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Chapter Text

Egawa Souta may have been considered a prodigy if he hadn’t had the bad luck to be born in the same generation as Namikaze Minato.

After all, what was there to talk about a second son of a hot springs ryokan when you could talk about the prized student of Sannin Jiraiya-sama? Souta may have made his family and friends proud by becoming the youngest civilian jounin at seventeen but Namikaze made history by becoming jounin at fifteen. Namikaze would later become a sealmaster surpassing even his own teacher at twenty, the next in line for Hokage at twenty three, and on top of that, he was easy on the eyes. Who could best that?

(Six years later, Souta would think, at least he wasn’t in the same generation as Hatake fucking Kakashi.)

——

The excitment of making jounin didn’t last long for anyone; exactly a week after promotions were announced, Lord Third declared that Konoha would go to war.

It made Souta’s mother cry. His father closed the hot springs for a day and Kouta didn’t say a word but Souta knew his twin, who was forever burdened by the responsibilities of the first born. When Kouta thought no one was looking, his breathing would stutter, like he was holding back a sob.

Souta, on the other hand, accepted the news with quiet resignation.

“You fool,” his mother shouted at him that evening, shaking in fury at his calm. She brushed off Souta’s father’s feeble attempts to stop her. She had held her silence when Souta had first started in the Academy, when he was made genin and chuunin, every single time he came back from missions with injuries. No more. “It won’t be like the Second War. You’re a jounin now - you’ll be sent to the front lines, you’ll have to fight, don’t you understand?”

Souta did. He was likely to be killed in battle before he turned eighteen. If he was really unlucky, he would lose a limb or two and survive. He understood all of this.

He simply wasn’t surprised.

The peace after the Second War had been slapstuck together and war had been on the horizon far longer than Hatake Sakumo’s failed mission if you knew to look for it: trade routes were getting more dangerous by the day despite doubling patrols. Skirmishes at the border were becoming more frequent and viscious. Rumour had it that economic collapse was glooming over Iwa. ANBU was recruiting again.

He tried to explain all of this, that the peace after the Second War was only ever transitory—peace always was—but this way, at least they wouldn’t have to worry about rations and safety since jounin family members were given priority.

His mother refused to listen, but she was his mother and heard the unspoken truth anyways: when Souta took his oaths as a shinobi, he meant his pledge to the Will of Fire. He was ready to take his place, fight and die for something bigger than himself. For honor, for glory, for Konoha. After all, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. 

“Foolish child,” his mother whispered, refusing to look at him.

His orders came two days later. Souta left without saying goodbye.

——

The first day of war, Souta learned that being a Konoha jounin in war time involved a frankly shocking amount of paperwork. He learned how to fill out requisition forms, mission forms and death certificates. He was responsible for receiving mission scrolls, disseminating information to chuunin and genin as needed, and keeping his team’s medical forms up to date.

The second day of war, he was sent to the east camp to take command of a genin team who was assigned a supply run. They moved from camp to camp through established paths that were patroled by chuunin. It felt like a regular C rank mission.

Eleven  weeks in, Hayashi Momo, a genin under his command, was killed in action. It was supposed to be a routine mission to transport supplies from one camp to another but an Iwa team had infiltrated further into the Fire Country’s border than expected. The ambush caught Souta’s team flat-footed, and Hayashi, who had been at the rear paid the price. After a furious hand-to-hand, Souta managed to distract the Iwa jounin with a well placed genjutsu long enough to slit her throat, which caused the remaining two Iwa chuunin to scatter.

He let them run: the mission wasn’t over so he secured Hayashi’s body instead.

When they finally reached base, he sat down—still soaked in blood—and filled out the death certificate with shaking hands. Name. Rank. Cause of death.

Then he dismissed the two surviving genin, their eyes red and faces pale. He didn’t say anything. What was there to say?

He instead dropped by the canteen for food and news, and then quickly turned around to volunteer himself for a perimeter check to slip out of the camp. He didn’t stop moving until the trees swallowed him whole—a safe haven for Konoha shinobi.

Hidden beneath the thick canopy, out of sight, he finally let himself slow down.

Souta swayed. Once. Twice. Then he crouched low, balancing on the balls of his feet like he was bracing for an earthquake. But the tremor was inside him, the news still ringing in his ears.

The Yamanaka twins—dead. Killed in a skirmish by the river two weeks ago. Their bodies were lost for days and finally found downstream. They used to always ask after Kouta and tease him that Kouta was the better looking twin.

Inuzuka Kegawa, who taught Souta the basis of chakra manipulation, had snapped after Kuromaru died in his arms and was in some T&I cell for reconditioning.

Adachi Yuto, who lived across the street, was taken prisoner and returned in pieces. Yuto had promised a congratulatory drink for Souta’s  promotion.

People he knew, people he grew up with—all gone.

Souta pressed the heels of his hands hard against his eyes as if he could keep the building pressure in his chest from spilling out.

All for the Will of Fire.

Souta knew this, he believed it—but his breathing stuttered all the same.

——

Four months in, after Souta learned that his first crush, Kanako, had gone MIA, he stopped asking after the people he knew. The news became too much to bear. It was better to only focus on surviving each day, and he let days blur into weeks and then into months.

Six months in, Souta learned why his friends were disporportionately dead or dying as he finally recognized the unfairness of mission allocation.

Clan genin and chuunin got the safe assignments—missions close to home or strategically insignificant with a low chance of danger. For jounin, there was no such thing as safe missions but clan jounin always had more information from other clan members. They knew the areas or missions to avoid or volunteer for depending on your ambition and injuries.

Civilian jounin like Souta were stuck with whatever was left.

Still, Souta continued to survive his missions, and quickly got moved closer and closer to the border. Despite his best efforts to stay detached, Souta also continued to hear rumors of Namikaze. Excited chatter floated through the ranks—how he descended onto battlefields like a golden hurricane of rage. A beacon of hope, ripping through enemies and turning the tide of battle single-handedly.

Then in a wave of deaths and killing and missions, Souta met Hatake Kakashi.

Hatake’s cheeks were round with baby fat, and the boy barely came up to Souta’s knees, but he was somehow a chuunin at six years old.

This tiny shrimp outranked half of Souta’s friends. Souta tore himself away from that absurd thought to focus on the sealed scroll Hatake was holding up.

“Souta-san, this is for you.”

The scroll contained three words, written in broad messy strokes, clearly urgently penned: I’ll owe you.

He didn’t recognize the handwriting but Souta could put two to two together.

“Uh,” he said, because he just got back from three consecutive supply runs, hadn’t slept for a week, and was not entirely convinced this wasn’t a hallucination. “Minato-san wanted this passed to me?”

“Yes, I just said that,” Hatake replied with an impressive amount of derision, even for a clan kid. “Ni-san had to head out immediately so he couldn’t wait until you came back from your mission. He told me to wait here and give this to you and you’d understand,” Hatake’s eyes narrowed. Every word dripping with suspicion, the shrimp asked him, “You can read right?”

For the first time since the war started, Souta laughed.

——

Whether it was a stroke of luck or terrifyingly precise planning on Namikaze’s part, Souta was indeed between missions for the following sixty hours and available to babysit Hatake.

At first, Souta wasn’t sure why Namikaze wanted someone watching over Hatake. Hatake was young but he was a chuunin, and had the legal authority and actual skill of one.

Hatake also wasn’t exactly thrilled about the arrangement. Fiercely independent and bristling with attitude, he reacted to Souta’s offer to help grab a kunai requisition form from the top shelf with open hostility.

“I’ve been chakra walking since I was two,” the boy snapped, already scaling the shelving unit with the casual grace of a cat. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

Souta let it go. There was no winning a pissing match with a six-excuse-me-I’m-six-and-a-half-year-old prodigy.

But later that evening, they entered the canteen together—Souta just a step behind, more out of habit than anything—and conversations quieted around them like someone had flipped a switch. Pockets of shinobi turned to stare. Some whispered. Others didn’t bother hiding their scowls as Hatake passed.

Souta caught the subtle shift in the kid’s posture—shoulders squared, chin up, eyes blank. Just like the black mask he liked to wear, the facade of indifference was armor. Reflexive and defensive, but the correct response. Hatake was a shinobi too after all. He knew better than to show weakness. 

That’s when Souta understood why Namikaze didn’t want the kid alone. He needed someone nearby—not to hold his hand, but to watch his back.

What Souta still didn’t understand was why Namikaze chose him.

——

Two days later, Namikaze schlepped back into camp, muddy and weary but otherwise seemingly uninjured. He thanked Souta with a nod, dropped a hand onto Hatake’s head, and—without breaking stride—pushed the kid into a deep, reluctant bow in a very practiced motion before dragging the kid away.

——

The bizarre baby-sitting, for a lack of a better term, happened a few more times after that and Souta didn’t really mind. Not only did it improve his standing among clan shinobi to be trusted to look after a clan kid like Hatake, as well as his standing with all shinobi to be trusted by Namikaze, working with Hatake was refreshingly easy.

The boy understood orders and was frighteningly competent. His taijutsu was still limited by his reach and weight but his ninjutsu was soldily chuunin level and improved each time Souta saw him.His chakra control and memory was likely better than Souta’s and the shrimp somehow already has some mastery over his third chakra nature.

This all changed after Hatake Sakumo’s death. The whispers and furtive looks towards Hatake grew bold after White Fang’s death, as if his suicide was an admission of guilt rather than a desparate man’s ploy. Shinobi, clan and civilian alike, spat on the Hatake name around campfires, blaming the White Fang for the entire war and cursing that his child continued to bring misfortune to them all.

The next time he met Hatake, Hatake was a very different child. Quiet and solemn. He hadn’t been talkative before but he would respond to Souta’s questions and comments with a childlike openness and honesty. Now he didn’t speak unless spoken to.

War makes a shinobi desperate and bitter, Souta knew this. He was no different -he stopped asking for updates of people he knew and had been volunteering for supporting attacks against Iwa to calm the churning desire to inflict as much pain on the enemy as they had inflicted on his fellow shinobi.

But if any of this were to mean something, there had to be a line, and the line had to be this: Hatake was Konoha. He was loyal. He was six.

Unsurprisingly, Namikaze started keeping the boy close after that. Word around camp said he’d pulled strings to have Hatake permanently assigned to him—breaking protocol that expected chuunin to rotate between field teams. Unprecedented but likely the perk of being Namikaze-I-clear-battlefields-alone-Minato.

——

Souta still met with Minato and Kakashi occasionally throughout the war. Unlike Minato, and by association Kakashi, who were constantly on the move, Souta was stationed by the western border near Kusa. The days were long, and war didn’t leave much room for rest, but somehow, he found himself making time for the two when they were around.

Minato, despite the weight of the world on his shoulders, had this constant cheerfulness that seemed out of place in the grim realities of war. He had a way of talking to people that made them forget the battles they fought or the losses they’d endured. A natural warmth and earnestness that made people gravitate to him.

Except, Souta noticed, in the quiet moments—the ones when Minato wasn’t grinning or cracking jokes, that there was something different about him when Kakashi was around.

Minato was still Minato, of course—kind, approachable, always willing to lend a hand or offer a word of encouragement. But the easy warmth that defined him seemed to fade when Kakashi was nearby, replaced by something a touch more protective for it to be simple affection.

Souta’s suspicions were confirmed one afternoon in the base camp. Two older shinobi, clearly not realizing Minato was nearby, bristled when they saw Kakashi kicking a stone at the edge of the camp with his distinct silver hair.

Souta recognized the two men—both experienced chuunin, who had survived but lost much during the Second Shinobi War.

The shorter one spat in Kakashi’s direction.

Kakashi didn’t flinch. He rarely did. His hands were tucked into the folds of his travel cloak, his head tilted down as always, hiding his entire face between his mask and his hair. He didn’t respond to their hurtling insults, not even sparing them a glance.

Minato paid attention though.

The change was subtle at first. Minato had been standing with Souta a few feet away, discussing a new earth jutsu he witnessed the enemy use, when he paused to observe the exchange and a slight shift in his posture made Souta’s stomach tighten. Minato’s smile—the cheerful easy thing, grew sharp and dangerous. His eyes darkened, the warmth draining from his expression like water slipping through the cracks of a dam. 

It was the look of someone who had seen far more than most would ever hope to, someone who had learned exactly how far the world would push him before he pushed back.

When the taller shinobi brought up Hatake Sakumo, the predator in Minato fully emerged.

It wasn’t that Minato moved at all. It was actually the stillness in his presence that made Souta’s pulse spike. A cold deliberation in his gaze now, and his body—always so relaxed—had gone completely still.

For a split second, as if sensing Souta’s discomfort, Minato’s eyes glanced over to Souta, and there was something terrifyingly thoughtful in them—like a feral but intelligent beast, weighing its options.

Minato looked back at the chuunin, and released killing intent.

Souta’s knees almost buckled at the weight of it. The sheer force of Minato’s presence—a promise of violence tempered by complete control—was enough to make everyone in the vicinity flinch. Even the two chunin, who had witnessed their fair share of battles, stumbled back.

Kakashi, in a twisted kind of irony, seemed to relax into it. He looked over at Minato, his expression unreadable before he silently moved to stand at Minato’s back.

Minato didn’t look at him but he straightened, the tension in his body dissipating like the calm after a storm, though the sharpness in his eyes remained fixed on the two chuunin who quickly withered under his gaze and slunk away. Then, after a long breath, he turned to Kakashi, his expression softening just enough to let a small, almost apologetic smile tug at his lips.

As though nothing had happened, Minato asked, "Ready to go?"

It was the first time Souta saw the man beneath the mask of Namikaze Minato and would be a while before he saw it again.

But in that moment, Souta understood: Minato’s kindness was genuine, but the calculated coldness that lay under it was genuine too.

Namikaze Minato, who was perfect, too perfect, too self sacrificing for Konoha, too kind to everyone he ever met, had a line that couldn’t be crossed. People he staked as his, who he wouldn’t hesitate to make the world burn for.

It meant that Minato was human too, and strangely, that only made Souta like him more.

——

Three years in, Souta made ANBU. He didn’t tell anyone, not even Kouta.

Unlike when he became jounin, there was no celebration, no ceremony—just a summons, an offer of a mask, and a new kind of oath.

He started moving toward the front lines not long after and learned that in ANBU, skill was the only thing that mattered. Unauthorized use of bloodlines limits was forbidden, and call signs replaced family names. You were measured and respected solely by your ability to survive and execute. It was refreshing, even freeing, because for the first time in his career, Souta wasn’t a civillian jounin—he was ANBU.

There was a strange kind of kinship in that. Not warmth exactly—but trust. A bone-deep certainty that the shinobi beside you would take a blade for you without question, and that you’d do the same because you were both tools forged in the same fire. Because you were both Konoha, and ANBU comprised of people who believed that was enough.

The work was darker than anything Souta had done before, but he didn’t flinch.

His upbringing in a civillian family was his greatest asset, letting him travel through country borders as a harmless civillian. Once he was in, he spent his days in the shadows, carving away at the enemy before they even realized they were bleeding. Starting rumors that would topple alliances. Planting evidence in the right hands at the right time.

He orchestrated chaos in the Wind Country, assassinating a rising Sand general and making sure the trail led directly to Iwa. He left forged correspondence in Taki’s outposts, suggesting betrayal, seeding distrust that would fracture their neutrality. He slipped poison into the ink of diplomatic scrolls, sending whispers of conspiracy rippling through the ranks of foreign shinobi.

Everything he did was a lie with a body count.

Some nights, he woke up with the weight of those deaths pressing down on his chest. Other nights, he didn’t dream at all, and that was worse.

——

Being in ANBU meant he saw less of Minato and Kakashi, but he heard about them more than ever. In a way, being on the inside of ANBU made him realize just how essential Minato was to the war effort. What had once seemed like unpredictable movements from the jounin were actually intricately tied to the ANBU’s operations. Like when ANBU carefully leaked intel that a camp by the waterfall was restocked with supplies. When Iwa finally moved to raid it, they found Namikaze Minato waiting for them instead.

Then, four years into the war, Minato somehow replicated the Second Hokage’s hiraishin, and for the first time since the war started, Souta dared to hope that the war might actually end.

——

The break in Souta’s run of missions came later when he got a sealed purple scroll which indicated an urgent request to return to Konoha. The scoll contained three words, written in broad, messy but familiar strokes, clearly urgently penned: I’ll owe you.

Ignoring the excited chatter that the Kannabi Bridge was destroyed, Souta turned toward Konoha and started to run.

Chapter Text

Souta’s jounin sensei was Aburame Riko, a veteran who controlled poisonous moths disgused as butterflies. She was a strict but fair teacher to Souta and his two teammates, Inuzuka Kentarou and Akamaru, and Hayashi Ren, a civillian born chuunin who never made it to jounin. The war meant his team, all on active duty, were constantly across the continent but Souta made a point to take Riko sensei out for drinks if he was in town around her birthday.

One year, Souta told his sensei about his interactions with Minato and his baby sitting duties of Kakashi. To his surprise, she shook her head, critical that Namikaze was allowed to be Hatake’s jounin sensei at all.

“What… are you talking about?” Souta had asked.

“Of course you wouldn’t know. ANBU aren’t allowed to teach genin,” She waved away Souta’s spluttered denials that he wasn’t ANBU. “If you do it as long as I have, you learn how intentional Jounin-genin pairings are. Certain arrangements are always avoided: a genin will never be paired with a teacher from the same clan—too much risk of favoritism. Civilian jounin don’t get teams made up of just clan heirs, and clan jounin don’t teach only civilians. But the worst match?” She frowned. “An orphan jounin and an orphan genin…. That’s a bond the village can’t control.”

Souta stared at her. It never occured to him that that village might be so deliberate in something so basic as a genin team, weighing  things like bloodlines and bonds.

“But what does that matter?” he said. “If the team works, if they learn to care about each other—why does it matter where they come from?”

Riko didn't answer right away. One of her moths landed on her shoulder, wings shimmering like stained glass, and she reached up and gently stroked its back with a single gloved finger.

“Loyalty isn’t just about caring. It’s about direction,” She said finally. “Konoha needs you to choose her and most people will, because they have their children, their family, their friends to protect. To choose the village is to choose all of them.

“But orphans who bond to each other? If you make them choose between a village full of strangers, and the only bond they have, who do you think they will choose?” Riko stared at Souta knowingly. “If push comes to shove, how far will they go to protect each other?”

——

When Souta, after getting Minato’s scroll requesting an urgent return to Konoha, finally reached its gates, Minato’s clone was waiting for Souta to share the news: Kannabi bridge was destroyed; one of Minato’s student was dead, and Kakashi had an implanted sharingan that Uchiha Obito insisted he keep.

“The Uchiha…” Souta stopped, actually struck speechless. He tried again, “The Uchiha will have Kakashi’s head for this.”

Minato’s eyes, usually so calm and reassuring, flashed with something darker. The predator Souta had glimpsed years ago, watching quietly as two chuunin tried to intimidate Kakashi in the camp, was back.

“Well, they’re not getting it,” The clone said quietly. “Can you watch my kids for the next twelve four hours? Discreetly,” He added, as if Souta who had been ANBU for four years now was anything but. “They’re at the hospital, east wing with me. And you’ll need this.”

Souta glanced down, growing still when he saw what the clone was holding out. It was a single three pronged kunai with the hiraishin seal etched into the handle.

His breath hitched in his chest. He knew how meticulously Minato guarded his kunai. The weapon let Minato teleport to any location it was thrown, making the security of the weapon both a matter of national and personal safety. In the wrong hands, it could lead him straight into an ambush. For a shinobi to even possess this without proper clearance was a violation of several protocols—ANBU security statutes, emergency transport restrictions, even classified fuinjutsu containment laws.

And here Minato was, offering it to him without hesitation, without a single word of caution.

Souta still didn’t know why Minato trusted him, but he took the kunai anyways.

——

By the time the ANBU tracked them down, the real Minato and his students had relocated to a quiet hallway in the closed northern wing of the main hospital.

Even cloaked in ANBU-grade concealment seals, Souta wasn’t surprised when Minato’s head turned ever so slightly in his direction as if in acknowledgement of his arrival. A bare flick of the eyes—subtle but intentional. Minato had always been a talented sensor.

The man leaned in and whispered something into Nohara Rin’s ear. Whatever he said, it made her straighten up, her expression turning solemn before she nodded sharply.

Minato patted her head twice before stepping back, disappearing in a yellow flash.

Souta took that as his cue to settle into the corner of the hospital hallway. He pressed back against the cool wall, as he scanned the dimly lit corridor. His chakra was tightly coiled, that Souta knew very few, if any, would be able to sense him.

It was considered bad manners for an off duty ANBU to be so hidden within village walls, but Minato had asked Souta to be discreet. The ANBU was clearly meant to wait for something.

His gaze flicked over to the gurney. He felt a hollow pang in his chest as he took in the sight of Kakasni. The shrimp was unconscious and barely recognizable beneath layers of bandages and blood-soaked gauze. His tattered jounin blues hung loosely around his thin frame, the cloth stained with blood in places, the remnants of whatever hell he’d been through.

But it was the bandage around Kakashi’s left eye that kept Souta’s attention. Nausea rose, slow and bitter as the reality that Kakashi had a sharingan under that bandage hit him full force.

An outsider having a clan dojutsu was a violation of the highest degree. The only reason Kakashi wasn’t killed immediately upon return was likely because of Minato, who refused to leave his side, and the sheer lack of precedent. This time, it wasn’t a shinobi from another village accused of bloodtheft. It was a fellow Konoha shinobi. In a village where bloodlines meant everything, that was a complication no one had prepared for.

Nohara obsessively reached out to grasp Kakashi’s wrist. She pressed lightly, checking his pulse for what had to be the fifth time in as many minutes. Souta didn’t blame her.

Kakashi felt half-dead. His chakra signature—usually so distinctive—crisp, bright, and sharp enough to feel like cold steel against the skin—was nothing more than a faint, struggling ember.

It made the complete absence of medics stranger. Normally, a shinobi in Kakashi’s condition would have been swarmed, rushed into treatment, surrounded by skilled hands working to stabilize him. But here, in the sterile hallway, Kakashi lay exposed and alone. The only sounds were the faint mechanical buzz of lights and the soft, rhythmic beeping of a distant heart monitor, far down another hall.

Souta scanned the corridor again, uneasy.

Konoha was, of course, in war—it was possible there were patients even higher priority than a non-Uchiha jounin with an implanted sharingan.

But, Souta thought with a twist in his gut, this was more likely beureaucratic paralysis. Kakashi was essentially radioactive until the Hokage decided whether to let Kakashi live or die.

Minato had to have gone to the Third to argue his case. Souta couldn’t imagine Minato leaving his students’ side at a time like this for anything else.

In which case, there was nothing they could do but wait.

——

It wasn’t long before Souta felt the chakra signatures come down the hall.

Around the corner came Uchiha Tetsuya, the current head of the Uchiha clan. Behind him trailed three Uchiha medics, their chakra signatures tightly coiled as if in preparation for a fight. Their eyes were all fixed on the gurney.

Souta went ANBU still. He knew what Tetsuya had come for. It was no coincidence the Uchiha appeared mere minutes after Minato stepped away.

Nohara Rin, trembling, stepped between them and her teammate.

She squared her shoulders and met the clan head’s gaze dead-on, eyes wide but steady. For a split second, it seemed to actually startle Tetsuya. His focus shifted to her—not with respect, but with mild irritation, as if surprised she had the gall to put herself in his way.

“…Remove the eye,” The Uchiha head ordered.

The medics stepped forward immediately, one of them reaching out to take Nohara by the arm and drag her aside.

“No!” She tried to shrug the Uchiha off. “You can’t!”

The medic’s grip tightened.

“Stop!” Nohara struggled with surprising force for someone so small and shaken. “Obito gave it to him!”

Souta was ANBU, handpicked to serve Konoha from the shadows by the Hokage himself. His duty wasn’t to provoke a civil war over a Hatake and a terrified chuunin.

So instead, Souta reached inside his vest and flicked the hiraishin kunai to the ground by his feet.

“Tetsuya-sama,” Minato strode forward from where the hiraishin landed without missing a beat. His voice was calm but unmistakably sharp. “Funny seeing you here. In a closed wing of the hospital.”

The medics froze.

Tetsuya turned slowly, his face unreadable, but his chakra surged like a ripple beneath the surface. A blink, and his eyes bled red.

Minato bared his teeth. It wasn’t a smile. “May I take your own use of the sharingan as an intent to battle?"

——

Souta found out exactly how far Minato was willing to go.

——

Tetsuya snarled, the tomoe in his sharingan swirling faster with barely-contained rage as he took a step forward, closing the distance.

But before either man who could make another move, a suffocating pressure flooded the air. Killing intent rolled over the corridor like a wave: old, vast, and cold as winter.

”Enough.”

Minato, already tense, straightened immediately, spine rigid and eyes forward. Even Tetsuya turned to face the Third Hokage with the slightest bow of his head.

Souta instantly dropped his concealment wards—ANBU standard of procedure in the presence of the Hokage— but remained still, breathing shallowly. The Third Hokage’s killing intent was like a tangible force, one that demanded immediate compliance and silence.

Minato must have been meeting the Third like Souta had suspected. The jounin must have told the Third where he was flashing to and why. The timing for the Third to appear in this random, deserted hospital wing was too perfect to be coincidence. And now, here the Third stood, flanked by two black-cloaked ANBU and with a presence that reminded them exactly who had led them through two wars.

“All of you,” He said, His gaze swept the space, including Souta, now revealed, still in his ANBU gear. “My office. Now.”

——

It was how Souta found himself in the Hokage’s office with the Uchiha head, Minato, Nohara, a now conscious Kakashi and the Council for an emergency meeting.

Kakashi sat slumped in a chair off to the side, resting against Nohara’s shoulder. He looked dazed, barely aware of where he was. Minato stood in front of them both, his chakra pooled protectively around them

"The next person who lays a hand on either of my students will lose both hands," Minato said tightly. The Uchiha medics, who had been standing across the room, instinctively took a step back. The chakra of the two ANBU flanking Minato shifted, as if to lean away.

The Council, which consisted of village elders, clan shinobi and civillian shinobi alike, stared in silence at Kakashi—at the bandages around his face.

The Third Hokage, after a long, heavy pause, motioned to the Uchiha, his clipped tone a warning in itself, “Explain. You have five seconds.”

“Hatake Kakashi stole the sharingan from the Uchiha,” Tetsuya said coldly. “Namikaze obstructed our right to take back what is ours. It is within Konoha’s own laws to control bloodline limits in accordance with clan law."

The silence that followed was thick—no one moved or spoke.

Hiruzen looked at Minato.

“The Uchiha were going to remove Hatake Kakashi’s eye while he was still unconscious,” Minato reported flatly, his gaze never leaving the Third’s. “The eye of someone outside their clan, without notifying the Council, Kakashi, much less you, Hokage-sama.”

If Tetsuya’s words had been met with a shocked silence, Minato’s were met with instant outrage. The clan heads of Hyuuga and Nara knocked their chairs over as they jumped to their feet, speaking over each other in their fury.

“Preposturous,” Hyuuga Akihito spat, his voice venomous and biting. “The Hyuuga will not condone such reckless actions—”

“The Uchiha jeopardize the very principles Konoha was built on,” Nara Kagami was shouting.

Ah, Souta thought, seeing the real game Minato was playing, how perfectly he had set the trap and was going, in one blow, for the kill.

Souta knew which law Uchiha Tetsuya was invoking. The vast majority of Konoha’s older laws were designed around protecting each clan’s autonomy over it’s bloodline limits or other clan specific powers. One of the key provisions allowed clans to exercise near-unlimited authority over its clan members . It was how the Uchiha could arrange marriages and how the Hyuuga could force the bird cage seals onto its members.

But Souta also knew, as Minato had pointed out, that when it came to non-clan members, the law required strict procedures—the notification to the council, informing the person affected but most importantly, the Hokage’s approval. This wasn’t just a formality. It was a safeguard insisted by the founding clans themselves to prevent one clan imposing its own clan laws on another.

The Hyuuga and Nara were clearly already fearing the possibility the founding clans had foreseen generations ago. If the Uchiha were allowed to set this precedent—if they were allowed to enact their clan laws on Hatake, a member of a different clan—it only opened the doors to someone doing the same to the themselves.

But even for the civillian born shinobi, who had no skin in the game of clan politics, the look of betrayal and fear was clear in their faces.

Konoha was in war and they were all soldiers who were prepared to die. Still, if any of their sacrifices were to mean something, there had to be a line. Some things had to be untouchable.

The mission was sacred. The Will of Fire was sacred.

The promise of safety in Konoha, of home, was sacred.

For the Uchiha to attempt this when a shinobi was chakra drained, unconscious and defenseless, injured in the defense of the village, was sacriliege.

——

Minato wasn’t finished.

——

In the end, Kakashi was allowed to keep Uchiha Obito’s sharingan.

With it, he continued to build a deadly reputation, outshining the Uchiha with their own dojutsu and gaining the moniker of Kakashi of the Sharingan. He was in three different bingo books by the age of 12.

Then, the news came that Kakashi returned from a mission with another teammate’s body that he confessed to killing. Souta, who still remembered the way Nohara obsessively checked Kakashi’s pulse, the way Kakashi leaned against her in the Hokage’s office, knew there must be more to her death. The truth, however, was sealed in secrecy. Kakashi’s mission was classified to the highest degree, kept under wraps by the Third himself.

Rumors spread like wildfire. Born was a new nickname for Kakashi: friend killer.

The cruelty in that was staggering. It wasn’t a nickname whispered by Kakashi’s enemies. It was from Konoha itself, its own people turning on one of their brightest, one of their own.

——

After the very public clash with the Uchiha, most people believed Namikaze Minato had lost his candidacy for the hat. Souta, who had a front-row seat to the chaos that day, agreed.

But as the war dragged on, Konoha’s Yellow Flash turned the tide again and again, his mere presence becoming enough to cause his enemies to scatter in fear. Enough to make Konoha shinobi shout in relief at the sight of his signature golden hair in the battlefield. On top of that, the destruction of the Kannabi bridge, led by Minato’s own students, halted Iwa's momentum, and finally, the war ended.

So with it, Koniha gained its youngest Hokage.

Who turned around and assigned Konoha its youngest ANBU Commander.

“You want me to be what?” Souta stared at Minato over his bowl of ramen. They were in the far corner of an otherwise empty Ichiraku Ramen,. It was that time late in the night that most people were asleep but not so early that the early risers were up.

“You’ve been in service for almost five years now, the longest tenure in history from my understanding. I went and checked,” Minato added, “You’re a trusted captain and have an unprecedented mission record. Also, you’re civillian born.”

Souta blinked, incredulous. "Most people would consider that a negative."

Minato’s eyebrow twitched, the closest to annoyed Souta had ever seen him. “Most people don’t understand that it takes twice the skill and grit for a civillian born to make it as far as you did.”

The unexpected recognition hit like a sudden blow to the chest.

It was an open secret that civilian-born shinobi were promoted less than half as often as their clan-born counterparts. It added to the stereotype that civilians weren’t cut out for the demands of shinobi life—that they lacked the raw talent or the proper bloodlines. But Souta had learned the hard truth over the years: the real issue was the discrimination, the lack of support, the unfair mission assignments. The doors that were shut before Souta even had the chance to prove himself.

To hear Minato, the new Hokage, acknowledge it so plainly struck a chord deep in Souta’s chest. An old childhood hope unfurled inside him, tentative but real.

Things could be different.

“I need someone who can bridge the clans and civillians together. You’re known, respected, and liked by both sides, which is rare for civillians and impossible for clan members.

“Most importantly,” Minato continued quietly. “I trust you.”

The ANBU stared at the Konoha’s living legend, the Yellow Flash, now his Fourth Hokage. But also, Souta realized with a jolt, a friend.

He closed a fist in front of his chest, the formal ANBU salute, “I accept with honor.”

Minato smiled, “The honor is mine.”

——

“You want horse before monkey to increase stability. Getting the timing right is the trickiest part.”

With that, Minato stepped back and looked at his new ANBU guards expectantly.

A beat of silence, then as one, the four ANBU turned to look at Souta. The masks obscured faces but could sense the disbelief and question they were too well trained to ask: that’s it?

“Lord Fourth,” The ANBU Commander tried not to sigh. The Hokage could not seriously be expecting anyone to learn one of the most complicated space-time jutsu known to man by giving them a single demonstration and a thirty minute lecture of how the seal was structured. For fire’s sake, the man had been a jounin sensei once. “While the faith you have in your troops is touching, I think we will all need a little more than that to learn the hiraishin.”

When Minato continued to look at him blankly, Souta forced a smile. “How did you teach Hatake new jutsu?”

“Ah,” Minato brightened. “Of course. Kakashi always learned better on the field as well.  How about I go through the seals more slowly a few more times and you can start trying for yourselves? I can give pointers on your chakra distribution.”

Souta waited but nothing followed. This time, he did sigh. “Lord Fourth, I meant how did Hatake learn before he obtained the sharingan.”

“Before-oh you misunderstand, Commander. That was how I taught Kakashi before the... Before,” A blink and the grief was gone.  “Afterwards, he usually only ever needed to see me demonstrate once.”

From the corner, Viper coughed once, probably to hide his outrage.

“You mean...” Souta tried not to sound pained. “You taught your student jutsu… by just showing it to him?”

“Yes,” Minato responded now with the wary reluctance of a man who sensed the disbelief in the room but wasn’t sure why.

Fucking geniuses. Souta scribbled a note on the bottom of his report: list of people never allowed to teach: Namikaze Minato.

He paused, “And Hatake learned from this?”

“Yes. Though he’d need more time to replicate jutsu that weren’t his primary or secondary nature, of course.”

“Of course,” Souta echoed as he added a second name to his list.

——

Souta closed the door to the Hokage’s office, activated the privacy seals, and turned to Minato.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?”

Minato paused mid signature. He raised an eyebrow, “Is this about the Mist treaty? I thought I left a note that it’s only a draft.”

Souta dropped the file of one Hatake Kakashi on Minato’s desk. It was an application for ANBU.

“I assume he had your blessing for this. You cannot seriously be asking me to accept Kakashi into ANBU.”

The war had ended months ago, and Kakashi was still falling apart. He was barely thirteen and already walking around like a ghost—traumatized, alienated from the village, and blamed for the deaths of his teammates. For the past year he had been signing up exclusively for solo A rank missions after another, and now, on his thirteenth birthday, the youngest age a shinobi could apply to ANBU, he was a file on the ANBU Commander’s desk.

Souta had been worried for the kid—not just because he liked the shrimp, but because he saw what it was doing to Minato as well. As if the stress lines from patching peace back together across the continent wasn’t enough, the quiet tension in Minato was getting worse. It was in the harsh line in his back whenever the Fourth reviewed Kakashi’s mission reports and his medical assessments. He stared at those pages like they might bleed if he stared long enough, as if some magical solution would rise from the ink and stop Kakashi's slow descent.

Minato had the gall to look genuinely surprised. “Where else would he go?”

Souta’s jaw clenched so tightly it hurt.

Now, he had known Minato long enough to understand how his mind worked. To Minato, placing Kakashi in ANBU was the only logical choice. It would put him under the Hokage’s direct command and under the protection of secrecy, keeping Kakashi out of the public eye. Whatever Kakashi’s missions were and however the missions turned out, no one but Minato would have to know. It gave Minato a measure of control without the risk of perceived favoritism.

Never mind that Kakashi spent more time in front of the memorial stone than with any living person and that putting him in ANBU would only isolate him further. That the work in ANBU broke hardened veteran jounins, sometimes into insanity. That Souta could see from a mile away, Kakashi was looking for a sanctioned way to die.

It wouldn’t matter, because ANBU was still the best way Minato knew how to protect him—keep Kakashi useful, and maybe the village would stop trying to bury him. Keep him close, and maybe Kakashi wouldn’t find a different way to destroy himself.

——

Souta had also known Kakashi long enough to know what the kid was thinking: Kakashi was determined to die. He might as well let protecting Minato be the reason why.

——

The ANBU Commander sighed through gritted teeth. Fucking orphans.

——

“Can you talk some sense into him?” Souta demanded, dropping into the seat across the table in Ichiraku.

Uzumaki Kushina stared back at him, mid bite. She slurped the rest of her noodles before answering. “What do you think I’ve been doing? The cheeky kid refuses to listen to me, ya’know!”

Minato and Kushina kept their relationship mostly out of the public eye. Between her status as a juurinchiki and Minato’s rise to Hokage, they’d had a quiet, private wedding ceremony—one of those rare things in their lives that wasn’t dissected by the village.

Souta tried to stay away from Kushina in public as well to avoid bringing unintended attention to her. But Minato wasn't budging on his decision to accept Kakashi into ANBU and Souta saw how Minato was when he was with Kushina. He became... lighter, softer. More human. The kunoichi had a way of peeling back the layers of responsibility and calculation that weighed him down, even if it was only for fleeting moments.

Souta shook his head, “Not Kakashi, I mean Minato. You’re the only one he really listens to. He needs to help Kakashi, not....“

Souta gestured helplessly.

“Oh,” Kushina said. She stared at Souta and repeated, “What do you think I’ve been doing? This is Minato trying.”

——

The news that Kakashi was joining ANBU sent ripples through through the ranks of the captains. Despite his age, no one disputed his qualifications to join when Kakashi’s file spoke for itself: Academy graduate at five, chunin at seven and jounin at eleven. Accomplishments some couldn’t achieve their entire lives, all before the civillian age of majority.

Even the Uchiha couldn’t dispute that Copy Ninja Kakashi was the greatest prodigy Konoha had produced and wasn’t that incredible praise coming from Konoha, the village that teemed with blood limit users.

It was the hidden village that had Sharingan users patrolling its streets and Hyuugas arming the hospitals. It had produced the White Fang, the Sannin and the Yellow Flash and still,  the indisputable title of genius went to Hatake Kakashi, the only child of the disgraced White Fang, the last living student of the Yellow Flash, and the only existing non-Uchiha Sharingan user.

Who wanted to command someone with that kind of pedigree?

Kakashi, unsurprisingly, excelled in ANBU. What was surprising was  he worked well in teams as well  

The only real complaint his captains ever had was that he was too protective. Kakashi had a habit of throwing himself into danger to shield his comrades, often ending up with injuries that could’ve been avoided. But that, too, really only gained him respect within the ranks. In an organization where skill and survival were everything, it was clear Kakashi was Konoha too and that was enough for his peers.

When Minato later ordered him to be his guard, a position typically never offered to rookie ANBU like Kakashi, the shrimp had the audacity to decline.

That lasted exactly one evening. Minato dragged him home for dinner, and dropped the news that Kushina was pregnant.

After that, Kakashi started turnin down A- and S-rank missions without a second thought, choosing instead to stay close to the village, close to Kushina. He begrudgingly helped Kushina around the house in exchange for learning sealing and stuck around for dinner. 

Somehow, despite being part of ANBU—the masked, brutal underbelly of Konoha—Kakashi started piecing himself back together.

Souta was relieved. He truly was.

He still wanted to throw something sharp at Minato’s smug face.

——

“Nara Shikaku has lodged a complaint that civilan children are feeding the deer,” Souta held out the twenty two page complaint to the Fourth. “Again.”

Minato groaned and leaned back against his chair. The jounin had long abandoned his white Hokage coat, and his vest was buried somewhere under the ANBU reports from last week. Down to the jounin blues, he looked like any other sleep deprived manic jounin. “Why?”

“It’s apparently unhealthy for the deer when they’re fed that much fruit. The complaint goes into detail about this from page 4 and continues until,” Souta flipped through the report, “For fire’s sake, page 16.”

“No, I mean why am I dealing with this? This should have gone to the Civilian Urban Affairs Committee if it involves civilian children,” Minato took the report and skimmed it with the efficiency of a man who had spent the past two moons doing nothing but. “Even if the Nara wanted to invoke clan rights over the deer and request punishment, this matter should have gone to through to Civilian Dispute. Actually,” Minato’s eyes briefly flickered up to his ANBU commander. “Why are you bringing this to me?”

Souta patiently waited for Minato to reach the last page of the report in leiu of an answer.

“That conniving bastard,” Minato swore as he read outloud, “‘The Nara Clan is under the impression that the civilian children continue to be attracted to the west forest because of the rumours that the ANBU training grounds are located within. We hereby request that the Hokage emphasizes to the general public that all ANBU grounds are off limits and not to go seeking for them. The Nara clan is happy to otherwise assist ANBU and any other shinobi in their mission to blah blah blah…’”

Minato threw the report back on the desk. Souta collected it and fixed the pile of papers it disrupted.

“I agree, Hokage-sama; I doubt the Nara actually believe this nonsense about the ANBU training grounds. They likely just mentioned ANBU because they knew that would get flagged and brought to me, and by extension you.”

Minato’s gaze turned towards the windows, where it was prone to go whenever he was deep in thought. The Hokage’s office had paranormal windows that afforded a sweeping view of the Konoha. “How many times has the Nara made this complaint prior to this?”

Souta guessed where Minato was going with this. “Formally, once. It was previously taken to Urban Affairs twice but dismissed that children will be children. However, they have informally brought it up three times with the civilian population through various community venues,” He paused. “For your edification, Hokage-sama, it will be mating season for the deer in a few weeks.”

Comprehension flashed in Minato’s blue eyes. He sighed, “We can’t reward this behavior but we also need to address Nara’s actual problem.”

And that was how Souta rest of the spent the rest of the day, mediating between the Nara, the civilians, and an increasingly impatient Hokage.

Still, a day arguing about deer. The peace felt different this time, like it was built to last.

——

It didn’t.

——

Souta was in his office, waiting to hear from the ANBU stationed with Kushina and Minato as she went into labor, when it happened.

The earth trembled first, like a soft warning. A rumble in the ground, a shift in the wind. Then, a roar—a deafening sound that made the walls vibrate and his chest seize. A chakra signature, impossibly massive, like an unstoppable storm descending on the village.

The Kyuubi.

Chapter Text

Souta stared for a heartbeat, barely hearing the screams of panicked civilians fleeing from the kyuubi.

Minato’s chakra pressure crashed down like what Souta imagined a supernova would look like if it took human form. The savage thrash of a hurricane, condensed into a single point.

And even then, it was frighteningly dim compared to the fox.

Through the rising panic, Souta forced himself to stay focused. He barked orders to the ANBU around him,“Hold the southern line. No matter what happens, the Fourth faces the Kyuubi alone.”

Minato and Souta had prepared for this. Every contingency plan and the contingency of the contingency had been discussed, revised, and covered again. This was the worst-case scenario—Kyuubi, in the middle of Konoha—and Minato had warned that the seal he would have to use to reseal the Kyuubi could kill anyone caught in its radius. What it would do to the castor—he hadn't needed to say.

As the chaos raged around him, Souta suddenly felt the faintest pulse of static—a prickling sensation brushing against the edge of his senses. His eyes snapped to the rooftops just in time to catch a familiar figure racing south, straight toward the destruction.

Straight to Minato.

“Toad, retreat!” Souta barked, knowing Kakashi’s  hearing would pick up the order even at a distance. But in blatant disobedience, Kakashi didn’t break stride. The damn shrimp didn’t even hesitate.

“Rabbit, Horse,” Souta started, ready to order them to drag Kakashi back—when Kakashi flared his chakra in a very particular pattern.

Every nearby ANBU stiffened, and like wolves scenting blood, their heads snapped in perfect unison to Kakashi.

It was the signal every ANBU knew because it was the one you hoped to never use: the warning you gave before you activated the suicide jutsu embedded in the ANBU tattoo—the ANBU code for goodbye.

Rabbit’s voice cut in, hesitant. “Sir? Your orders?”

Souta exhaled slowly, the breath trembling in his chest. The truth settled heavy and bitter: Kakashi knew what Minato was about to do, that the Hokage was walking into certain death to seal the fox. And he was effectively telling Souta he was going to Minato’s side, even if it killed him.

There would be no stopping Kakashi, no talking him down. And Souta, who had all of Konoha to care for, couldn’t afford to spend any time or resources to try to stop him.

Souta was going to lose them both.

Steeling his heart, the ANBU Commander ordered, “Prepare to delay the kyuubi if the Fourth fails. Touch base with the Nara to confirm how long their wards would hold if it heads east. I want an update in five.”

——

Somehow, the fox was sealed.

Even more shocking was that somehow, Minato survived.

——

It took thirty medics working in shifts around the clock, five chakra transfusions and two full blood transfusions to keep Minato breathing. Even then, his survival had been a threadbare miracle. It was another two weeks before Minato gained consciousness and three days before Minato stayed awake long enough to be told what happened.

Souta was tasked to deliver the news that Naruto was safe, Kushina was dead and Kakashi was dying.

“Kakashi…” Souta’s voice faltered, and he cleared his throat, pushing through the tightness in his chest. “He’s in a coma. He needs regular chakra transfusions to keep his organs from shutting down. His system’s leaking chakra at a rate the medics can’t control. Nothing they try is keeping.”

What he didn’t—couldn’t—say was that the medics had been simply buying time, keeping Kakashi tethered to life by sheer force of will and resources, for Minato, as next of kin and Hokage, to authorize the decision to let the teen go. It went unchallenged that Kakashi of the Sharingan, the genius who likely helped Minato seal the kyuubi, was too valuable to die from a lack of resources. If it happened, it had to be a choice.

Minato took the news surprisingly well. His eyes drifted off, distant and unreadable, as if he were seeing something far beyond the hospital room. Souta waited, tense, expecting some kind of reaction—pain, anger, denial, grief, anything.

But none came. After a long, unbearable pause, Minato nodded in clear dismissal.

Souta didn’t know what to make of it.

——

Souta should have realized Minato took it too fucking well.

The next morning, he found a shadow clone in place of his Hokage and despite Souta’s increasingly frantic questioning, the clone only said Minato would be back and refused to let baby Naruto out of his sight.

——

An excruciating twenty hours and seventeen minutes later, the real Minato flashed into the Hokage office with Slug Princess Tsunade in tow.

——

Across the next few months, Minato proved to the Hidden Nations why he was the youngest Hokage of Konoha.

He buried his grief for Kushina, tucking it away next to the quiet, gnawing dread for Kakashi who was healing but still unconscious.

Instead, he smiled for Naruto, praised the shinobi who rebuilt the walls and streets, and reassured the civilians who walked them. Konoha, knowing all too well the price Minato had been paid to protect her, rallied behind him with a love deeper than before.

The Council was another matter.

They respected him. Some even revered him. But fear simmered beneath that respect. In their eyes, Minato, by caring for all, cared for none. It made him unpredictable.

Souta, behind his own Deer mask, watched the dark glances the elders gave each other. They didn’t dare oppose Minato when the destruction of the fox were still fresh in their streets. But as the weeks passed, as Konoha began to recover, Souta saw more and more elders looking to Shimura Danzo when Minato spoke.

As ANBU Commander, Souta served the Hokage and only the Hokage. This included protecting the Hokage against threats even if they were from within. He kept Minato updated but the truth was the Hokage had bigger problems, like Konoha’s economy, her broken defenses and her grieving families. The rest, they would handle when the time came.

——

So Minato continued on, somehow remaining, stubbornly and wholly, Minato.

He walked the streets of Konoha, chatting with shinobi and civilians alike. When he learned that Suzuki, the owner of the toriyaki stall on the main street, broke her leg, he placed a D-rank mission request to provide help until she healed. He congratulated the youngest Inuzuka for graduating from the Academy. Just the day before, he had lunch with Uchiha Fugaku, the new clan head since his predecessor stepped down years ago after his public clash with Minato.

Minato was rebuilding Konoha not just brick by brick, but heart by heart. His love for the village was never in doubt.

Every night though, Minato made sure to end his day at Kakashi's bedside with Naruto in his arms.

Tsunade had been honest with him that prognosis was grim: Kakashi would live but he might never wake. Still, she encouraged him to speak to the boy and reach out since connection could sometimes do what medicine could not.

So Minato tried. Most nights, he shared his day and the new things he learned about the people he met during his walks. Other nights, he read Naruto picture books, slipping in some dry commentary for Kakashi.

The nights Souta worried about the most were when Minato sat by Kakashi’s bed and said nothing at all.

——

The news came on a rainy evening when they were in the Hokage’s office, poring over which trade route to share with Iwa. Static had been building in the air all day, and as dusk fell, the storm finally unleashed.

Lizard interrupted their dinner to report, "Lord Fourth, he's awake!"

There was only one person Lizard could be referring to. Minato didn’t need to ask; without a word, he reached across the table, gripping Souta’s wrist. The next instant, Souta felt that all-too-familiar, nauseating tug of being yanked through the fabric of time and space. When his vision cleared and the dizziness faded, they were in the corner of Kakashi’s hospital room.

A medic was carefully removing the oxygen mask from Kakashi, who lay still—too weak to move but blinking.

Awake.

“Kasshi,” Minato said, his voice low, unsteady. His voice carried a raw edge Souta had never heard before, stripped of its usual calm. It caught in the quiet like a breath held too long.

Souta barely registered the medics backing away, that Tsunade have a sharp nod that sent them quietly out the door. Minato didn’t seem to notice them at all.

Rain tapped gently against the windowpane. The storm seemed to have paused too, hushed.

Minato reached out to place his hand lightly on Kakashi’s chest as if he needed the steady rhythm beneath his palm to believe this was real.

“Can you hear me?”

Kakashi’s lashes fluttered. His gaze, dazed and flickering, found Minato’s face. And then, in a voice cracked with disuse, he said something Souta hadn’t heard him say in years, sounding almost childish —but no, Souta realized, not childish. Simply young.

Ni-san.

——

Barely a few weeks after Kakashi’s return to consciousness, Souta woke with a jolt as a familiar chakra signature brushed faintly against his senses like a ghost walking through walls.

He stepped out of his bedroom, half-expecting an illusion. He found Kakashi sitting on his couch. The teen hadn’t masked his chakra. He was just sitting there, legs drawn up, forehead pressed to his knees, arms wrapped loosely around his ankles.

Souta didn’t speak at first. He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching the boy who wasn’t supposed to be out of bed, let alone wandering across rooftops and breaking into other people’s homes.

“Kakashi,” He greeted quietly.

There was a long pause before the teen answered the unspoken question, his voice rough, brittle at the edges. “I needed air.”

"You couldn’t have opened the window like a normal person?”

Silence stretched between them again until something in Kakashi shifted—his shoulders tightening, like the breath he was holding had finally turned heavy enough to hurt.

“Souta-san, Kushina-ne is gone.”

…Of course. As the ANBU assigned to her guard, Kakashi had been the one who spent the most time with Kushina in her last days, being bullied into cleaning the house and learning seals. Souta had had time to grow accustomed to the loss but for Kakashi, the loss was still raw.

“She made me learn how to use a rice cooker. She said if I could memorize a hundred jutsu, I could figure out how not to burn rice.”

Souta waited.

“She made me stay for dinner,” Kakashi continued, muffled. “Sometimes I was supposed to leave, and she just—looked at me, and said she’d throw a pan at my head if I didn’t sit down. She always made too much food. Claimed it was for the baby.”

There was a pause. Then Kakashi’s voice cracked, just once.

“I think she knew I was hungry.”

Souta didn’t offer condolences or reassurances. He just crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the coffee table, close enough that his knees brushed against Kakashi's toes. It was too intimate for a superior but it was two in the morning, and Souta was in his pajamas in his own living room. He wasn’t the ANBU commander here.

“Yeah, shrimp,” he said, voice low with grief he didn’t bother to hide. Kushina had been his friend too, “She’s gone because she decided to save us.”

Kakashi didn’t lift his head. Just breathed, slow and shallow.

For a fleeting moment, Souta was struck by how much Kakashi grieved like Minato did—it was in the set of his shoulders, in the stillness between breaths, in the way he seemed to fold in on himself without ever letting go. Suddenly, fiercely, Souta hoped that when it was just Kakashi and Minato together, they didn’t have to hold it in so hard. Maybe, just maybe, they could let their guards down for each other—

He noticed the blood running down Kakashi’s hands and everything in Souta stilled.

Ah, he thought, growing cold. This was why Kakashi came to him tonight.

When the teen finally spoke, the words were so quiet they barely reached across the space between them.

“I should’ve—”

“No,” Souta interrupted, firm but gentle. He was intimately familiar with regret and the dangers of what ifs. “Don’t go there.”

Kakashi didn’t move, but the older shinobi felt something hitch in the boy’s chakra—tighten and recoil like a reflex pulled too fast.

The house was quiet around them, the deep kind of tranquility that settled into walls at night. Wind tapped faintly against the eaves. Somewhere, a floorboard groaned under its own memory.

Souta didn’t try to fill the silence. He knew: grief didn’t need answers. It needed space.

“I’m the common denominator,” Kakashi finally whispered. “I'm the one he should be burying.”

There was no hysteria in the teen’s confession. There was just flat, unshakable conviction that came from years of slow erosion—grief packed tight, compressed and buried until it formed something solid. Something immovable.

——

Souta, as ANBU Commander, read all of the decisions Kakashi made in the field—brilliant, effective, and chillingly indifferent to his own survival. The boy had perfected the art of being just reckless enough—just suicidal enough—that he always skirted the edge of death without ever stepping far enough to give Souta the grounds to bench him.

It turned out a genius was good at everything, even self-destruction.

Still, Souta had thought he understood the shape of the teen’s grief, the guilt and apathy, the coldness that wasn’t cold at all but something more like numbness.

But what Kakashi had never shown him—not until tonight—was the depth of the rot underneath. The quiet, loathing self-hatred so blinding that it said Kushina was gone and it was his fault.

You see, Kakashi laughed at her jokes and scrubbed her dishes and ate at her table. She had reached out to him, and he had let her. He’d cared.

And by doing so, he had poisoned her like he had poisoned everyone else he cared about.

Now he sat hunched over, knees drawn in, fingers clenched white around nothing, grieving with the unbearable stillness of someone who thought he didn’t deserve to mourn.

——

Souta leaned back to study the boy before him—this ghost of a child, built out of more trauma than time.

“Don’t let him hear you say that,” Souta said finally.

Kakashi looked up for the first time, dry eyed, “He already knows, Souta-san, but I’m his student and he's too soft. Sensei won’t admit he’s better off without me.”

Souta exhaled, a rough sound that might have once been a laugh. Minato was many things, brilliant, genuine, kind. Soft was not one of them.

But the idea of Minato alone—Kushina gone, Kakashi dead, and Naruto in his arms—rose unbidden and stayed.

“No, Kakashi," Souta said quietly. "He really wouldn’t be."

There was no protest from Kakashi, no flicker of disagreement or hope. There was just the same unbearable silence, like the truth hadn’t reached him at all.

——

Later that night, Souta bandaged Kakashi and put him to bed. When the last bandage was wrapped, the teen blinked at Souta from where he lay curled beneath the covers in Souta’s bed, pale and exhausted.

“You can’t tell sensei,” Kakashi made him promise.

It was why the teen had come to Souta, after all. Why he’d dragged himself across rooftops in the dead of night, why he’d bled on Souta’s floor and not Minato’s.

Because Minato had ordered him to live and this was Kakashi trying to obey, trying to pull himself back from the edge—but Kakashi wasn’t going to ask Minato to put him back together after Kakashi fell apart because of Kushina.

Kakashi wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t going to give Minato that heartbreak.

——

Souta closed the door behind him, glanced down at his hands, his gaze catching on Kakashi’s dried blood under his nails, and felt his heart break.

Chapter Text

Kakashi was gone the next morning.

Souta stood in his room, eyes fixed on the pile of neatly folded blankets and pillows stacked at the end of his bed. It might have felt like a bad dream if not for the bloodstain on the tadami mats in his living room. That part was real.

The jounin sighed as he ran a hand through his hair.

Later that afternoon, he slipped a psychiatric panel into Kakashi’s medical paperwork, a bureaucratic sleight of hand that didn’t raise too many questions.

The results came back later that week, impeccably clean: no signs of depression, no suicidal ideation, no disqualifying mental issues. Hatake Kakashi was cleared for duty pending physical recovery.

Souta wasn’t surprised. Kakashi had never failed one of these, not even when he was five and he had stumbled on his father’s body.

Still, there were options. As ANBU Commander, he had the authority to sideline Kakashi quietly. It wouldn’t need a formal reprimand or a black mark to be on his record if Souta framed it as a prolonged medical recovery, extended as long as necessary. That kind of move though would eventually draw Minato’s attention and Souta would have to tell him what happened last night.

The problem wasn’t that Souta would have to break his promise to  Kakashi that made the jounin hesitate. Souta would tell Minato in a heartbeat if he thought telling Minato would actually help.

The real problem wasn’t Kakashi’s fragility. It was Minato’s.

——

For all Minato’s effortless charm and easy smiles, Souta sensed that Minato was even closer to the edge than his student.

Souta had caught a glimpse of it the day he told Minato that Kakashi was dying. He’d told the Hokage in the hospital wing, voice flat, trying to prepare him. And Minato, so usually composed, so maddeningly collected, hadn’t said a word.

He’d dismissed Souta and walked out.

Not out of the room. Not out to breathe or grieve or gather himself.

Minato had walked away from the village. 

The Fourth had left to find Tsunade with the intention of bringing her back to treat Kakashi, but it didn’t change the fact that he had left at all. Leaving behind a Konoha in unprecedented crisis and shambles. It had been an act of reckless desperation, one that defied protocol, logic, everything a Hokage was supposed to represent. And Minato hadn’t even hesitated.

No one knew. No one ever would. It was a secret Souta was going to take to his grave.

Now that Kakashi was awake and recovering, Minato was getting better. He wasn’t working in his office like a man trying to outrun his own thoughts anymore. He let himself pause now, gazing at the Hokage Mountain or chatting with ANBU or the administrative staff between meetings and reports. He took more breaks to hold Naruto and coo or watch him sleep. He even started asking after Kakashi’s recovery. 

Still, Minato wasn’t ready to know what Kakashi had done in the dark, when no one was looking. To face how close his student had got to ending it all.

That truth would have to live in the shadows.

And if there was a next time and Kakashi decided not to come to Souta but instead chose to bleed out alone, if the unthinkable were to ever happen, and Minato learned what Souta had hidden from him, he would kill Souta. Not metaphorically, or figuratively, but in the most literal sense of the word.

Souta accepted the risk. He was ANBU Commander who served the Hokage and only the Hokage. He protected the Fourth against threats even if they came from within.

——

(The cold truth was that losing Kakashi didn’t mean Konoha would lose Minato. Minato still had Naruto to look after. But the Fox showed that losing Minato meant Konoha would lose Kakashi as well.

It meant Minato always had to come first.)

——

When Souta casually suggested Kakashi use the medical leave as an opportunity to leave ANBU and return to regular corps, Minato frowned. Then, simply: “No.”

The Fourth didn’t offer an explanation. Souta didn’t ask for one.

——

Thus, once Kakashi was finally discharged from the hospital, approved by Tsunade-hime herself, he rejoined the ranks of ANBU.

On Kakashi’s first day back, he was promptly summoned by one ANBU Commander, who took that opportunity to yell at Kakashi, channeling every ounce of frustration and concern he had been building up for the past few months into an ear-splitting tirade. Souta shouted about protocol, about recklessness, about breaking rank and disobeying a direct order. About the suicidal stupidity of running toward the Kyuubi against Souta’s explicit orders. At one point, he may have even yelled about Kakashi’s shoes.

Kakashi stood there in his mask, posture straight, saying absolutely nothing for hours.

Then, when Souta’s voice was starting to give out and the veins in his neck had begun to retreat, Kakashi muttered, "Lord Fourth would have died if I hadn't gone to him."

Souta’s blood pressure spiked so hard he was fairly certain he saw stars.

What followed was another hour of yelling. By the time his voice finally gave out for good, Souta collapsed into his chair. He waved a hand toward the other chair without looking.

Kakashi, wisely this time, sat without saying a word.

"So does that mean you remember what happened that day?” Souta asked, his head leaned back and eyes closed.

"No," Kakashi admitted. "That's just what sensei told me."

Souta gritted his teeth. This fucking kid.

However, with the patience of a civillian born ANBU Commander who had to handle the egos of clan heads on a weekly basis, he forged on. "What did Minato say exactly? And what do you remember?"

It turned out that Kakashi didn't remember much of that day, if anything at all. He didn't recall passing by Souta or reaching the Kyuubi. All that remained was cold desperation, the suffocating pressure of the Kyuubi’s chakra and the bone deep certainty that Minato would die.

"I did something with Obito, and it saved sensei,” Souta frowned but that was all the teen had. Kakashi shrugged, "I told sensei that's all I remember and he said I was right and he’d explain it later but not to tell the Uchiha. As if I'm the one getting cosy with the Uchiha and having lunch together every month."

"You actually do with Viper," Souta pointed out absentmindedly as he considered the new information.

It still didn’t explain everything that Souta had seen in the aftermath after the seal. The ANBU Commander tapped the edge of his pen against his desk, deep in thought.

Minato had given Souta a similar vague explanation that Kakashi had saved him and helped seal the Fox. The man was uncharacteristically evasive about what exactly happened that day, though it was clear the Sharingan played a crucial role.

The next obvious question to that was whether whatever Kakashi did was something unique to Uchiha Obito's eye or if it was something all sharingan could do.

Given how carefully Minato had been nurturing the village’s fragile relationship with the Uchiha, Souta suspected the Fourth was wondering the same thing.

——

"This is Team Delta, reporting back from duty and delivering the mission debrief for your eyes only sir."

Souta accepted the scroll from Rabbit and glanced at the rest of the team. They had just returned from the Sand, tasked with sabotaging the newly established trade agreements between the Sand and Mist by kidnapping and ultimately killing the wife of a merchant, all while masquerading as Mist nin.

Missions like this were never pleasant but Souta was pleased to see the lack of causalties and minimal injuries in his people. There technically only needed to be the captain presentto submit reports but all ANBU had a standing order to report to Souta unless medical attention was needed. Souta liked to see his shinobi in person after the job, to gauge their condition for himself.

"Any injuries of note?" Souta asked.

"No, sir,” Rabbit reported. “No major injuries. Not even chakra exhaustion."

There was a quiet snigger from Bear.

"Well done shinobi. Give yourself forty eight hours before you return to duty. Dismissed—Hound, a word please."

As one, the ANBU tilted their head back to bear their neck in salute to their Commander, before shuffling out. Hound, as ordered, stood at attention where he was.

When the door clicked shut, Souta flicked the handsign for unmask and sighed, "Really? Of all your options, that was the mask you went with?"

Kakashi clipped the snarling dog mask to his waist with a scowl. "It's just as suspicious to avoid the mask as it is to use it, Commander. Nara are allowed to use the deer mask—or at least they were until it was taken out of circulation when you took it. I don't see why I get such grief whenever I use the hound mask. Sir.”

The Nara didn't have an exclusive summoning comtract with deer, nor did they have a reputation of using said deer to track and hunt enemy shinobi down. But Souta didn't bother pointing that out. He long learned there was no winning a pissing match with a fourteen-excuse-me-fourteen and a-half-year-old prodigy.

Instead, the commander studied Kakashi, who was standing like someone who ached all over—but he was clearly not poisoned, not bleeding, and, as Rabbit had dryly pointed out, not dying of chakra exhaustion. Minato would be pleased.

Which brought Souta to—

"You're coming to the barbecue tonight, right?" He gave Kakashi a pointed look that suggested this was less an invitation and more a veiled order. "My brother keeps asking if you’re showing up. He’s convinced you’re too thin and you’ll miss your growth spurt.”

Kakashi’s brow furrowed for a split second before his lips twitched into something close to a smirk.

“Wouldn’t that count as fraternizing with a superior? Sir ,” he added, with the hypocrisy of someone who spent half his nights eating with the Hokage and didn’t see the irony.

Souta rolled his eyes. “Dinner starts at seven. Show up hungry. There’s going to be a lot of food.”

Kakashi saluted at that and Souta waved him away. To his surprise, the ANBU didn’t turn around to leave. “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

Souta raised an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth tugging downward in mild suspicion. “Go ahead.”

Kakashi stepped forward with surprising caution, his movements a bit more deliberate than usual. From his inner vest pocket, he pulled out two small, neatly wrapped boxes and placed them on Souta’s desk. He hesitated again, suddenly shy, “Happy birthday, Souta-san. The green box is for Kouta-san.”

Souta stared. He hadn’t expected Kakashi to actually remember his birthday let alone for him to get him a gift.

“Thank you,” Souta said, genuinely touched, before adding. "You still better have a different mask the next time I see you."

In blatant disrespect, Kakashi rolled his eyes.

——

“Happy birthday, Souta,” Minato said warmly, though the greeting was slightly breathless as he juggled Naruto in one arm and a pair of bulky gift bags in the other, all while awkwardly toeing off his sandals at the entrance of the Egawa Onsen.

The floor of the lobby had been polished to a mirror shine, and behind the front desk, the staff offered polite bows before offering to take Minato’s coat and bags. Today, the onsen had been closed to the public, reserved entirely for the birthday celebration.

“Here,” Minato added, nudging the bags toward Souta while carefully adjusting the sleepy baby on his hip. “Yours and Kouta-san’s. They each have cards, so you’ll be able to tell which is which.”

Souta accepted the gifts with a nod, tucking one under his arm as he gave a cursory glance around the quiet entranceway. A lanky teenager was suspiciously absent. “Welcome, and thank you,” he said, before adding with a sharp little glint in his eye, “Where’s the shrimp?”

Minato’s answering smile was tight, “He said he’ll be here in an hour.” 

“Ah.” Souta’s tone was knowing. There was no need for more.

Kakashi, ever conscious of the wary or outrighht hostile eyes that followed him in the village, still refused to be seen with Minato in public.

Souta didn’t push. Instead, he glanced down at the gift bags, then back up at Minato, arching an eyebrow. “You got these wrapped with a baby strapped to you?”

“Delegated it,” Minato said dryly, lips twitching. “Being Hokage has a few perks.”

“Must be nice.”

“Mm. I’ll trade you for a day—Naruto, paperwork, public scrutiny... and I get to yell at ANBU recruits.”

“I don’t yell,” Souta retorted as he lead Minato down the hallway to where the rest of the crowd was. “I speak very calmly but loudly…”

When Kakashi arrived an hour late, it was Souta’s father who was greeting guests at the door.  Souta, who had felt Kakashi’s chakra pass the wards, reached the entrance in time to see his father laugh and slap a broad hand onto Kakashi’s shoulder.

“Souta! The Hokage’s kid is here.”

“That’s Naruto, sir,” Kakashi replied, slinking out from under the hand like a cat. “He drools a lot. Has orange fuzz for hair. Kind of hard to miss but I see where you got confused.”

“No, no,” Souta’s father chuckled, either missing the sarcasm or purposefully ignoring it. “Naruto’s the Hokage’s boy. You’re the Hokage’s kid. ”

Kakashi’s look of utter confusion was a sight to behold. It was only second to the sight of Kouta, Souta’s civillian twin brother, headlocking Kakashi with a teasing grin and Kakashi, fierce ANBU operative, trained assassin, and soon to be the youngest ANBU captain in Konoha’s history, letting it happen, resigned.

——

With time, Minato forged peace and trade across the continent. He brokered trade routes through the Land of Rivers, reestablished diplomatic ties with Suna, and even pulled Kiri into an uneasy neutrality. Across the continent, Konoha’s influence expanded—not through conquest, but through clever negotiation and undeniable strength.

Ironically, the more stable and stronger Konoha became, the greater the threat towards Minato from within came. It turned out peace bred ambition. With external enemies quiet and the borders calm, eyes began to turn inward.

Real power rested with the Hokage, and no one knew that more bitterly than Danzo. He had always operated from the shadows, content to control through influence, through secrecy. But under Minato, that influence was slipping. And Danzo was not a man who let go of control quietly.

Danzo tried subtly and repeatedly to remove Minato. It was never through open coup or confrontation because he wasn’t stupid or suicidal. Even in the prime of his youth, Danzo would have been no match for the Yellow Flash who was fast, brilliant, and devastatingly effective in killing his enemies in open battle. So instead, Danzo schemed.

Still, things were better. Naruto learned how to walk. Kakashi, for all his lingering darkness, began to surface.

He didn’t stop taking missions like he had nothing left to lose but between them, he threw himself into caring for baby Naruto with a quiet intensity that bordered on obsessive. It hadn’t been asked of him. No one had assigned it. But the moment he’d stepped into the nursery, something in him caught. Something took root and refused to let go.

He watched over Naruto like Naruto was a lifeline. And Naruto grew up learning that Kakashi had the best snacks, to say Kaka after dada, that the best naps were on Kakashi because the teen would growl at anyone who tried to wake Naruto up. In turn, the worst of the hollow look had faded from Kakashi’s eyes. He still bore the weight of his ghosts, but he carried them differently now. Less like a burden, and more like something he’d finally acknowledged.

There was structure. Routine. A spark of something in Kakashi again, however faint.

The fear Souta carried—the one that lived in the back of his mind like the faded bloodstain on the tatami mat in his living room—was beginning to ease.

Kakashi was still here, choosing to stay. And maybe, just maybe, starting to believe he could live.

——

Then, Minato sent Kakashi to fucking ROOT.

Chapter Text

The last time Souta saw Kakashi before Kakashi was reassigned to ROOT, he hadn’t even been looking for him.

Souta had been walking the halls of ANBU Headquarters, conducting his usual rounds during which he checked inventory, chatted with ANBU, and watched teams train. He walked these rounds often enough that no one was alarmed to see him prawling the hallways in his deer mask, barely responding beyond to salute him. Souta had made a point to make these rounds routine when he became ANBU Commander because they provided  excellent cover for when Souta needed to observe someone more closely without drawing attention.

That day, he was in the ANBU headquarters after receiving a troubling report that Akimichi Ryo, a two-year ANBU veteran had shown signs of psychological instability during a mission: He’d been overheard talking to long dead teammates. Souta knew better than to call Akimichi in directly; that kind of scrutiny only pushed ANBU deeper into themselves, sometimes beyond return. Instead, Souta took his time looking through the equipment inventory near the northern exit. Akimichi often used the northern training grounds, making the exit a natural place to cross paths without raising suspicion.

Souta had just closed the last scroll, idly noting a missing ration pack and a kunai logged under the wrong unit number, when he heard voices from the other end of the corridor that connected the barracks to the canteen.

It was Uchiha Kaito wearing a Viper mask, and Kakashi in a Sheep mask.

They were a strange combination given that Viper was an Uchiha and Kakashi had an implanted sharingan in his head but Kaito had always been an unusual case. He was the nephew of the Uchiha head, born to influence, privilege, and expectation. By clan logic, he should’ve climbed through the ranks of the Police Force, settled behind a badge, and walked the village with authority pressed into his every footstep.

Instead, he had chosen to be faceless and nameless in ANBU.

When Souta first caught wind of the Uchiha's interest in Kakashi, his initial reaction was one of quiet alarm. Interest from an Uchiha, especially one as well-placed and politically potent as Kaito, was rarely casual.

Souta had pulled Kaito’s file and read it again—this time, not as a commander skimming for performance metrics, but as someone searching for motive. It didn’t take long to see that whatever attached Kaito to Kakashi wasn’t malicious. In fact, Souta suspected it wasn’t even fully conscious.

Kaito had awakened his sharingan as ANBU: on his first field mission, his entire squad was dead before dawn. Kaito had been the only one to return. The scroll in his white knuckled grip and his red eyes, with the newly awakened tomoe spinning too fast to hide, made it clear that his team had done their job: they got the rookie and asset out alive.

For a boy raised on clan loyalty, it had been a shattering revelation. Kaito had grown up hearing that only clan stood by clan, that loyalty was reserved for those bound by blood or tradition. And yet, these masked strangers—none of them Uchiha, some of them affiliated with other clans—had died protecting him not because he was Uchiha or even because he knew them and earned their loyalty. It was simply because he was Konoha.

That mission had tempered Kaito, filing down the raw arrogance he once wore like a second skin. It hadn’t broken his pride, but grief and debt had reshaped it into determination.

And now, years later, Viper stood in the corridor, trying to coax friend-killer Hatake Kakashi into getting some food.

“You’re stunting your own growth, Sheep. Let’s get lunch.”

Kakashi, standing at the entrance of the canteen, turned to the Uchiha,“I thought that’s what we were doing.”

“That’s the canteen,” The mask hid Kaito’s face but the disdain in his voice was clear, “I want sushi at Umi’s.”

“That sounds like a you problem.”

Kaito sighed and stepped forward, bumping shoulders with the teen in an easy, practiced motion that blocked the boy’s path without making a scene. 

Souta raised an eyebrow. ANBU, as a rule, didn’t like touching, and the Uchiha, who held themselves apart by pride, were even worse. Kakashi, somehow was worse than both groups combined, slinking away from any kind of touch like a cat avoiding water. The fact that Kakashi didn’t sidestep the gesture, meant the two were on better terms than Souta had thought.

“Fine,” Kaito said, sighing theatrically. “I’ll buy. Let’s go, you cheapskate.”

Kakashi ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it absently. His fingers paused at the back of his neck, thumb brushing the skin there like it itched.

“Viper,” Kakashi said, and there was a weariness that didn’t match his age. “You really shouldn’t be seen in public with me.”

Silence followed, taut and uncomfortable.

Kaito didn’t speak right away. He simply stared. Then, in that slow, deliberate drawl of his, he spoke, his voice smooth, but laced now with a razor’s edge.

“Sheep. Am I not an Uchiha?”

Kakashi stiffened at the open mention of the Uchiha. It was subtle but Souta, watching like a hawk from the hallway, caught it. And if he caught it, then Kaito, standing barely a foot away, certainly did.

“What’s the point of being a member of a founding clan if I have to give a flying fuck what anyone else says? Let them whisper. I don’t care.”

Kakashi’s gaze dropped, the moment stretching too long before he finally spoke again.

“I’ve been refused service there before.”

Souta stilled. He hadn’t known that. It was common knowledge that resentment toward Sakumo still lingered in parts of the village, fueled by misinformation and the cowardice of hindsight but Souta hadn’t realized the animosity ran so deep, that even now, years later, there were places in the village bold enough, bitter enough, to turn away Kakashi of the Sharingan. The Fourth’s last student.

Kaito said nothing for a long moment. His chakra remained perfectly level, as expected from someone of his caliber, but Souta didn’t need a spike to sense the danger in the pause.

Then Kaito exhaled, and when he spoke, his voice was cheerful, “Then we go to Yoshitake. They have better drinks anyways. Come on.”

And finally, Kakashi let himself get dragged away.

——

The thing was, Souta was the fucking ANBU Commander. The ANBU were under the Hokage’s direct command, but every ANBU operative, every mission, every detail from their rations to their barracks was Souta’s responsibility that he took seriously. He kept a close watch on his shinobi, knowing that in an organization built on secrecy and anonymity, where members sometimes didn’t even know who was behind the masks on their own team, someone had to be the constant and be the face they could trust and name they could say outloud. That someone was him.

It was why no other operative was allowed to use the ANBU Commander’s mask and Why his identity wasn’t hidden even to the public. It wasn’t for the public. It was for ANBU.

Not even the Hokage could just pluck an ANBU operative out and reassign them to ROOT without the ANBU Commander knowing. Not unless they went great lengths to deliberately keep him in the dark.

And that was exactly what the Fourth had done.

After Minato ordered Kakashi’s access to the Hokage’s office revoked, Souta showed up on his doorstep three days later with a bottle of expensive sake in one hand and a quiet determination to find out what the hell was going on.

Minato hedged, skirting around the details, but he made it obvious something was wrong. That potentially Kakashi had done something that was apparently unforgivable.

The problem was Souta couldn’t think of a single thing Kakashi could’ve done that Minato wouldn’t forgive.

Minato had always shown Kakashi more patience than any commander would normally extend to a subordinateor or even a teacher to a student. He had stood by him through war, grief, and trauma. He had walked away from the village, just to find a way to save Kakashi because he refused to accept what every medic in the village told him: that he had to let Kakashi go.

Minato’s idulgence towards Kakashi bordered on irrational. And Kakashi, who fiercely adored his sensei ever since he barely came to Souta’s knees, had never taken that for granted. After all, this was the kid who pulled himself back from the edge of self-destruction, simply because Minato asked him to.

So when Minato handed him the file, Souta wasn’t ready to see Kakashi’s personnel file, which should have been quadruple sealed in the ANBU archives, now marking his affiliation as ROOT.

——

Viper stood at attention just inside the doorway, posture rigid. Formally requesting a meeting was rare for him and Souts already had a sinking suspicion what this was going to be about.

“Where is Sheep, sir? His team isn’t out on a mission but he hasn’t been in his barracks for weeks.”

Souta didn’t answer right away. In front of the Hokage or other officials, he wore the stylized deer mask of the ANBU Commander but here, in the privacy of his own office with fellow ANBU, his face was bare. The look he gave Viper was carefully neutral.

“Sheep has been reassigned to ROOT.”

A moment of silence, then—

“Has Hokage-sama gone senile?”

“Viper,” Souta warned but the Uchiha didn’t back down.

“Respectfully, sir, has the esteemed Hokage-sama gone senile?”

The question was clearly sarcastic but the challenge underneath was genuine. Souta narrowed his eyes. He could understand the outrage. He even shared it. That still didn’t mean he’d allow insubordination.

“Lord Fourth’s decision is final,” Souta said coolly. “And it has my full support. You are past disrespect and eding dangerously close to insubordination.”

Viper flinched, straightening reflexively at the hard edge in his superior’s tone.

“Given your history with Sheep, I’ll let it go today. This conversation didn’t happen. Dismissed.”

Viper’s jaw flexed, as if he were grinding his teeth. For a long second, he didn’t move, and Souta wondered if he was about to push the line even further. But then, just as suddenly, Viper gave a short, sharp salute and walked out.

Once the door clicked shut behind him, Souta let out a quiet sigh as he ran a head through his hair.

He didn’t blame the Uchiha because they all knew sending a shinobi to ROOT wasn’t really just a reassignment or even a demotion. It was a death sentence. After all, ROOT was Danzo’s private army and Danzo was careless with those he deemed expendable. ROOT had a survival rate lower than a front-line ANBU.

But Souta had to trust that Minato wouldn’t senselessly send Kakashi to ROOT like this unless he had something bigger planned. It had to be a trap Minato was setting up for Danzo who was getting more brazen by the day, his assassination attempts more blatant, and more dangerous.

Because if it wasn’t, the alternative was that Minato had effectively ordered Kakashi’s execution.

——

“Kakashi is infiltrating ROOT under my orders.”

Souta stared at Minato. They were in the middle of dinner at the Hokage Mansion but Souta had been expecting something when Minato put Naruto down to bed early.

Souta’s suspicions were finally confirmed. The supposed rift between Minato and Kakashi was a deliberate front designed to get Kakashi inside ROOT.

Before he even realized what he was doing, Souta threw the spoon he had in his grip straight at Minato. The chakra-infused spoon shot across, the metal glinting as it flew, a mere hairs width past Minato’s face. The impact was loud, the wood of the wall splintering slightly as the spoon embedded itself.

The room fell silent.

Souta’s breath came in shallow bursts, his chest tightening as he held Minato’s gaze.

“When you gave me that bullshit answer that Kakashi did something you couldn’t forgive, I let it go because I trusted you. And I trust that you would make the right choices for the village. But six operatives we sent in were all killed. To know that and still choose to send Kakashi alone is,” His voice faltered, the words catching in his throat. “That's insanity.”

Minato didn’t flinch. He didn’t move from his seat, even with the spoon still quivering in the wall behind him. His expression softened, but his eyes remained hard.

“I’m asking you to trust me one more time, Souta,” Minato said quietly. “Kakashi is the only one who has a chance to get close to Danzo, to find out what he’s really up to. If Danzo thinks he can use Kakashi, he’ll let Kakashi live, given his skill and connections to me.”

“You’re using Kakashi as bait.”

“Kakashi agreed to it.”

“The kid would never tell you no and you know it," Souta snapped.

Minato tilted his head, a small, almost imperceptible shrug—his answer a silent, so?

Souta’s hands clenched into fists on the table.

“You wouldn’t risk anyone else like this. You wouldn’t ask anyone else to do this, because you know it’s asking for the impossible. Why are you so—” He stopped, grappling for words. “Fucking psychotic when it comes to Kakashi?”

Minato didn’t so much as twitch, the blue of his eyes glinting cold as frost beneath the soft glow of the overhead light. The man across from Souta wasn’t the one who’d lovingly put Naruto to bed just an hour earlier. This was the Hokage now, calm, composed, and terrifying in his clarity. The man who sent his last student to ANBU and genuinely believed it would help him.

“Because Danzo is trying to kill me,” Minato said, voice smooth as cut glass. “And if he succeeds, he’ll kill Kakashi—if Kakashi isn’t already dead—and then he’ll go for Naruto.”

The statement landed like a blade in the chest.

Minato didn’t look angry. He didn’t even sound particularly urgent.

“This isn’t without risk. I’m not pretending it is. But it has to be done. Danzo is building something and hiding it under our noses. Kakashi is the only one who can get close enough to find out what it is—and the only one I can trust not to come back compromised.”

——

Souta had forgotten: Minato’s idulgence towards Kakashi bordered on irrational but worse, his trust in Kakashi was unconditional.

——

Dr. Hyuuga Kouji, Kakashi’s primary medical officer, began visiting Souta with increasing regularity. At first, it had been professional concern cloaked in clinical language but over time, the doctor’s composure began to crack.

By the fourth visit, Kouji was barely knocking.

“He’s unraveling,” he told Souta in a low, urgent voice. “Because they’re not letting him sleep. His nervous system’s showing signs of long-term disruption, micronerve spasms, twitch responses when I so much as raise a hand. The kind of things you’d expect from someone in torture rehab, not medical leave.”

Souta remained silent.

“Sheep refuses to elaborate what the training entails but if this continues, he’s going to break.”

Souta didn’t need the warning. He knew Danzo’s style and, while Kakashi had been trained to endure pressure, Danzo specialized in corrosion. Danzo didn’t want to test Kakashi’s loyalty. He wanted to rewrite it.

And then, one morning, just as the tension in the village began to feel like a taut wire ready to snap, Minato hiraishined into Souta’s office with the face of a man who was set on murder.

Something was wrong with Kakashi, Minato said. Kakashi didn’t give Minato the safe word, and if Minato didn’t get answers by the end of the emergency council meeting, he was going to go down personally to kill Danzo before sunset.

Souta didn’t doubt him for a second. This wasn’t the calm, smiling man the village saw in passing. This was the Yellow Flash who had ended wars in a blink, buried a best friend, raised a son alone, and sent his most broken student into the hands of a snake in hopes of protecting them all.

If Kakashi was truly gone, if Danzo had done something irrevocable, then Konoha stood at the edge of civil war.

And then—

It ended.

Not with a bang but with the telltale flash of a hiraishin as a silver-haired shinobi flickered into existence in the center of the Hokage’s office, holding Shimura Danzo's head.

——

Souta sometimes really hated how competent Kakashi was. It meant Minato could ask for the most insane things, and Kakashi, being Hatake fucking Kakashi, delivered.

——

After Kakashi dropped the metaphotical bomb that was a dead councilman who had an implanted sharingan, the room was quickly cleared under Minato’s order, leaving just himself, Souta and Uchiha Fugaku.

“Kakashi!”

Souta jerked around at Minato’s shout, his pulse spiking as he caught the unmistakable sight of the teen starting to collapse. Kakashi, who had been standing tall and composed atop the council table just moments ago, suddenly wavered, his knees buckling, his body tipping backward like a puppet with its strings abruptly cut.

Crow lunged for the councilman’s head before it hit the ground while Fugaku, standing directly across the Hokage desk and therefore behind Kakashi, reacted on instinct. One hand shot out to catch the teen before he could fall—but Fugaku never got the chance.

Minato’s killing intent exploded, causing everyone including Fugaku to flinch. Even Souta, who was expecting it, staggered back a step under the sheer weight of the Fourth’s chakra.

In the same moment, Minato had Kakashi by the front of his vest, yanking him forward into his arms before the teen could fall. Kakashi’s body went limp the moment he was held, his head resting against Minato’s shoulder, breath shallow, chakra faint and flickering like a dying ember.

The Fourth’s chakra, usually bright warm, felt stormy at the edge of Souta’s senses, volatile and crackling at the edges like thunderclouds circling a lightning rod. A natural disaster in human skin, and all of it aimed at the world beyond the boy in his arms.

Fugaku’s eyes flicked briefly to Souta, a silent question in them—what just happened? Souta with the hand out of view from Minato signed in Konoha field code: retreat.

Souta had seen Minato like this only once before, after he woke up from the fox and held Naruto in his arms for the first time. He had refused to let anyone get close, his chakra crackling in the air around him daring for someone to try.

Souta had learned that was what looked fear looked like in Minato—reflexive, protective and unadulterated violence.

It was best to let the man hold Kakashi for now. Let Minato, who had issued an order to kill Kakashi on sight merevhours ago, be human, even if it were for only a few minutes.

“The sharingan in the councilman’s head,” Souta said turning around, giving the Fourth a semblance of privacy, “Fugaku-san, whose eye is it?”

——

Kotoamatsukami was, without question, the most broken ability Souta had encountered in his entire career.

It was a genjutsu that didn’t even need line of sight to overwrite a person's will without them ever knowing. A genjutsu that could snare a sharingan user was, frankly, obscene.

And the only reason Kakashi hadn’t died when Minato forcibly dispelled it was sheer, blind luck.

“You heard what Doctor Kouji said about long-term genjutsu,” Souta said, trying not to sound like he was questioning the Hokage directly though he absolutely was. “Kakashi won’t be able to tell genjutsu from reality potentially for weeks. He’ll be aggressive, disoriented—dangerous. He’ll likely try to kill you in the confusion. And when he’s not doing that, he’ll be catatonic, depressed. Emotionally volatile with guilt. He knows he killed four Konoha shinobi. This isn’t something you can brute force your way through. He needs to be under supervision of medical professionals.”

It was like Minato didn’t hear him at all. The Fourth said, “Kakashi stays with me.”

Souta stared at him, almost incredulous.

“I’ll leave clones,” The Hokage added, his tone softening but no less firm. “They’ll monitor him. If anything happens beyond what I can handle, I’ll summon the medics. But he’s not waking up alone in a hospital bed surrounded by strangers.”

Souta rubbed a hand down his face, exhaling hard. “With all due respect, why take that risk? Why not just let him stay at the hospital?”

Minato's gaze shifted toward the far hallway that led to the spare room where Kakashi lay unconscious under heavy sedation. The shadows there seemed heavier than usual, like they were weighed down by the gravity of what had happened.

“Because if he wakes up alone in a hospital,” Minato said slowly, “Surrounded by strangers and restrained, his first instinct will be to fight.”

His jaw tightened.

“His second, when he remembers what he did, will be to kill himself.”

Souta suppressed a flinch, remembering the bloodstain in his living room, and knowing Minato wasn’t wrong.

Minato must have seen the flinch anyway because suddenly, the Hokage’s gaze snapped back to him, sharp and searching.

“Souta,” He said. “Is there something I need to know?”

——

Souta could tell Minato the truth, that Kakashi had already crossed that line. That the possibility wasn’t hypothetical or theoretical and therefore all the more dangerous because a line crossed once became exponentially easier to cross again.

He could say that if Minato truly wanted to keep Kakashi alive, he couldn’t do it as the Hokage. It wasn’t something that could be delegated, medicated, or watched from a clone’s eyes. It would take time. It would take presence. It would take Minato dropping everything else and simply being there for weeks, maybe months.

But if Souta did, Minato would do it. Even if Konoha needed her Hokage.

——

“No,” Souta lied without missing a beat and refused to let his decision hurt.