his room in the Hatake house. He looks over at the chuunin vest hanging by the cupboard.
His father is dead by now.
“Kakashi?” The same voice calls again, and now it sounds concerned. “I’m coming in.”
The sliding doors open, and Kakashi looks up to see his father, silhouetted by warm light.
He’s alive.
Hatake Sakumo is wearing his jounin blues without the vest, his hair pulled back in a messy knot rather than the efficient ponytail that Kakashi always remembers him with. The short, fluffy flyways that usually puffed around his jaw had grown long, were tucked behind his ears rather than left to dangle. He was unarmed- no kunai pouch on his thigh, no belt for his tanto’s scabbard, and he was watching Kakashi with a sort of concerned affection that Kakashi was more used to seeing in his own eyes on those occasions he saw a candid photo of him when he watched his students mid-idiocy.
The analytical part of Kakashi’s mind, the trained part, catalogues the hall behind Sakumo- more of the same traditional styling, with a small arrangement of azaleas in an alcove further down the hall. This is a large house, it seems.
Kakashi’s father- his living father- reaches down, offering him a hand, and Kakashi reaches back out, unable to help himself.
He’s lifted like it’s effortless, his father barely noticing the weight as Kakashi is put back on his feet, and the ease of it takes Kakashi’s breath away.
“Still sleepy?” Sakumo guesses, and Kakashi nods dumbly. “Well, don’t worry, I won’t tell your cousin that the great shinobi can trip over his own feet.”
He chuckles, and ruffles Kakashi’s hair, turning to head back out of the room Kakashi woke up in.
His father’s hand was so warm. He’s moving, breathing- he laughed, and Kakashi cannot remember the sound of his father’s laugh. Couldn’t remember, anyway- now he hears it, it echoes in his head, tiny, tinny memories of Sakumo washing the dogs in the yard, Kakashi in the tub to make bath-time more efficient. His dad had laughed, then, spraying Kakashi and Shio (and how long has it been since Kakashi thought of the old white dog, so long-suffering in his patience as tiny Kakashi pulled his fur and mushed at his snout with tiny fingers) with the hose.
Kakashi blinks, and there’s another adult in the doorway.
He doesn’t recognise her, but there’s something familiar there, anyway. She’s around the same age as Sakumo, maybe a few years younger, with the same silvery hair, but she wears hers long, falling in a waterfall to the small of her back. Her grey eyes are far less solemn, turned up at the edges, and she wears the black variety of the jounin uniform. Kakashi has no idea who she is, but she certainly seems to know him, if the way she waves at him, not taking the toothbrush out of her mouth, is any indicator.
“Honey!” Another voice he doesn’t know- this one is masculine, a little raspy- calls, “where’s my cyanide?”
The strange woman looks at Kakashi, rolling her eyes in a shared frustration that he doesn’t understand, and pulls the toothbrush from her mouth.
“Why do you need it, sweetheart?” she calls back, mouth full of bubbles, and heads further down the hall, following the same route Sakumo did.
“The eggs are missing some zing!” calls back the strange man.
And he wants cyanide for that?
The woman disappears into another door, and Kakashi hears her spit out the toothpaste. A much clearer voice then calls back, “Darling, no cyanide in family breakfast! Put it to the side!”
“Surely cyanide can’t be that bad for you?!” The man continues to yell across the house, and Kakashi slides quietly down the corridor until he comes out into a larger, central space. Still traditional, still tatami, but this space is large, with a low, traditional table in the centre. Through more sliding doors, these ones left open, Kakashi can see a man standing in a kitchen, his back to the living room as he stands in front of a stove, poking at some eggs.
He’s tall, too, with dark hair that’s cropped very short. He’s built more broadly than Kakashi is- was? Will be?- broader than Sakumo or the strange woman, with heavy muscles that makes Kakashi think of Gai. The woman steps past Kakashi, startling him- she moves quietly, a shinobi at rest, but still a shinobi- and heads into the kitchen, putting an arm around the man’s waist, leaning in to kiss him on the jaw.
“No, darling, us Hatake aren’t built for cyanide.”
“I know, I know, but I just keep hoping that you’ll correct me one day,” the man sighs, shaking his head, and turns to kiss her in return.
Sakumo comes out of the kitchen, carrying the rice cooker, and sets it on the table. He pointedly does not look at the two kissing ninja in the kitchen, and when he sees Kakashi looking, he tuts.
“Akiko, you’re disturbing my son.”
“What’s disturbing about love, Sakumo?” says the man, breaking away from the kiss. “Affection is the sign of a healthy marriage, and there’s nothing wrong with showing it!”
“Perhaps it could wait until you aren’t in front of a child, Shoto?” Sakumo says dryly, and the man- Shoto- sighs heavily.
“Sakumo, you’re far too worried about appropriate behaviour. What, Kakashi’s old enough to see murder, but kissing is where you draw the line?”
Sakumo shakes his head, and pops open the lid on the rice cooker to begin scooping bowls. The woman- Akiko- comes out of the kitchen with a pot of soup, and begins to serve that too, and Shoto follows behind with his hopefully cyanide free eggs. There are pickles, there’s some broiled fish, and before long, Kakashi is looking at a cheerful family breakfast for five arrayed at the table.
Shoto, it turns out, is a handsome man in his late twenties or early thirties, probably around Kakashi’s age, but his looks are marred by an air of exhaustion, heavy bags under his eyes and a sallow, jaundiced tinge to his skin, like he’s dealing with the after effects of a horrible illness. He doesn’t move like he’s sick, though, sliding dishes onto the table and taking a seat at the head of the table, opposite Sakumo. Akiko sits catty-corner to her husband, opposite Kakashi.
There’s one setting left, next to Kakashi, but there’s nobody to sit there.
“Is Arashi still not up?” asks Sakumo, frowning, “he has training this morning, doesn’t he?”
“I think he stayed up late reading,” Akiko says. “Kakashi, would you go get your cousin?”
“Don’t throw anything at him, this time!” Shoto adds, when Kakashi doesn’t move from his seat.
“Kakashi,” Sakumo says warningly, like this is something he’s said many times, and is getting sick of repeating himself, “listen to your aunt.”
Aunt?
Cousin?
“Sure,” he says easily, because Kakashi is ANBU trained, and is not going to get thrown off by something as strange as the past having changed. He stands carefully, and heads back down the corridor he came from. It’s a natural assumption, considering that Sakumo and Akiko both came from that direction, that other bedrooms may lie the same way, and the sooner he gets out of sight, the better.
The house, it turns out, is a loop, the corridors in a square around a central courtyard, and Kakashi’s room is on one side of it. The next corridor leads onto a master bedroom- clearly Akiko and Shoto’s from the scents in it and the general detritus of life, and he pauses in the doorway.
Who are these people?
It had always been Sakumo and Kakashi, the only remaining members of the Hatake. Kakashi didn’t have an aunt.
Or-
Kakashi frowns, thinking hard. He remembers being very young- maybe four? Three or four? A graveyard. The smell of freesias. Uncomfortable, black leather shoes. Whispered condolences, shaking people’s hands. His father’s tears- it had been the first time Kakashi saw his father cry, but it hadn’t been the last.
But if that had been Akiko’s funeral, and Kakashi is well past the age of three-or-maybe-four, why is she alive?
There is another person who should not be alive, but Kakashi doesn’t want to question that one.
He moves through the corridor, turning the corner once, then again. He can hear the faint murmur of the breakfast table conversation up ahead- he’s done a full circle of the house, almost, and that’s when he sees the last unchecked door.
Kakashi slides the door open without knocking, a reflex he doesn’t think to question until he realises he’s looking into someone else’s bedroom, almost perfectly opposite to where his own was.
There’s a futon in the middle of the room, but whoever it is that’s sleeping has thrashed around until one leg is fully exposed, snuggling the blankets like a body pillow.
“Maa, wake up,” Kakashi says, and the form groans, “everyone’s waiting for you, you know.”
The groan is high and childish- it’s a kid.
Another kid?
Does Kakashi have to think of himself as a kid, now?
There’s a quarter-second of stillness, and then the kid throws himself to his feet, bolting towards the door, and it’s only reflexes that move Kakashi out of the way of collision.
“I’m sorry!” the kid calls towards the living room, “I’m coming! I’m- I’ll be right there!”
“Arashi-kun, don’t rush!” calls Akiko, sounding lightly concerned, but it’s too late, the kid is sprinting towards the living room, and Kakashi blinks after him.
What an energetic child.
Kakashi takes a moment to look into the bedroom, quickly scanning for any further information, but there isn’t much to gather. The kid is pretty neat- not as neat as Kakashi as a child, but few children are- there’s a michiyuki draped over the futon blankets, a stack of scrolls on the floor nearby, and some of them are even open, held in place by an ink stone, a daruma, and a little chalkstone statuette of a cat. He ambles over to look, and-
Fuuinjutsu.
How curious, considering that fuuinjutsu is the thing that brought Kakashi here in the first place. He leans down, quickly scanning the scroll.
It’s not Minato-sensei’s style, kakashi can pick that up easily enough. Not Jiraiya’s style, either. Kakashi frowns. There’s something familiar about it, but he can’t pin what it is.
He can’t seem to pin much of anything today, at all.
“Kakashi! Breakfast!” his father calls, and Kakashi shrugs, heading towards the living room.
He’ll figure it out in time.
First, he has to figure out how he’s going to murder Danzo without anyone figuring out it was, in fact, a murder.