Chapter Text
Kakashi doesn’t even have enough heart left over to cry. Even base emotions scrape on his oversensitized mind, chest scrubbed raw from dread and panic.
“A nap,” he chokes out, buzzy and old-old-old. “Food, later.” Robb is in his arms and Crow is tucked into his side. Grey Wind left sometime after Kakashi barged in and started the hysterics. He’s knees are locked in an awkward kneeling crouch. He should—move. Stand up.
“Sounds like a plan,” Robb mutters. “There’s a cot right there.”
Kakashi hadn’t been planning on letting him go—possibly ever again—but Robb nonetheless tightens his grip, head burrowing further into his neck. “You’re a big, strong Avatar of death, aren’t you? Walk that talk and carry me.”
A spark of fondness lights up, scorching across the chasm that opened up when he had—When he thought—
“When you’re right, you’re right.” He wraps his left arm around Robb and sweeps Crow up with his right. “Nap. No talk. No talk for a bit.”
“Leaving things unsaid is a path that only leads to further heartache,” Crow says, voice hoarse in an unfamiliar way. “However. A crow is certain there are kinder ways of negotiating interpersonal dynamics.”
Sure there is.
“For a bit.”
***
Facing the world is easier with a full belly and a six-hour nap under his belt. The Free Folk had continued without them, which was for the best; there’s a reason Kakashi set up their camp a ways away from the crush of humanity. Much like himself, Robb and Crow seem more than eager to perform normalcy, even if they don’t feel it. They—and Kakashi—orbit around each other, generous with casual touch but oh-so-very careful. Mostly, Kakashi slows his thoughts as low as he can and doesn’t think about himself, Robb, Crow or the gaggle of other supernatural agents running around.
Crow’s and Robb’s scents are thick with concern and regret, which he refuses to acknowledge. Later, maybe. When he doesn’t feel like he’s held together with spite and inertia; when he stops feeling like calamity is hovering at his shoulder, waiting to strike. It’s—not ideal, granted, but he can compartmentalise. Minato-sensei hadn’t been in the ground, and Kakashi had already been taking missions; he could do the same now. Besides, they tried going granular, and it didn’t work. They tried zooming all the way out, and skidded to a stop two breaths before a mental breakdown. So, now he will approach things sideways as nature intended.
They meet up with Jon and the rest when Mance decides it’s time to camp for the night. Tomorrow is a rest day, if he’s not very mistaken, which is a luxury he only allows his people when he sees they will start dropping otherwise.
“Oh, thank the Old Gods and the New,” Jon says, less than three seconds after setting his eyes on them. “You’re all alive. Good. Great.” For some unfathomable reason, he sends an approving look to Robb. “Good.”
And that’s enough of that. A thought has been brewing in the back of his mind; an interesting little concept that might very well prove to be useful. And, the best part is, it has nothing at all to do with love. “Come on,” he says, instead. “Jon, Robb, on your wolves. Crow, with me.”
Everybody is looking at him. That’s probably fair. His words are sharp, quiet and bitten-off, three fourths of the blood vessels in his eyes burst and his nails tingle. “Sorry, dearest— “
“There is a vein of graphite in our camp,” he says, curling his lips away from his teeth. It’s a smile inasmuch as a noose is a necklace. “So you get to come with me while I make a crucible, several containers and moulds. Then, we find some ore.” He escalates his smile a few degrees. “Any problems?”
“No. No problems.” Robb nods once, twice. “Graphite? Ah—mining? Sounds like just the thing.”
“I thought so.”
***
They gather a crowd, because Free Folk are nosy by nature, and Kakashi isn’t doing much to keep things discrete. If he were a better man, a man more in control of a single damn aspect of his life, he would shoo them away. As it is, he can’t even bother acknowledging it. The work is simple but important. The Far North might be generous with ore, but that doesn’t mean he should be careless and wasteful.
That said, there is enough graphite in this strain to satisfy a village for a month. Kakashi rips out far more than he needs, then some more just because, and moves onto shaping. Focus. Graphite might be a forgiving material to work with, but Kakashi is hobbled without a proper use of his Chakra. Hatake Compound had Chakra-conducive crucibles and Fūinjutsu powered furnaces that could do things with metal these flower children couldn’t imagine. Still, there is beauty in doing things manually, as it were. To say nothing of the rarity; a lump of graphite this pure would be worth ten S-rank missions, if it could be bought at all. And here is Kakashi, messing around.
“That’s—a nice set of stone bowls,” Robb says, once Kakashi judges it’s finished. “Very, ah, artistic.”
Sage save you. “They’re moulds,” he sighs. “I need to purify my ore—” His lips are twitching, the little brat’s. Kakashi growls at him, the sound rumbling from deep in his chest. Humans on the outskirts shudder and retreat, but Robb only grins, wide and toothy, eyes squinting shut. Kakashi can’t decide who is more ridiculous, Robb with his shiny curls and baby blues, or Crow, bundled up in so many layers of leather and fur, you can only vaguely guess there is a human underneath, somewhere. “Cute.”
***
“Goodness gracious, how exciting,” Robb’s voice winds through the silence. He sounds like he is moments away from expiring from boredom. “Are we still sniffing the air? Riveting stuff.”
Kakashi’s nose twitches, but he doesn’t move. This is fiddly work. He could simply roam around if he didn’t have civilians to lug around. Now, it has to be a precise operation. In and out, as it were. Which means—Scanning.
“I’m a tracker, not a miner,” he whispers. “I’m not trained to locate inorganic targets. I’ve done what I can with my sense of smell but I need to focus if I am to find anything past a twenty-mile radius.”
(“Twenty miles--”, “Yes, I know. It’s impressive, but saying so will stress him out.”, “But twenty miles, Robbie—”, “I know, I know.”)
“Quiet,” Crow says, the sound flowing and final. “Kakashi Hatake would have been smart to go alone. This is a costly compromise, in terms of energy, efficiency and focus. A crow will not be pleased if Hatake Kakashi’s gesture is not treated with the respect that it deserves.”
And now he’s even more distracted. Crow being on his side, emphasising his authority with a mean edge, will always make his knees wobble and throat squeeze.
“Yes, Crow.”
“Sorry, Crow.”
“Sorry, ‘Kashi.”
“Yes, sorry, uh. Kakashi.”
Charming little monsters. He tweaks the trickle of Chakra to his nose and head, lets his head lol back as he inhales a long, smooth breath—
“There. We have a promising place to start.”
***
He sends another suspicious look at the serpentine rock formation. It doesn’t give one back, because it is a lump of rock, but it’s possible that the greenish hue manages to glitter extra pretty in the sun. Kakashi’s scowl intensifies.
“Light of my life, song of my heart. If I may be so bold, what are you—”
Kakashi absently snaps his teeth in the direction of Robb’s poking finger. “It’s too easy,” he says and crouches down. “You don’t just—find all the ore you need, practically bursting out of the ground, coaxing you to mine it.” What’s the catch? Will monsters burst out once he takes a lump? Is it a problem if they do?
“It’s a lump of rock, Kakashi.”
“It’s a lump of pentlandite and cobaltite,” he says. “Meaning nickel and cobalt.” He waves an absent hand until the peanut gallery retreats a good hundred steps—he has to frown at Crow to get them to move past a dozen—and cracks the ground open. As expected, the veins are plentiful and gorgeous. “This is such a bad sign.” He sighs, ripping out the rock in roughly ten-kilogram lumps of pure, precious ore. “Never mind.”
***
As if to make up for all the heartache, the land practically vomits rare metals out for them. On his way back, he stumbles across dark stones marked by veins of pyrochlore. Just lying there, as you would. He hadn’t looked for them. Niobium ore, begging to be mined.
Lugging all of it to the clearing takes some doing, even with the makeshift sledge he could pull and save time. They are set to reach the Wall in six weeks or more; he can take a couple of days to gather his materials. Robb already traded several deer and moose carcasses for a cart pulled by two reindeer, so they won’t have to bother lugging the ore around, once he purifies and casts them into ingots. Plus, his alloy experimentation will take proper focus; a good smith doesn’t set out to do any serious work without having all his materials ready.
The work is—good. Cleansing and soothing; welcoming like few things have been of late. It’s exhilarating to apply himself to a simple task, to something he is good at, something he can understand. Sun had fully set by the time he rolled his shoulders and sets about smelting. It’s—a lot clumsier than he would like, and he would have died of shame if one of his ANBU saw how much Chakra he was wasting. Needs must; he might lose grip on the Chakra as soon as it leaves his body, but the energy doesn’t dissipate. It moves and acts as it would, following its nature. In this case, he goes back to the basics, meaning lightning.
“Put something over your eyes, nose and mouth,” he says, and focuses. Let’s see how this will go.
***
“Are you seriously going to forge swords for the giants?”
Kakashi sighs and shakes out his shoulders. He’s tempted to say none of your business if it will save him from the conversation. “For now, I’m gathering supplies,” he says. “My father is the first Hatake to move away from the Land of Iron. Meaning that we have forgotten more about steel than this country has ever known. Mance’s people have nothing; porous, brittle slag they barely hammered into shape.”
“Iron can’t kill White Walkers,” Jon says slowly. Cautiously. “Only dragon glass and Valyrian steel.”
Yeah? “Fascinating.” He exhales a long breath. Being combative for no reason is not going to get them anywhere. “White Walkers aren’t the only threat, kid. If I’m going to bring thirty thousand noncombatants into the territory of people who see them as vermin, I will arm the ones that can fight to the fucking teeth.”
Huh. That was a surprise, somehow. “Their army is twenty thousand strong,” Robb says. “Unless Bran calls the bannermen, they will be the strongest force in the North.”
Yeah, no. “Sure,” he says. “Starved, untrained and unarmed horde running for their lives can match Starks, Boltons and Umbars, with their horses, full gear and a territory advantage. Easy.”
Robb’s expression grows more serious, and contemplative. “I hadn’t considered that. You want the giants to be their insurance?”
No. He wants—He wants not to think about any of this at all. He wants these people not to be his problem. He wants to bury himself in rewarding work and keep his head down for a decade.
“We haven’t even made it to the Wall,” he says instead. “But ideally, yeah. I don’t want twenty thousand warriors to feel like their backs are against the wall. There is no love lost between any of—” You. “—Them. The more secure they feel, the less likely they are to overreact and start a conflict that won’t end well for anybody.”
“Mance will keep them in line,” Jon says, displaying the type of wide-eyed naivete that sees little boys dead in ditches. “And Robb—via you and Crow—will keep the peace in the other direction.”
Kakashi catches Robb’s eyes. For all that they’re the same age, Robb feels—decades older than his brother. Winning wars and building Kingdoms despite the utter uselessness of every authority figure in one’s life will do wonders for one’s maturity.
“Hatake Kakashi is kind,” Crow says. The warmth in his tone is sincere but amplified. Typically, he is far more discrete with his emotions. “And he is correct. Whether or not the people of the Far North deserve the consideration is beside the point. They are too weak to defend themselves from the combined armies of the Northern Kingdom and too strong to be ignored. If there is a chance for functional stability, the scales must be equalised some.”
“By all means,” Robb says, visibly a hundred miles away, mind spinning behind the pretty blue eyes. “Tree-sized swords for the giants. Armour, too. Tools—”
***
“Alright, we’re alone. Spit it out.” Robb arches an eyebrow, conveying every single flavour of calm and patience. It’s making Kakashi relax and also tense up with annoyance. Sometimes, he’d like nothing more than to give the brat a firm, long shake and dunk him in the snowbank. “You haven’t been worried about the Northerners a day in your life and, moreover, you know that the Wildlings are tough as nails. The Wildlings don’t have gear, but they are strong, big and mean as hell. The average infantryman would get flattened.”
Yes, well.
“I could be worried,” he says, aggressively leaning into Grey Wind’s flank. The cub whuffs at him calmly. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think the wolf is amused. “The twenty thousand warriors have thirty thousand noncombatants to guard. They could be taken advantage of.”
“They could. And if you were truly worried about that, you would simply strike terror in the hearts of Bran’s bannermen. You’ve not forged a single blade, not for your flock, Renly’s people or mine, for that matter.”
“Excuse you I forged plenty for the flock.” Cauldrons and bathtubs for the most part, but the point remains. He sighs. “I’m tinkering,” he says. “Thinking. It’s all very—” He sighs again. It’s becoming repetitive. “Look, we have a glass-like material called dragon glass that kills the white walkers, yes?”
“Indeed.”
“And we also have steel that kills White Walkers that’s called Valyrian steel, yes?”
Robb arches a brow, while Crow makes an interested, considering noise.
“So, we melt down some of the terrible, no-good, cursed glass, throw in some iron and carbon and a handful of other elements, and we should have Valyrian steel,” he adds, quite helpfully in his opinion. “You can make steel alloys with silicate, you know? Mundane silicate. Sand. It produces outstanding results if you know how to integrate and, more importantly, fold it, afterwards.”
Robb’s expression shifts into wonder, eyes huge and round in his face. Still, he tucks all that excitement away all too soon, flicking worried eyes Crow’s way.
“Of course, we will respect Crow’s boundaries on the matter,” he continues. “The stuff is his. He says no, we make it with mundane obsidian. Also, I want to experiment a bit with forging with fire Chakra. I doubt it will be as effective as evil blood magic, but it might help.” He shrugs. “You said you don’t want to be involved in this any more than you have to. Truth be told, I’m right there with you. The only way we get to do that is if we give other people the tools and the intel to do it for us.”
Robb makes a small, focused noise. It’s—pleased, yes, but also tense. Charged. “Damn it, even your coping mechanisms are hyper-competent. Here I was, rolling my eyes—Silly, I thought. Sulking. Gods, you’re the most infuriating man I’ve ever met.”
A little bit of the deliberate, scatter-minded fuzz recedes. Praise is praise, and this one was so grudging it sailed right over every wall of self-loathing he had built. “I am absolutely sulking,” he says. “Obviously. You're out of your mind if you think this is how a professional behaves. It just so happens that most of my self-soothing protocols are, in some way, connected to war and murder.” Yikes. “See? Drowning in self-pity. Awful.”
Robb hiccups, staring up at him with shiny eyes and bouncy curls. Slowly, he inches forward, arms opening—
Kakashi descends, sweeps him up and grabs Crow in the same movement. One step, two, and he pivots, lands on the ground with the two men covering him like the world’s most aggravating security blanket. Grey Wind shifts and huffs a wet breath straight into his ear, completing the picture.
“The worst. All of you. Terrible.”