Chapter Text
Kakashi was not doing well. He had not been doing well for a long time actually. He was hurting and had been losing loved ones since before he even knew to value them, but losing his sensei and Kushina was another kick while he was already down.
He threw himself into ANBU missions, tried to drown out the loss with duty, but he still dreamed of them, of Obito crushed beneath a boulder, of Rin with his hand through her chest, some rare nights he even dreamed of coming home to find his last relative bleeding out on the wooden floors.
Now dreams of Minato and Kushina laying next to each other and in front of their son, protecting him with their lives to their dying breaths, haunted him at night. Sometimes the dreams even crept into his days, when he was assigned to guard their son, and he saw the blond of his sensei’s hair on his son, and he heard their son’s cries, as if he were lonely and missing what every child should have had, as if he knew of Kakashi’s failures.
Sometimes it grew to be too much for Kakashi, it would take every shred of his willpower and sense of duty towards the village and its former hokage to complete his shift and return to his usual ANBU missions. But every now and then, in the rare moments he saw the infant happy, heard his bright laugh, the world stopped for a moment, the pain left him for a bit, he could almost see his sensei’s happiness through his son and he himself felt lighter than he did in a long time, lighter than any time he could remember.
It never lasted though.
Those moments were few and far between.
Even with all the time he spent guarding the infant, he rarely saw him that happy. It never occurred to him that this might be unusual for an infant that seemed to default to cheer otherwise, he had no previous experiences of dealing with young children after all.
He simply clung to those moments tighter, snatched up every smile he could. They were his only source of light in this darkness, his last tether to sanity. They were the reason he wasn’t back to accepting impossible missions far outside Konoha most shinobi would never return from. They were the reason he still spent long stretches of time in the Village, guarding a boy he was forbidden to get close to, no matter how torturous the long stretches of silence or crying between the smiles grew.
During those shifts he was responsible for the infant’s safety and took to his mission objective with the single-minded focus of an alert guard dog, of the Hound he was named after, whose face was painted over the mask on his own face.
He didn’t consider the boy’s wellbeing, as that was the mission of his caretaker, of the orphanage staff that watched out for the infant, while he watched over them. He would have likely never put more thought to it if he hadn’t been suddenly and roughly ripped from the warm bliss of the child’s light laughs and plunged into the dark despair of his wailing cries.
He was still thrown off from the abrupt break from tranquillity as he watched the caretaker roughly try to feed the baby a bottle, muttering angrily about noise and demons while the baby spluttered and chocked and cried.
Kakashi had no real knowledge of how infants ought to be fed but the cries assured him this was not the right way, he felt it in his very tortured soul.
He was torn between his need to interfere, to quiet the keening by chasing off the offending attacker, and staying hidden to watch over the infant and the caretaker as he knows a good ANBU agent should. He was to protect the boy from outside threats and not interfere with his caretaking. Yet every fibre of his being screamed at the wrongness of this treatment when he helplessly watched the cruel feeding and hid away in the darker shadows.
When the caregiver -or attacker? Kakashi was confused and hurting and hated it- finally left after the boy had drunk a sufficient amount of the bottle, Kakashi inched closer to the wailing child.
His cries were still needling his skin, his head, his mind. He wanted back his laughter, his happiness, his bliss. He was hyperaware of his surroundings when he left the shadows he was hiding in and moved closer towards the boy.
There was no one around to see his insubordination, his weakness and neediness. No one to see him reach out for the child and pick him up like a fragile glass figurine. No one saw him hesitate with uncertainty before petting and rubbing his back lightly like one might a young puppy.
When the infant suddenly burped and both of them startled and stilled, Kakashi knew no one had seen him flinch back in worry before resuming his petting as the boy finally quieted his cries and stared blankly at the man holding him.
It felt like a long while later that the infant finally started babbling at Kakashi happily and reached out to him while Kakashi’s pain finally eased and a certain lightness returned to him.
It was not quite the bliss of the child’s delighted laughter but he welcomed the feeling like a man’s first taste of water after hopelessly wandering the deserts around Sunagakure for days. When the boy finally fell asleep and he laid him back down again Kakashi thought he ought to care more for this boy’s wellbeing after all. Perhaps not as part of his mission or duty as an ANBU captain, but certainly as his sensei’s student.
After all, Minato would certainly expect him to watch over Naruto, and Naruto’s happiness was the only light in Kakashi’s entire world.