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Kakashi and Pakkun first met after Kakashi had finally steeled himself to go through his Father’s personal effects and located the summoning contract.
x
His Father’s name was not on the Stone.
Kakashi understood why. Still, there was something that niggled about it – not a sense of injustice, exactly, but something like that. He was sure he would figure it out one day. For now, he had bigger problems.
Kakashi was a gennin without a team. Usually this meant he would get some menial job, but based partly on the facts that he was the last of the Hatake Clan, that his Father had been the famous White Fang, that he had tested out of the Academy without ever attending it, and that there was a war going on, he had been forced on a jounin. They called it apprenticeship. It was more like service. And even then his commanding officer wasn’t taking him seriously.
The only way out that Kakashi could see was promotion.
A promotion required him to widen his repertoire of skills.
He considered his options, and decided to learn summonning. His Father was not there to guide him through the process as he had promised he would, but Kakashi had never before considered lack of guidance a serious obstacle, so he proceeded on his own.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said the young pug that appeared after Kakashi’s second attempt.
Kakashi felt underwhelmed, but he was a professional ninja. He stood at attention. “I am Hatake Kakashi, gennin of Konoha. It is… an honour to meet you.”
The pug gave him a skeptical look. He was excellent at skeptical looks. “Gennin, huh? What are you, seven?”
“I am six years old,” Kakashi reported, standing still for the inspection.
“Is this a jo- Wait,” the dog cut himself off. “You’re Sakumo’s son, right?”
“Yessir.”
The pug took a deep breath and then released it loudly, almost like a sigh. He looked around himself, and then pawed at Kakashi’s toes, which were peeking out of his sandals. “I need to talk to someone. Don’t move. Summon me again in ten minutes.”
And he disappeared.
Kakashi continued to stand at attention. He counted in his head. When he reached six hundred, he cast the summoning jutsu again.
The same dog as before appeared, and a moment later was followed by another. This one Kakashi already knew.
Kakashi bowed. “Tenrousei-san.”
“Kakashi-chan,” said the once co-leader of his Father’s hunt. “How are you?” He was sniffing the air to figure out the answer by himself, so Kakashi replied as the script required.
“I am well. Thank you for asking.”
The two dogs shared a look. Tenrousei-san appeared sad, while the new summon openly expressed anger.
“As I said,” Tenrousei-san growled under his breath, “Sakumo did his best, but between his obligations and his… personal experience…”
Kakashi was not certain what they were talking about, but he understood the implied criticism of his Father. He scowled. There was professionalism, and then there was pride and honour. Usually people had enough discretion to not speak ill of the dead around him, because failure or not, he would not let anyone insult-
“Basically,” said the pug, “Kakashi-chan is alone.”
Kakashi wanted to protest this, but in the most technical sense he was alone. That was (if he was honest) why he chose to do this. Father probably would not have agreed with him learning this technique yet. But his Father also would have supported him in any decision and any course of action he might have taken.
And, in the end, whatever opinion he might have held, it was of no consequence now.
Kakashi was, after all, a legal adult. While his Father’s support would have been appreciated, it was not necessary. Good thing, too, since his Father’s death had rendered the point moot.
“Inari’s balls,” said the pug with another loud exhale. “Okay. Okay, we can still maybe salvage this situation.”
Kakashi’s scowl returned full force, but the pug was suddenly looking up at him from the grassy field, and Kakashi subconsciously stepped back and raised his arms for a block.
“I am Pakkun,” said the dog. “Now sign the contract, gennin of Konoha, so we can try to mitigate some of this damage.”
Kakashi did not have much experience with authority figures, but he understood what orders from a superior shinobi meant.
Pakkun-san had given him an order.
Kakashi complied.
x
Leader and follower, guardian and charge, a boy and a dog – Pakkun and Kakashi were all of these and more. Striking a balance was too difficult, and they paid for their failures in blood and tears.
x
Kakashi noted that his hands were still trembling.
Why, though? He was in the village, as safe as a shinobi could ever be. On top of that, he was surrounded by the warm, breathing wall of his hunt, for a moment completely cut off from the outside world. He was curled up small enough to fit against Buru’s side, and the others simply piled on so that it was becoming difficult for him to breathe.
Kakashi wished he could believe in the illusion of safety – but his hands refused to stop trembling.
He cursed himself for the weakness. This was unacceptable.
“I’ve just about had enough of this,” growled Pakkun. He bit down and tugged on Kakashi’s trouser leg. “This can’t go on. We need to-”
“Tell,” snapped Guruko. “We gotta tell.”
Kakashi clenched his jaw and twisted his body to free himself of the layer of ninken that had half-smothered him in their misplaced concern. “I am perfectly capable of carrying out the mission assigned to me.”
Tsubame ruffed in agreement.
They stood side by side – Tsubame’s shoulder to Kakashi’s hip – facing the rest of the hunt. They had gone on missions just like this one before, and they had performed acceptably well. Kakashi was a chuunin. Solo missions were within his purview, and with Tsubame’s support he felt confident that this assassination would be just as successful as the past three were.
“Tsubame,” Pakkun implored, “you’re smarter than this. Can’t you see-?”
“Do you not have faith in us?” Tsubame cut in, baring her teeth.
Pakkun whined. “Can’t you see what this is doing to Kakashi-?”
“Kakashi is a ninja,” Tsubame snapped, leaning her weight into Kakashi’s leg. “He is the leader of this hunt. He can judge his own preparedness. If he says we can do this, it means we can.”
“Kakashi is seven,” Pakkun exclaimed, entirely in growls and barks, as if Kakashi could not understand.
As if Kakashi could not see that Pakkun did not have confidence in him. Kakashi was not a child. This mission was nothing new to him. Pakkun’s lack of support was – disappointing. Painful, perhaps, but it was far from the first painful disappointment in Kakashi’s life, and he was sure that there would be many more.
“Pakkun?” Guruko said quietly, slinking over to Kakashi’s other side, brushing against his left leg. “That’s not fair. Kakashi and Tsubame – they can do this.”
Pakkun dropped on his butt in front of Kakashi and stared up, eyes dark and glistening. “You’re hurting yourself by accepting these missions-”
“I am doing my duty,” Kakashi retorted. What did it mean ‘hurting himself’? His Father had ‘hurt himself’, and after he had been cremated people spoke of him with less venom, as if ‘hurting himself’ somehow cleaned the stain on his conscience. From what Kakashi had seen, ‘hurting himself’ was an honourable thing.
“Inari’s balls, kid! Listen to me! This is not how it works even for ninja – this is not right-”
“I’m going to report my absence to Minato-sensei,” Kakashi spoke over Pakkun.
This was simple. He was unusual in achieving a relatively high rank for his age. Therefore he had certain predispositions, which were at the disposal of the village. Kakashi was not a child, as Pakkun tried to claim – but he could successfully pretend to be a child, which most of the other chuunin of Konoha could not.
Kakashi spun on his heel and strode out, flanked by Tsubame and Guruko.
Finding Minato-sensei was easy. Evading Kushina-san was a little more difficult, since she was sitting next to him, reading while he drew in a notebook. The training ground was gouged and singed, but the spar must have been long since over; the two shinobi were relaxed and clearly both lost in their minds.
Until Kushina-san raised her head from her book, spotted Kakashi, and reached over to punch Minato-sensei in the ribs.
“Wha- um, what?”
“Take better care of your student, airhead,” she admonished, letting loose another punch, which Minato-sensei absently dodged.
“Kakashi?” Minato-sensei looked around at the scattered hunt, and zeroed in on Kakashi, who was standing mere five yards away from him, and should not have been able to come as close without being detected. “What’s happened?”
“I have been approached by a Council member with a mission,” reported Kakashi.
“And an offer of a reassignment,” Pakkun added angrily.
“Reassignment.” Minato-sensei’s face fell. He tried to fake a smile, but for a shinobi that attempt was truly pathetic. No matter how his mouth stretched, he was still staring at Kakashi with wide, wet eyes. “Oh. You- you want to-?”
His teeth clacked when Kushina-san smacked him on the back of the head. Then she tugged on his ear. “These are for listening with.”
Minato-sensei blushed; after a moment he grabbed Kushina-san’s hand, pulled it away from his ear, turned to face her… and froze, staring at her. By this time his face was approximately the same colour as her hair.
“Human courting rituals are weird,” commented Uuhei.
“In his defence,” said Guruko, “he can’t actually smell that she wants him.”
Pakkun sighed and glanced sideways at the couple, who were arguing in undertone while staring into one another’s eyes and still holding hands. “No, in this case that defence doesn’t work.”
Kakashi, who had witnessed several of these exchanges between Minato-sensei and Kushina-san, shifted into parade rest, aware that this was going to take a while (fortunately his mission did not include a set time of departure). Lately these negotiations occurred with increasing frequency, and Kakashi had, with some reluctance, started collecting evidence of Minato-sensei being an unsuitable team lead due to tunnel vision and lack of situational awareness. It was a pity; Minato-sensei was otherwise a competent shinobi.
Pakkun barked.
Minato-sensei and Kushina-san turned to see what was the problem – and remembered, as soon as they spotted Kakashi waiting. They broke apart in a flurry of apologies.
Kushina-san descended upon Kakashi. He tried to dodge, but she was nearly as fast as himself, and he was grimly aware that if he damaged her in any way, however unintentionally, Minato-sensei would have him reassigned immediately (or worse). Kakashi was subjected to a hug – he withstood the discomfort stoically. It was far less uncomfortable than the jutsu that had abraded his back and legs last week in that encounter with Iwa shinobi.
Shorter-lasting, too.
“Oh, sorry,” Minato-sensei was muttering. “I- Which Council me- It was Danzo, wasn’t it?” He stood and shifted from the absent-minded seal-crafter into the A-class jounin from the Iwa bingo book. “I will take care of it.”
He would take care of it? Kakashi did not need anybody to take care of him. He was a shinobi-
“Kakashi, stay here,” Pakkun ordered, scrambling to follow on Minato-sensei’s heels. However, it must have occurred to him he had spent two years convincing Kakashi that they were equals, and Kakashi should not act as Pakkun’s subordinate. “Don’t do this. Don’t go. This is not- Sit on him,” he barked at Buru, and then hurried off on Minato-sensei’s tail.
“Ooh, I’ll smother the little cutie!” cried out Kushina-san, liberally misinterpreting Pakkun’s instruction.
Kakashi crouched and put his arm around Tsubame – Tsubame had the necessary expertise for the mission, and if Pakkun was not willing to accompany Kakashi, the choice of a partner for this mission was clear. They body-flickered away an instance before the laughing Kushina-san fell upon Kakashi again.
He had a mission, and he was not going to shirk his duty.
He came back two weeks later. The offer of reassignment was withdrawn. Minato-sensei seemed at first frantic and then, after Kakashi was released from the Hospital, relieved.
Tsubame’s name was never added to the Memorial Stone either.
x
The first time Kakashi summoned his hunt after the Kyuubi attack, it was to say goodbye.
x
He should have done it before. Before he had tried to assassinate the Sandaime.
If he had succeeded, they would have felt his death and yet not known how or why it happened. With no other summoner left in this world, there would have been no way for them to find out.
Kakashi should have summoned them. Out of courtesy. They had done much for him.
They would have talked him out of acting so stupidly, so thoughtlessly. He had damned himself, for nothing in return. An empty gesture at best, and even that was swept under the rug.
“What’s that smell?” asked Uuhei.
“Tattoo!” Akino exclaimed. “Did you get a tattoo, Kakashi? So cool-”
“Idiot,” barked Uuhei. “Just look at him.”
Kakashi was standing in the middle of the training ground, at night, wearing his new ANBU uniform. He had only pulled his mask to the side, the way he had seen some other ANBU members do.
There was a moment of silence followed by a sudden barking and growling clamour.
“Shiryuusu-sama will tan your hide,” groused Pakkun. “Smart you might be, but you’re also dumb as a cock.”
Kakashi froze. He wanted to hunch over and cross his arms in front of his chest, but it seemed like every joint in his body had locked up. Minato-sensei was gone. Kushina-san was gone. Baby Naruto – the Hokage had told him – was also gone as far as Kakashi was concerned. Everything that had ever mattered to him was a pile of ashes and a few kanji carved into the Memorial Stone.
Here just a week ago. Gone now.
As if someone had switched off the light, except they did it for the whole world at once.
“You don’t make life-changing decisions when you’re emotionally compromised!” Pakkun insisted, eyes trained at Kakashi’s shoulder where the seal-infused ANBU tattoo was hidden under the sleeve of his uniform.
“It’s…” Kakashi’s voice caught. He cleared his throat and tried again, pretending he was giving a report. “It is punishment. Well-deserved. I acted treasonously. This sentence makes me useful to the village.”
Again, there was silence. Only the cold late-October breeze rustled in the leaves of the trees.
“I don’t believe it,” whispered someone hidden by someone else.
“Yeah, I call bullshit,” agreed Guruko.
In stilted words, Kakashi reported the events of the past fortnight, starting with the preparations for Kushina-san’s delivery and ending with his assignment to ANBU. He was, still, numb enough to only feel the echo of a detached horror. All the rage he had felt when he raised a chokuto to his Hokage had disappeared after Inoichi’s mental alteration.
How comfortable.
“I see,” Pakkun said eventually. “So Bisuke…”
Bisuke was a Pack puppy. Like Kakashi. Like Pakkun. An orphan taken care of by the Pack as a collective (because Pack didn’t subscribe to the idea of throwing anybody out into the cold world to survive on their own, whether they were adult, or legally adult, or neither). Pakkun had introduced them in the hope of giving Bisuke a place to belong. Kakashi had offered to invite Bisuke to the hunt after his Presentation… but that was not feasible anymore.
“I am… sorry,” Kakashi offered.
He was not, though, not really. He wanted to be, perhaps, but it didn’t matter. Very little mattered anymore, and the Pack would take care of Bisuke either way, right? Kakashi wasn’t important.
That was good. Being useful, but not important. That made sense. That was something he could do.
Be of use. Be of use until he either died or was not of use anymore and then died.
Right.
He pulled the mask over to cover his face. Hound. That was him, now. No more Kakashi. That was… simple.
“Kakashi-”
“Inu,” he protested. “This is who I am now. Thank you for everything you have done for me, Pakkun, everybody. From now on, I am a ghost.” And ghosts had no such connections-
The train of thought was ripped apart when Shiba and Urushi pulled him down. A moment later Buru was sitting on Kakashi’s chest; breathing suddenly became problematic.
Pakkun climbed on top of Buru and leaned over to glare down at Kakashi, even though he could not see through the eyeholes of the mask.
“Pull the other one, pup; it’s got bells on,” growled the pug. “You are not dead, and until you are dead, you are alive.”
“But-”
“But you are ANBU?” asked Guruko, and laughed. “You and how many others, whiner?”
Kakashi spasmed under Buru, but due to the weight on top of him failed to retaliate to the insult.
“Yeah, like that’s the end of the world!” scoffed Akino.
“Well, that’s adolescence for you,” Pakkun lamented mockingly. He took a couple of careful steps forwards, sticking to Buru’s side with chakra, and put a paw on the cold porcelain of Kakashi’s mask. Sensing that Kakashi was about reaching the point when he would become angry enough to take a leave of his senses and fight seriously, he spoke with gravity: “We liked those people, too. They were good people. They were good to you. They will be missed.”
Kakashi felt tears welling in his eyes and blinked them away. He didn’t have the energy for this. He had received and accepted his sentence. It was not what Minato-sensei would have wanted for him, but it was what he deserved (better than he deserved, and he wasn’t about to argue against mercy).
“But you are ours,” rumbled Buru.
The words reverberated through Kakashi’s squished ribcage.
“This is not the end,” Pakkun stated definitively (so confidently that Kakashi wanted to believe him, even though he could not). “When you are off duty, you will be at home. And we are part of that. So you will spend time with us. Now, I will have your oath. And, believe me, Buru will sit on you until you give it, even if it takes so long that you are delirious of thirst. About this, I have no qualms whatsoever.”
x
After yet another lie between them, Kakashi thought he was summoning Pakkun for the last time.
x
Kakashi felt wrung. The mission had gone better than anyone could have reasonably expected, but it had been demanding, and he had come into it off of the tail end of nine weeks of enforced exhausting inaction. He had no more energy left for anything. He had never thought he might come to such a state, but he needed a vacation.
He got it, too. But not until after a session with Inoichi, a debriefing with the Godaime’s shadow clone (which took what felt like two days with only one break for a soldier pill), and a meeting with Iruka that was disconcertingly akin to a mirror of their parting three months ago. Iruka was worried. Kakashi was irritated by feeling like he was obligated to make concessions to Iruka’s worry (yes, he was aware that this was convoluted emotional bullshit that made no real sense, but the knowledge did not stop the irritation). He needed to get out and clear his head.
He needed to sleep.
He could not sleep.
He ambled through the village with the hope of not being chanced upon by Gai (he was not, thank whoever assigned Gai the mission that kept him away from Konoha today) until he arrived at the Memorial Stone.
He had figured it out, in the end. It was not so much a way for the living to remember those they had lost, as it was a carrot dangled in front of every ninja departing the village for a mission. Go, die well, earn your half-times-five inches of glory. Naruto had, hilariously enough, struck almost too close to the truth of it at the first meeting of that sad excuse of a team.
Might as well get it over with, Kakashi thought, staring at the stone that failed to honour all those ninja who gave their best in service of the village, only had the bad taste to manage to retire or be invalided or succumb to a disease (or walk on four legs).
Cut the bite open, suck out the venom. That was the only thing to do (or die, which was always an option, but never an option).
“Kuchiyose no Jutsu.”
Pakkun appeared as expected. He did not look any better than Kakashi, but aside from observing this fact Kakashi did not give a damn. He was not interested in apologies. He was not interested in excuses and explanations either.
He wanted to resolve this, once and for all, and at the moment he was inclined to give the hunt an ultimatum: either Pakkun or Kakashi would have to leave.
“I didn’t think you remembered any of them except Tenrousei,” Pakkun said, skipping over the apology. “I thought – why bring it up at all? No good would come out of stirring those memories; it would just pointlessly make you uncomfortable with Naruto’s hunt.”
“I remember them all,” Kakashi replied. His memory had been nigh on eidetic even before the Sharingan. It was one of the facets of his so-called genius – the basis of his improbable vocabulary and advanced sentence structure at far too young an age; the reason why he learnt to read in months instead of years, and why he could regurgitate the entire Academy curriculum at five-years-old to convince the committee to graduate him; the little twist in his brain that still let him recall his Father’s corpse in bright colours when he closed his eyes and thought of that day.
When he was six, he had hoped – childishly – that if he tried summoning them, his Father’s hunt would come back to him. Instead, Tenrousei-san had appeared only after Pakkun had brought him, and then never came back.
Kakashi had not seen a single one of his Father’s ninken until Rikku responded to Naruto’s summoning.
Pack puppy, indeed. His Father’s hunt even avoided Pack gatherings, so Kakashi had stopped attending the Presentations for fear that they would miss their children’s and grandchildren’s proud moments because of him.
Pakkun sat on his haunches and dropped his head onto his paws. “I have always, always tried to do my best by you. For a while I was your parents, and your teacher, and your best friend. I know I took on too much – I did not always do well enough at everything.”
“Maa.” Kakashi stared at Konoha’s lights in the distance. Things had changed so drastically that it was an entirely different world now than it had been back then, some twenty-two years ago. “I was a self-sufficient child.”
Pakkun harrumphed. “You needed parents, Kakashi. More than you think you did.”
Parents were a luxury. Look at Iruka; look at Sasuke and Naruto. Who even had parents these days? Only the improbably lucky ones (with better odds, as always, for the civilians).
Dishonesty in a hunt, Kakashi thought. That was how they died. If his Father had been honest with his hunt, he would not have killed himself – they never would have let him.
But – and realising this caused a dull ache inside Kakashi’s ribcage – was he any different? If put into a similar position, would he have confided in his ninken, or would he have chosen a silent, dignified exit over the mire of tears and self-reflection and guilt on the road toward the mirage of healing?
He had the answer – after Minato-sensei died Kakashi had pulled back from his hunt rather than rely on them, and it was only chance that his decisions had not killed him then.
“Omission versus sabotage, huh?” he mused, smiling widely and mirthlessly under his mask. “I am such a good student. I learned it all from you, sensei.”
Pakkun whined. It was a high-pitched, uncontrolled, mournful sound, such as Kakashi had only ever heard from him once before (that time Kakashi left with Tsubame and came back alone).
But at least Kakashi had figured it out – or at least thought he had figured it out. The blindness of love, that was it. The subconscious shift of perception; the reshuffling of priorities that happened to you without you realising it; the emotional highlighting of personal objectives.
The age-old dilemma of a shinobi: choosing between duty and love. Between duty and loyalty.
Between, in Pakkun’s case, love and loyalty.
“I am not a child anymore,” Kakashi pointed out. “I don’t need your protection. I won’t thank you for it.”
“And, apparently,” Pakkun grumbled, “you still don’t understand shit. Don’t tell me you don’t need protection! I don’t care, and I never will!” He huffed, and with visible effort forced himself to calm down at least a little. “If Naruto tells you he doesn’t need you to protect him, will that make you stop? And Iruka?”
Kakashi growled.
Pakkun growled back. “What, pup? Will you ever, ever stop trying to shelter them from pain?! Tell me you will and hear the lie in your own words!”
Kakashi punched the ground. It was soft and yielding, and the action didn’t help at all, so he turned around and punched the Stone’s plinth. And then punched it again. And again, feeling the give of the breaking bones-
A set of teeth buried themselves in his calf.
He kicked out; Pakkun whined, but he didn’t let go. Kakashi raised his hand, jutsu at the ready-
Pakkun was looking up at him. A pair of dark, immensely sad doggy eyes, reflecting the flicker of pale blue.
Kakashi looked up, then, too, at his hand, at the bolts of electricity crackling between his fingers-
And realised what he had almost done.
The jutsu fizzled out. He cried out, and maybe strangled a scream. His knees went out from under him. Pakkun released his leg and dodged just in time to avoid being knelt on. Kakashi stuffed his wrist into his mouth through the mask and bit down – like a weak counter-point to the bite on his calf, to the fractured knuckles – and everything went fuzzy. Blood and tears soaked into the mask as Obito wept along with him.
He tried to apologise. Tried. There was a lump in his throat, and the ‘sorry’ just got stuck under it. He couldn’t force it out.
He felt the touch of a soft paw to his knee. He grabbed the henohenomoheji vest and curled himself around Pakkun, unable to do more than hold on, broken hand and all.
“We are partners,” Pakkun said quietly from the cage of Kakashi’s arms, legs and torso, “but you will never, ever stop being my puppy. And I will never, ever stop protecting you, even at the cost of losing your trust.”
Kakashi took a deep breath, and let all the anger go.