Chapter Text
The moment Kakashi opens his eyes, he knows that something’s wrong. Mostly because he can see greenery and his body feels pleasantly warm rather than as if his blood is boiling in his veins.
The adrenaline left from his fight with Pain is humming through his bones, and he snaps up from the relaxed position he’d woken up in.
(No white hospital walls no civilian chakra near no hostile entities chakra levels normal-)
He stops at that because he knows he’d been on the brink of death from chakra exhaustion. Can still remember his chest heaving and his fingers aching, the well of power inside him drying up with every jutsu he tosses at the madman trying to destroy his village.
(Not enough not enough not enough-)
ANBU instincts keep him loose as he casually stands and casts kai to dispel the genjutsu that he’s obviously been stuck in, (something’s wrong) flexing his hands only to stop when he realizes that his joints don’t ache nearly as much as they ought to (something’s wrong ) .
Kai does nothing. The greenery remains.
(Thirty years of constant service as a shinobi has ruined him in ways that civilians can never imagine, be that screaming nightmares of blood spraying from the stumps of childrens’ necks or the creak of his chakra-infused bones as he leaps into another life-or-death fight. But his cute little students still need him so he can’t die now-)
His students.
(His so-strong students who don’t know what’s good for them who he should have helped more fighting for their lives, where are they-)
Kakashi breathes once, twice. His fingers don’t tremble and his throat doesn’t contract, because he is a shinobi and he will not have a panic attack, not now.
(Something is wrong )
Kakashi looks around again, takes stock of his surroundings. He’s in a small camp, a pack, a bedroll, and the remains of a campfire being the only blemishes over the forest floor that indicate a human presence.
This is very strange.
Kakashi’s cleaned up the camp and is heading south, hoping to find some sort of settlement where he can ask where the bloody hell he is. There was no map in the pack, and Kakashi knew there was no point in hurrying much.
(The long-honed instincts of an ANBU Captain whisper that he’s too far away to get back to Konoha in time to help push back the invasion. The scent in the air and the shape of the leaves tells him that he’s not even in Fire Country.
Find them, find them, find them, Kakashi-sensei cries, but Hound’s cold logic beats him back and takes the wheel, shoving their body into lurching steps that slowly shift to smooth leaps between treetops as the rest of his mind acknowledges that rushing in won’t help anybody.)
Until he catches a glimpse of his reflection in a creek and stops, because his eyesight has been Sharingan-dulled for years and he should not be able to see the Konohagakure symbol on his hitai ate, and he shouldn’t see a thick line scratched through the stylized leaf, because he is not a nukenin, and he especially shouldn’t see his goddamn fourteen-year-old face staring back at him, what the fuck?!
He forms the motions for kai again and again and again, but nothing changes. The reflection in the water remains.
This is a problem.
Kakashi’s flipping (not frantically, not frantically, he is calm ) through the Bingo Book tucked in the pack he’d woken up with and when he catches a glance at a single entry he freezes to stare at the words inked on the page, the stark truth that slaps him in the face and shatters his veneer of serenity into shards.
Hatake Kakashi, A-Rank Nukenin. Flee on Sight, the entry reads, and lists a ridiculously high bounty beneath it.
(Kakashi takes a moment to be incredibly insulted that he’s not considered S-Rank.)
Apparently he’s wanted over half the continent, Konoha and Kiri included.
Kiri, Kiri, Kiri, something long-buried croons, and Kakashi absently runs his tongue over too-sharp teeth.
(Kiri bloodline mutations manifest themselves in animalistic alterations nine times out of ten, and the Mist-Born Hatake clan is no different. Sakumo White-Fang was tall but hunched, almost unnaturally so for a respected shinobi of his standing, almost as if he was more comfortable on all fours, too-long arms barely brushing bowlegged knees.
When Friend-Killer Kakashi’s baby teeth fall out early and suspiciously canine fangs surreptitiously take their place, Sakumo sews his son a black mask and pulls it over the three-year-old’s face, whispering that what the Hokage doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
And when a mission fails and Konohan eyes turn to Sakumo in their anger, Cold-Blooded Kakashi finds his father’s still-warm corpse splayed out over tatami flooring. He pulls his mask a little higher, because even if his blood and fangs and ancestors belong to Kiri his father died for the Leaf-)
Too risky, Hound decides, tucking the Bingo Book back in his pack and standing again. He needs to make for Konoha. He needs to find his students.
(His students who are just barely newborns now, Naruto in an orphanage Sasuke crushed under Uchiha expectations in the middle of a brewing civil war Sakura trapped in a civilian house-)
He’ll figure out what to do from there in due time.
(But he gets the feeling what whatever he does is gonna be stupid. )
Kakashi watches in wonder as he stretches the limbs he’d sported fifteen long years ago. The dimensions aren’t drastically different, probably why he hadn’t immediately noticed.
(He thinks he’s around fourteen because the ANBU tattoo is still present on his shoulder, but the whispers of a new jinchuruki in Konoha had placed this point in the timeline to right after Minato-sensei’s death. He guesses that’s what drove this body’s defection from Konoha.)
But the lack of pain when he stretches and the smooth skin where scars gnarled his body just a week ago is different, and oddly new.
He’d be worried that he’d gone absolutely crazy if he hadn’t called his summons the second day and they’d been just as confused as he was. The only possible explanation was dimension travel, Kakashi had deduced as he’d thoughtfully watched Obito’s Sharingan spin lazily in the reflection of his face off a well-polished kunai. Kamui, a dimensional technique that, while technically possible, was also incredibly uncontrollable and often used as a last-ditch stab at survival.
It was awfully unlikely, especially since Kakashi isn’t a born Uchiha, but it’s the only explanation that makes a lick of sense.
He’s been watching his students for a day now, watching and waiting. He’s incredibly tempted to do something impulsive like snatch them all up and steal away to the wastelands with them.
Unfortunately, he’s still got most of his mental facilities intact, so the Kakashi-sensei in his head that screams for justice is well-smothered by Hound once again.
(But then he watches the matron leave little-Naruto in a dirty diaper, crying and hungry, Minato-sensei’s blue eyes tearing up.
Team-Minato’s Kakashi leaps to his feet as his sensei’s son sobs and sobs and sobs and something long-overdue snaps. )
This was a bad idea, Kakashi thinks frantically as he hightails it away from Konoha with Minato-sensei’s newborn strapped to his chest, baby-Sakura and baby-Sasuke swaddled and tucked away in Bull’s saddlebags. This was a very bad idea.
But as Naruto’s baby-scent drifts up to his masked face he breathes deeply, and the scent of pack only strengthens his resolve.
(Hatake Kakashi has more than just dog-teeth separating him from native Konohans. An acute sense of smell fills his head with his students’ individual scents, and irrepressible instincts nudge against his limbs, whispering keep moving, keep moving, crooning over the pups he’d caved and stolen right out from under their guardians’ noses.
Mine, mine, mine, his blood murmurs, and Kakashi’s hold tightens around the pup cradled against his chest.)
The first order of business, once Kakashi and his pups are across the Fire Country borders, is to make camp. They settle in a cave hidden by a convenient copse of trees, dark and dank with a musty scent that means no one’s come here in years.
Bull settles down with a huff, his other ninken crowding around the bundles in bags by his flanks, sniffing and yipping gleefully at the two infants swaddled inside.
Kakashi takes out his bedroll and smoothes it, arranging the blankets into something vaguely nest-like that allows him to tuck all three pups into the folds of the coarse cloth and watch them carefully for a moment, drawing deep breaths of their individual scents to determine that all three are content and sleepy, not hungry nor needing a diaper change.
(Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea-)
His little fourteen-year-old body curls around the nest, his three charges squished together in the center, and his ninken lay down beside him, Pakkun snuffling at the babies one last time before going to keep watch at the cave’s entrance.
His blood thrums as his Hatake-nose pulls in his students’ scents, and his teenager-body relaxes.
(Worth it.)