Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Her first thought when she wakes is about the paperwork.

It should feel strange. She knows it should. But it doesn’t. Paperwork has always been a quiet companion - neat lines and tidy logic where her thoughts so often wandered. She almost envies Hermione, who will likely be the one tasked with filling it out. The forms. The missing person reports. The death certificate, if they ever find her wand.

Because Luna isn’t foolish. One moment she’s studying the Veil, a top Unspeakable with clearance most could only dream of - and the next, her foot catches on the corner of a chair, and she’s falling. And after that… there’s nothing but light, warmth, and the uncomfortable weightlessness of a newborn body.

She doesn’t scream. Doesn’t cry.

It feels… inevitable.

Perhaps that’s why she doesn’t panic.

~

She does grieve them. Her father. Her friends. The questions and theories that would never be answered now, left half-formed in the margins of her notebooks. There is a hollow sort of ache, dull and distant, like pressing on a bruise that’s faded but not healed.

She aches. But it doesn’t reach her fully. Not yet.

She’s always been good at continuing. After her mother died. After Hogwarts fell. After the war ended and the world expected her to be whole again. She’d floated through it all with that same quiet calm people mistook for peace.

This is no different.

Loneliness settles in like an old houseguest, hanging its coat by the door of her new mind. It doesn’t knock. It never has. She’s used to its presence - at mealtimes, in empty corridors, in the moments after laughter dies. It isn’t welcome, but it’s familiar. That makes it bearable.

Her new name is Tsukiko. At least, that’s what her father seems to call her. It feels like a borrowed coat - a little stiff, a little long in the sleeves. She wears it anyway. It's what they call her, and in this place, as in every place, names carry weight.

Still, beneath it all, she is Luna. Quietly. Unshakably.

She spends much of her early days with her eyes closed. Meditating, drifting inward. Her mindscape, at least, remains intact - cool, still, and untouched. Her Occlumency barriers hold steady, a fortress built long before her rebirth. They keep the grief at bay. They keep everything at bay.

It’s easier that way.

~

Her father seems concerned. They arrived home from the hospital a scant few days ago.

He carries her with a carefulness that speaks of fear - fear of breaking her, of losing her. His hands are warm but tremble, just slightly, and she can feel the hollowness in his chest like a bell long-silent. She recognizes grief when she sees it; it clings to him like a second skin.

Her mother had died in childbirth. That much, she intuits. There’s no woman waiting at home, no cooing voice to greet them. Just silence, and the faint scent of lilacs still lingering in the blankets. She recognizes the look in his eyes - the same one her father wore when her mother exploded like starlight in their living room, leaving behind only a memory and the smell of ozone. Grief, yes. But also worry.

She watches him through her lashes, serene in the way only newborns and the grieving can be.

They leave the house in a blur of motion and hushed words. He mutters something under his breath - a name, perhaps. A prayer. A plea. The wind is soft against her skin. The sky is a bruised violet, and somewhere in the distance, a bird calls out. It's all achingly real.

She almost wishes it wasn’t. Because if this were a dream, at least she’d be able to wake up.

They arrive at a building that must be a hospital, though it looks nothing like St. Mungo’s. Clean, sharp lines. Slippers at the entrance. People in robes that remind her more of monks than medics. And the language - fluid, precise, and utterly foreign. Japanese, she realizes distantly. She remembers enough from Hogwarts electives, from Muggle Studies, from scattered travels after the war. Enough to pick out meaning here and there.

Tsukiko. That’s what they call her. She knows enough Japanese to translate it.

Moon child.

It feels both fitting and not. She is no child of this world. She is Luna, reborn with ancient eyes and too many memories. But the name hums through her bones like a lullaby. She accepts it, as she has accepted so many things.

The healers - because that’s what they must be - lay her on a bed of soft cloth and run glowing hands over her body. She stiffens, instinctively. The magic here is different. Not channeled through wands or incantations, but through the body itself - through something they seem to call chakra. She hears the word again and again, feels it in the way energy moves, in the rhythm of the room.

It is not magic as she knew it, but it is kin to it. A cousin, perhaps. Wild and warm and thrumming with life.

It doesn’t frighten her. Nothing does, really. Not anymore.

She lies there, still and quiet, eyes wide as moonlit pools, and lets them work. Her tiny fingers curl and uncurl. She catalogues everything: the way her father’s voice breaks when he answers questions, the kindness in the medic’s hands, the low murmur of concern in their tones. They’re worried about her. About her silence. About the way she watches, always watching, and never cries.

She doesn’t blame them. She knows what she must look like: too calm. Too knowing. Too… other.

They think she’s sick. Or damaged. Broken, somehow.

She isn’t. She’s just herself. Reborn. Untethered. Half-mourning, half-marveling at the world that unfolds around her.

And somewhere, in the depths of her mindscape, where grief floats like pollen in still air, she repeats the name they gave her: Tsukiko .

Moon child.

It echoes.

And she does not cry.

~

She tucks her grief away in her mindscape.

It takes no effort - only instinct. A habit born of long years spent living in a world that didn’t know what to do with her softness, her silence, her way of feeling everything too deeply. Occlumency had come naturally to her after her mother’s death. She had needed it, back then. To keep breathing. To keep going.

And now, it answers her call again.

Her mindscape blooms behind her closed eyes, familiar and impossibly distant: her bedroom. Not the one in this new world - not the sterile nursery with paper lanterns and tatami floors - but the one she had known as Luna.

The round windows filter soft moonlight through painted panes. Her ceiling is covered in galaxies she had charmed to swirl slowly with the seasons - now, they drift lazily, trailing comet dust and memories. Her bed is there too, draped in velvet covers embroidered with fantastical creatures, each stitch a memory, each thread a tether. The mismatched furniture, the stacks of worn books, the corkboard cluttered with pinned sketches and notes - everything is just as she left it.

Except now, it is still.

It is not a room she lives in. It is a vault. A sanctuary.

She folds the grief with gentle hands, presses it into the paint on the ceiling - the ache for her father, for her friends, for Hermione’s determined scowl and Harry’s quiet laughter. She tucks it into the threads of her blankets, smooths it into the folds of her worn robes hanging neatly in the closet. She even hides a sliver behind the mirror that once reflected a girl both too much and never enough.

It is both a part of her, and it is not.

That’s the thing about grief - it doesn’t vanish. It waits. Patient and still. She doesn’t try to erase it. She simply places it where it cannot spill over.

For now.

The bedroom hums softly around her. It is hers. She is still hers.

Outside, in the real world, her infant body stirs, a frown ghosting across her tiny mouth before it fades. The healers murmur, noting her odd calm again. Her father strokes her hair and sighs, thinking she is asleep.

But inside, in the room beyond time and space, Luna sits cross-legged on the floor of her memory, hands resting on her knees. She breathes.

And the stars on the ceiling above her glow quietly, bearing witness.

~

Eventually, she is discharged from the hospital again.

The days pass in a soft blur of check-ups and assessments, gentle hands and quiet voices. The healers remain kind, their touch light, their chakra careful and measured as they scan and probe and try to understand the baby who does not cry. They speak in hushed tones around her, their language fluid and unfamiliar, though she’s beginning to piece it together in fragments and feelings. They don’t know what to make of her stillness. Her wide, watching eyes. Her silence.

But they are gentle. That matters more than she expected.

She assumes they tell her father there is nothing wrong - not physically, at least. That much she can guess from the way he deflates slightly when they speak to him, from the dip of his shoulders as he nods. Still, his brow remains creased with worry, deep lines furrowed between his dark eyes as he cradles her against his chest and murmurs to her in low, uneven syllables.

His name, she has learned, is Ensui.

She doesn't know if it’s a given name or a surname, but it fits him - quiet, fluid, like water held in trembling hands. There’s grief in him still, etched deep into the set of his jaw and the slump of his posture, but beneath that, something steadier. Steeled by sorrow. He is trying. She recognizes that, too.

He carries her home wrapped in a soft blue blanket, the edges embroidered with silver thread that catches the light. It smells like him - like pine and smoke and something faintly metallic. The path they walk is quiet, the streets unfamiliar, the architecture foreign. There are no fireplaces for Floo travel, no Apparition pops in the distance. Just silence and shadow, broken by the occasional murmur of wind or the soft crunch of sandals on gravel.

The house is small. Neat. Sparse in that way grief tends to demand - half-lived-in, half-abandoned. The walls are bare. The light is soft. 

Ensui holds her a moment longer before setting her down in her crib, as though unsure if she’ll vanish again when he lets go.

She doesn’t.

She lies there quietly, eyes open, watching the patterns of light shift across the ceiling.

There is no mobile above her crib. No enchanted stars. No painted moons.

But there is a window.

And through it, the real moon waits - low and round and silver, like an old friend.

Tsukiko, they call her. Moon child.

And perhaps it’s fitting, after all.

She doesn’t cry. Doesn’t fuss.

Just breathes, and listens, and waits for this new life to unfold.

~

She smiles at him the next morning.

It takes effort, more than she expected. The muscles of this new face are small and unfamiliar, her control over them still imprecise. But she manages it - a soft, subtle curve of her mouth, barely there, but intentional.

His breath catches. She sees it - the way his eyes widen just slightly, the way something fragile and disbelieving flickers across his face, like he’s watching a miracle unfold. He says her name, Tsukiko , voice hoarse, and bends to press his forehead gently to hers.

And she smiles again.

It isn’t his fault, she thinks, that she is too old, too strange to be an infant. That her soul is worn around the edges, her thoughts too still, too knowing. That she is not what he expected - not a blank slate, not a fresh beginning, but something tangled and aching and impossibly ancient beneath soft, new skin.

He has cared for her anyway.

Held her, fed her, rocked her gently even when she did not cry. He has not once raised his voice, not once recoiled from her silence. She can feel his care in every gesture, in the way he checks the temperature of the room before setting her down, the way he watches her when he thinks she’s asleep. There is a steadiness in him she hadn’t expected. A gentleness.

She does not want to repay that with worry.

So she smiles. For him.

Perhaps, in the future, when she learns the full shape of this language, when she no longer has to piece it together from scraps and rhythms, he will call her strange. Will look at her like she is other, the way so many had before. Even her friends, even the ones who loved her - they had never truly understood her. Only accepted her in spite of the distance they couldn’t name.

She is used to being alone in a crowd. To walking alongside others while always drifting half a step apart.

But for now - he doesn’t look at her that way.

For now, he is all she has.

And for now, that is enough.

~

She does not cry.

She had stopped crying after her mother died, when she’d still been Luna. That loss had hollowed her, cracked something deep and unseen. And though she’d felt deeply - always - the tears had simply stopped. As though her grief had calcified inside her, become something quiet and sharp she carried like a hidden stone in her pocket.

She hadn’t cried when Hogwarts had fallen into Death Eater hands. When the corridors turned cold and cruel and filled with the scent of blood and fear. She hadn’t cried when the Carrows punished her for speaking too freely, too kindly. She hadn’t cried when she’d been taken - when they’d dragged her to Malfoy Manor, her wand ripped from her fingers, her name spoken like a stain.

She had sat in that cellar, where time bled into itself and shadows whispered, and she had waited. Silent.

She had survived.

And she does not cry now.

Not even now, when everything she has ever known is gone - her friends, her father, her magic, her world. Even now, as she wakes each day in a body that does not fit, in a house that is not her own, with a name that feels like a mask. Even now, as grief hums through her like a forgotten song, she does not weep.

Instead, she smiles.

Not just for him - her new father, whose brow is always furrowed with concern, whose hands are careful, whose grief mirrors her own in different shades. She smiles for him because he does not deserve the weight of her broken edges, the jagged places inside her soul. Because she can give him this - this small kindness, this illusion of peace.

But she also smiles for herself.

Because she remembers. Because she endures. Because she is not just surviving this strange rebirth - she is choosing it. Choosing to keep going, to soften where she could have hardened, to offer light when all she has known lately is loss.

Because to smile in the face of sorrow is its own kind of defiance.

She is not whole. She may never be.

But she is here.

And that, for now, is enough.

~

She misses them all. But she misses her father most.

There are days when her chest aches with it - an ache that’s not physical, not anything chakra or magic could mend. It is the kind of ache that lives in memory. In the way silence falls too heavily in this new home. In the places between heartbeats, between breaths. In the lull of early morning, when the world is still and she can almost believe she is back in Ottery St. Catchpole, the kettle just beginning to whistle, the scent of nettle tea curling through the air.

Xenophilius Lovegood had never been a perfect man. Scattered, eccentric, far too trusting. But he had loved her with a fullness that had always made the world feel just a bit less sharp. His love had been wide-eyed and open-palmed, never asking her to be anything other than herself. And now, that love was gone - cut off mid-sentence, mid-step, mid-laugh.

She had not gotten to say goodbye.

It’s that, perhaps, that lodges in her throat sometimes when the wind sighs through the trees and sounds just a little too much like the rustle of his cloak. That grips her chest when her new father - Ensui - laughs, low and warm and unfamiliar, and she finds herself searching it for echoes of a voice that no longer exists.

In the sanctuary of her mindscape, she visits him.

She has placed him there gently, carefully - his favorite chair by the window, his odd little printing press with its ink-stained levers, the cluttered shelves of The Quibbler editions, each one humming with absurd truth. He sits there in her memories, always half-turned toward her, eyes twinkling with some new theory about Nargles or Moon Frogs. She knows it's not real. Knows it's only the shape of him that memory can hold. But she goes anyway. She needs to.

Some days, she curls up at his feet and pretends the war never came. That she is twelve again, home from Hogwarts on holiday, helping him stir moonberry jam while he hums off-key to himself.

Other days, she simply stands in the doorway and watches. Afraid that if she moves too close, the memory might dissolve.

She doesn’t cry. Not even in the privacy of her thoughts.

It’s not pride that keeps her still. It’s not strength. It’s something else - something brittle and ancient, a grief so vast it cannot find a single point to spill from. She feels as though one wrong breath might shatter her entirely.

She misses her friends, too. Hermione’s determined sharpness. Harry’s quiet steadiness. Neville’s clumsy, earnest bravery. She misses Ginny’s laughter most of all - bright and warm and unafraid.

She misses her magic. The thrum of her wand in her hand, the way spells felt when they unfurled just right - light and purposeful, like a thought turned tangible. She misses how it connected her to everything - how it was an extension of her will, her wonder, her wild heart.

This chakra is not the same. She can feel it around her, in her, but it hums a different note. Earthier. Stranger. She does not reject it - but she mourns the old song.

Sometimes, in the dark, she lifts her tiny infant hands and mimics a wand movement.

Lumos , she thinks.

Nothing happens. Of course not. But in her mind, the room glows softly with imagined light.

It’s always dim here.

Not in the literal sense - her father keeps the lights soft, the windows open - but in her spirit. The world feels one note too low. A little flat. Like a song missing its chorus.

And yet… she does not regret. That surprises her. She had thought - if she ever died, truly died - she might cling to what was lost. But there is a strange acceptance that has settled into her. Perhaps because she has always lived at the edge of things, has always known life to be brief and beautiful and strange. Perhaps because she had learned early that even when the world ends, it keeps turning.

Still, she misses her father. And sometimes, when the night is especially quiet, she listens for his voice -  Xenophilius, not Ensui - that steady cadence she remembers.

“You are loved, Luna,” he used to say, whenever the world felt too loud. “Wholly. Wildly. Just as you are.”

She repeats the words to herself like a mantra, a memory, a spell.

She does not cry.

But her heart calls out for him, across time and space, across dimensions and stars. A soft, pulsing ache. Not a scream. Not even a whisper.

Just… longing. The kind that never quite leaves.

And in the cradle of her mind, beneath moons both real and remembered, she holds that grief like a locket. Closes her fingers around it. And breathes.

~

Her new father doesn’t speak much.

He moves through the world with the quiet grace of someone who has spent his life listening more than talking, and she respects that. Understands it, even. Silence can be a sanctuary as much as a wound.

But each night, as the sunlight fades and the house settles into stillness, he reads to her.

It becomes their ritual.

He settles beside her crib, sometimes cross-legged on the floor, sometimes in the low wooden chair that creaks beneath him, and he reads. His voice is low and steady, the cadence of it wrapping around her like a blanket. At first, she understands none of the words - just the rhythm, the way his tone rises and falls, the subtle shift when he voices dialogue or emotion.

Some nights it’s picture books. Brightly inked illustrations, their pages angled just enough for her to glimpse. She cannot read the characters yet, but she watches the drawings carefully - silhouettes in headbands leaping across rooftops, children with too-large eyes and glowing hands. Shinobi, she begins to realize. Ninja. People who can walk on water and breathe fire, who vanish in puffs of smoke and reappear in the blink of an eye. It sounds like fantasy, like magic - but the books treat it as fact. As ordinary.

Other nights, he reads longer works. Scrolls with curling edges, ink-stained and delicate. Thick books yellowed with age. No pictures. No bright colors. Just words - heavy ones, complex ones. His voice shifts when he reads these - grows slower, more precise.

She listens. Intently.

The words begin to separate in her mind, no longer a blur of unfamiliar sounds. Patterns emerge. Repetition becomes recognition. She watches his mouth move, matches sound to shape. She pieces meaning together from context, from tone, from the rare expressions that flicker across his face when he reads something particularly vivid or heavy.

The scrolls are different from the picture books. They speak of chakra, of strategy, of history carved into blood and stone. They tell stories of clans, of wars, of power and its price. It is not unlike what she had studied as Luna - magic, magical theory, politics - but the framework is entirely alien. Chakra flows through the body like magic through a wand, but it is lived, breathed, trained. Physical. Elemental. Brutal, in some ways.

Still, she learns.

She always has.

As the days blur into a routine, her silence no longer seems so strange to him. He stops looking quite so worried when she doesn’t babble, doesn’t fuss. She thinks he must know, somewhere deep down, that she is watching. Learning. That she is listening to every word like it’s a lifeline.

Because it is.

It’s her way back to understanding this new world. To belonging, in whatever way she can.

And slowly, word by word, she begins to find her place within it.

~

She learns to crawl first.

It is slow, awkward work - her limbs too soft, her balance unreliable. Her body, though young, carries the weight of an ancient soul, and it feels strange to be so helpless, to fight for each inch of ground. Her mind is swift, precise - but her body is clumsy, and that dissonance grates in quiet, private ways.

She falls. Constantly.

Face-first into cushions, onto the wooden floor, into the outstretched arms of silence.

But each time, her father is there.

He does not rush to stop her from falling. Instead, he waits. Watches. And then lifts her gently - never hurried, never impatient - and sets her upright again. He does not praise her, but he smiles, soft and rare, and in that look she finds all the encouragement she needs.

When she learns to stand, her legs tremble. Her grip on the edge of the low table is tenuous. She sways, then falls, then stands again. Over and over.

And always, he is there.

She grows into her body the way a tree grows into the wind - slowly, but with quiet certainty. Each step is a meditation. Each fall, a lesson. Her knees bruise. Her hands scrape. But she does not cry.

And eventually - inevitably - she walks.

Not well. Not far. But enough.

Enough to chase the edge of her curiosity, enough to reach for the books he leaves on the shelf just within reach, enough to follow him room to room, her tiny footsteps echoing in the stillness of their home.

All the while, she continues learning the language.

At first, in fragments. Words she recognizes by shape and sound. Then grammar. Structure. Vocabulary. She absorbs it the way she had once absorbed spellwork and magical theory - as though it were the very air around her. There’s beauty in it: the subtle shifts in meaning, the elegance of formality, the warmth of certain words.

And one day - after her balance has steadied, after her tongue has learned the shape of the words, after she has fallen and risen a thousand times - she stands in front of him, chest rising with breath, and speaks her first word aloud:

“Tou-san.”

He stills.

His eyes widen. Something flickers across his face - disbelief, maybe, or wonder. His lips part, but no sound comes out. Then, slowly, so slowly, he kneels before her, hands gentle on her shoulders.

“... Tsukiko,” he says, voice low and warm.

She smiles.

She does not say anything else. She doesn’t need to.

She has said enough.

~

She begins speaking more after that.

Not all at once - her words come carefully, deliberately, like small birds tested in the wind before flight. Each sentence is constructed in silence first, turned over and over in her mind until it feels safe enough, right enough, to release into the world.

She does not ask the questions most children would.

She doesn’t wonder aloud why the sky is blue or why the grass grows toward the sun. She already knows these things. Instead, she asks about history. About the shinobi. About the people in the picture books who move like shadows and split the earth with their hands. About the names she hears whispered in stories - Senju, Uchiha, Nara.

And she asks, too, about the warmth.

The quiet pulse beneath her skin, humming like magic once had. It is different, but familiar - living, breathing, flowing with her breath and thought. She had felt it since birth but said nothing, unsure if naming it would make it slip away. Now she dares.

She watches her father’s face as she speaks - carefully. Watches the way his eyes widen when she strings together a question far too complex for a child her age. For a moment, fear flickers in her. That old fear - the kind she’d carried since Hogwarts, since her childhood, since the first time someone called her strange and meant it to wound.

She wonders if he’ll pull away. If he’ll see her as other. As wrong.

But he doesn’t.

The astonishment in his expression softens - melts into something gentler. Not fear. Not judgment. Something like awe. Or reverence. Or maybe just… wonder.

And then he answers her.

Not with laughter. Not with lies meant to simplify. He does not dim the truth for her sake. He speaks plainly, thoroughly, his voice steady as he explains each word, each idea. When she asks for clarification, he gives it - never patronizing, never condescending. As though he knows she can handle the weight of it. As though he trusts her to understand.

“The warmth you feel,” he tells her one evening, seated beside her with a thick scroll open between them, “is chakra.”

The word rolls through her like a chime. She already knew, in a way. But hearing it aloud gives it form. Anchor. Meaning.

“Chakra,” she repeats, quietly.

“It’s the energy of the body and the spirit,” he says. “Shinobi train to use it. To manipulate it. To strengthen it.”

She nods slowly, absorbing his words like water into thirsty roots. Body and spirit, he’d said. She wonders if that’s what makes it feel like magic. Like home.

Her eyes drift down to her small hands, to the places where that warmth pulses steadily beneath her skin. She closes her eyes, just for a moment, and listens to it.

Chakra , she thinks.

And in that moment, something inside her clicks into place.

~

“Will you tell me about it?” she asks, her voice small but steady.

Her words are careful, weighted - not with fear, but with the quiet reverence she always held for knowledge. For truth. She looks up at him from where she sits, legs folded beneath her, the open scroll forgotten in her lap.

“Will I learn to use it, one day?”

For a heartbeat, he doesn’t answer.

She can see the way her question lands in him - can feel it, almost. The way his breath stills, the way something flickers behind his eyes. A memory, perhaps. Or a decision forming. He watches her in silence, as if measuring what she’s truly asking. As if searching for something hidden in her gaze.

And then - 

“Yes,” he says quietly. “If you wish to.”

Relief settles into her like sunlight through leaves.

He shifts beside her, reaching for the scroll. Unrolls it further. The diagrams drawn there are unfamiliar, inked with concentric circles, tiny notes in cramped characters, pathways through a human body she is only beginning to understand. He taps one with a callused finger.

“This,” he says, “is the chakra system. You were born with it, like everyone else. But control takes time. Training.”

“I want to learn,” she says.

He nods. There is no hesitation. No patronizing smile. Only understanding. Only that quiet, unwavering presence he carries like a second skin.

“You will. But not yet. Your body is still growing. Too much too early can harm you. We’ll begin with feeling. Sensing. Meditation. Breathing. Chakra flows with intent.”

She listens, absorbing every word.

He teaches her the word for breath - iki . The word for flow - nagare . The words for strength, focus, balance. He doesn’t ask why she wants to know, doesn’t question how she grasps so much so soon.

She thinks maybe he already knows there’s more to her than there should be. And maybe, just maybe, he’s already decided that he doesn’t need to know everything. That it's enough to love her anyway.

And so she nods.

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll wait.”

And she does. With the patience of someone who has died once already.

~

She waits, and in waiting, she learns.

Not just about chakra, but about him. About the man who holds her tiny hand in his callused one as they walk through quiet woods, who carries her on his back when she grows tired, who never speaks unnecessarily but always answers when she asks.

One evening, as they sit together with firelight flickering against the walls, she gathers the courage to ask, “Tou-san… what is your full name?”

He looks at her for a long moment, then replies, “Nara Ensui.”

Nara. The name echoes through her, soft and significant. She’s heard it before - whispers in the scrolls he reads, fragments in stories, tucked beside other clan names like Yamanaka and Akimichi. She files it away carefully, a puzzle piece falling into place.

“You’re part of a clan,” she says. Not a question - an observation.

He nods. “The Nara clan. We live near forests, raise deer, study medicine and strategy. We have a jutsu - Kagemane no Jutsu. Shadow Possession.”

“Will you show me?” she asks, eyes wide with quiet awe.

“Someday,” he says. “When you’re ready. It’s not an easy technique. It requires precision. Control. Patience.”

She nods solemnly, storing the words away like seeds to be planted later. Precision. Control. Patience.

Then, softly, she asks the question that has bloomed in her chest since she first understood the shape of the word mother.

“What about her? My mother?”

He doesn’t answer immediately. His hand stills on the scroll he’d been writing on. The silence that follows is not uncomfortable, but weighted - filled with memories he hasn’t touched in some time.

“She was a traveler,” he says finally, voice low. “A wanderer. The kind of person who never stayed long in one place. But she stayed long enough for me.”

There’s a strange tenderness in his expression, touched with sorrow. His eyes look somewhere past the walls, past the flickering shadows.

“She never told me the name of her clan. Said it was better I didn’t know. Said she was the last of them.”

He glances down at her then, and for a moment, the ache in his expression deepens.

“You look like her,” he says quietly. “Not like me. Your eyes - silver-blue. Like moonlight on water. And your hair… pale blonde. She had both.”

Luna - Tsukiko - feels something tighten in her chest. Not pain, exactly. Not grief. But recognition. A quiet sorrow mirrored in his voice, an echo of her own losses. Her old mother, long gone in another life. Her new father’s partner, lost in this one.

“She never told you anything?” she asks, already knowing the answer.

“No,” he says. “Only that she didn’t come from here. That she was searching for something. Maybe for peace. Maybe for a home. She died giving birth to you.”

He doesn’t say more. He doesn’t need to.

The silence that follows is reverent.

She leans against him, tiny shoulder to his side, and he rests a hand gently on her head. They stay like that until the fire burns low, until the shadows stretch long across the floor.

She does not cry.

But her fingers curl into the fabric of his robe, and he says nothing about it. Only lets her stay, steady and silent, until sleep comes to carry her away.

~

They get their first visitor on a cool spring morning, when the plum trees in the courtyard are just beginning to bloom.

The knock at the door is soft but sure, and her father stiffens for a heartbeat before rising, his movements calm and practiced. She watches from her place on the floor, legs tucked beneath her, a scroll of basic kanji characters balanced across her knees.

He opens the door without hesitation.

The man on the other side is broad-shouldered and sharply intelligent, with a mess of spiked hair tied back in a low ponytail and eyes like a half-lidded storm - lazy in appearance, but sharp enough to cut. He’s dressed in the same muted tones as her father, a flak vest slung across his shoulders, a cigarette dangling unlit from two fingers.

Her father smiles - actually smiles, faint but real - and says, “Shikaku.”

The man lifts a hand in greeting. “You look like hell, Ensui.”

“I’ve had worse.”

The two men clasp forearms in that quiet way of people who’ve known each other too long to bother with formality. There’s something easy between them - an understanding forged in shared silence and maybe blood. She watches it all, silently cataloguing, fitting puzzle pieces into place.

They speak in low tones as her father gestures him inside, and then the man - Shikaku - spots her.

He tilts his head slightly, curiosity flickering across his face. “That her?”

Ensui nods.

Shikaku crouches down to her level, and though his expression is unreadable, his chakra feels calm. Contained. Watchful, but not threatening. She stares back at him, unblinking.

“You’re quiet,” he says after a moment.

She shrugs one shoulder. “I listen.”

Shikaku snorts faintly. “Figures. What’s her name?”

“Tsukiko,” Ensui says.

“Moon child,” Shikaku muses. “Huh. Fitting, somehow.”

Then, to her father: “She’s what - two?”

“Two and a half,” Ensui answers, his voice softening almost imperceptibly.

And there it is.

Two and a half.

She files it away without reaction, though inside, the number settles around her like a robe that still doesn’t quite fit. Two and a half years old. A lifetime and a half behind her, and still only two and a half in this one.

Shikaku straightens, stretching lazily. “She’s sharp. And observant. Like her old man.” He gives her a sidelong look. “You going to be a shinobi, little moon?”

She doesn’t answer. Not yet. She doesn't know what kind of shinobi she can be.

But her father looks down at her and doesn’t speak either - and that, somehow, feels like permission.

Like possibility.

~

They are preparing for war.

She realizes it slowly - not from any one word, but from the undercurrent that threads through her father’s quiet conversation with Shikaku. The way their voices drop even lower when they think she isn't listening. The tension that lingers in the air after each sentence. The maps they spread across the low table, marked with gridlines and scrawled notes, tiny carved tokens placed and moved like pieces in a game no one wins.

She doesn’t understand all the words, not yet. Some are too advanced, too rooted in nuance or context she has yet to uncover. But she understands tone. She understands the shape of war. She’s lived through one already.

The names they speak are unfamiliar, but the weight they carry is not: Kumo, Iwa, Kiri. She doesn’t yet know which enemies are which - but she knows they are coming. The word border is repeated often. The word reinforcements. The phrase civilian evacuation.

And underneath it all, the quiet, unspoken fear.

Shikaku leans over the map, tapping one edge with the blunt tip of his cigarette. “They’re pushing again,” he says. “Iwa’s moved a unit toward the western pass. Scouting, maybe. Maybe more.”

“They’re probing for weakness,” Ensui murmurs. “Looking for soft edges.”

“Then we make sure we don’t have any.”

She watches them from her corner of the room, her scroll forgotten. Her fingers curl slightly into the fabric of her yukata as she listens, the warmth of her chakra fluttering faintly beneath her skin in quiet awareness.

They talk of tactics next. Of formations, of contingency plans. Of people - names she doesn’t know, likely comrades, likely friends. Some are spoken with tight familiarity, others with brittle worry. No one says the word death, but she hears it in the pause between lines. In the silence that stretches too long after one name is mentioned and not answered.

She glances up at her father.

His expression is unreadable. He’s always been like that - steady, composed, a lake with no ripples. But she’s learned to see the difference in his silences. This one is a heavy kind. A silence of calculations, of grim expectations.

She’s only two and a half.

And yet she understands.

Later, when Shikaku leaves and the house falls back into stillness, she climbs into her father’s lap without a word. He seems surprised but doesn’t question it. Just wraps an arm around her and rests his chin lightly on her hair.

“Are you going to war?” she asks, voice barely a whisper.

He doesn’t answer immediately.

Then: “If I’m needed.”

She nods.

She doesn’t cry.

Because she knows already - war takes people whether they’re ready or not. Whether they deserve it or not.

So instead, she listens to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat and presses her ear against his chest, memorizing the sound.

Just in case.

~

Her father begins training her when she is three.

Not all at once. Not harshly. But with the same quiet steadiness he brings to everything - measured, intentional, and filled with a reverence she recognizes. He doesn’t rush her. He doesn’t treat it like a game. And for that, she is grateful.

By then, she already knows the feel of her chakra. It hums just beneath her skin like a second heartbeat - familiar and warm, like moonlight caught in a bottle. She can sense it with ease now, draw it toward her center and let it disperse again like breath. She doesn’t yet use it, but she understands its shape. Its weight.

The first thing he teaches her are the hand seals.

He kneels in front of her in the clearing behind their house, the morning light slanting through the trees. The air smells of damp leaves and new earth. He holds up his hands slowly, deliberately, and forms the first seal.

“Inu,” he says.

She copies it.

“Tori.”

She follows.

Each seal is a language of its own, a sigil made flesh. Her small hands tremble at first - her fingers not yet as nimble as her mind - but she practices with quiet diligence. He corrects her only when necessary, adjusting a wrist, a thumb, never impatient. She learns the names, their sequence, their meaning. The rhythm of them. How they feel when paired with intention.

Soon, he begins to show her how to shape the chakra she gathers.

He places his hand gently over hers, guiding it. “Push it here,” he murmurs, “not all at once - like pouring tea. Steady. Controlled.”

It’s difficult, at first. Not because she can’t do it, but because this body - her body - is still growing into its strength. Her chakra coils too fast, burns too bright, like a river pressing too hard against its banks. But she breathes. Listens. Waits.

And slowly, it obeys.

Alongside the chakra work, he trains her physically.

Gentle katas in the soft grass, her bare feet padding through practiced steps. Movements designed not to fight, but to understand the way her body moves - how to shift her weight, where her balance lies. She learns how to fall. How to land. How to rise again. They train in the early hours, when the air is cool and the birds are just beginning to sing.

He leads; she follows.

Sometimes he speaks, offering quiet instructions. Other times, he simply moves, and she mirrors him. It’s almost like dancing - slow and deliberate, an art form she begins to love.

In the evenings, he reads to her still. But now, she understands more. The words no longer slip past her like mist - they settle. Root. She asks better questions. Deeper ones. And he never filters the truth.

She is still a child in this world, but he trains her like a student. Like someone worth preparing.

Because he sees what she has not said aloud:

That she knows what’s coming.

And he intends for her to be ready.

~

As spring stretches into summer, the training becomes part of the rhythm of her life - woven between meals, reading, and long, thoughtful silences. Her body is still small, still soft around the edges, but her movements are growing sharper. More controlled. She learns how to shift her weight with precision, how to roll through a fall without jarring her joints, how to breathe from her diaphragm and steady her center.

Her father begins to push her just a little more.

Nothing cruel. Nothing beyond what she can bear. But enough.

He wakes her earlier - before the sun rises, when the world is washed in indigo and mist clings to the trees like breath. They train in the quiet, the air cool against her skin, the dew dampening her feet. She no longer fumbles through the hand seals. They flow from her fingertips with the certainty of memory, each one anchored in her breath and chakra.

Sometimes, he shows her why they matter.

A simple technique - a spark of chakra that flickers at her palm. Not jutsu, not yet. Just a taste of potential. Enough to feel the buzz of power gathering beneath her skin, responding to her will.

“Control first,” he always says. “Then strength.”

She nods each time. She understands.

What she doesn’t expect is how much she loves it.

Not just the chakra, or the forms, but the discipline. The ritual of movement, the clarity of intent. She’d once found peace in ink and parchment, in ancient spells and careful diagrams - now she finds it in the steady beat of her feet against packed dirt, in the pull of muscle and breath and will.

And still, at the end of every day, they return to words.

“Why do shinobi need to fight?” she asks one night, as he lights the paper lantern beside her futon.

He considers the question for a long moment. “Because sometimes, words don’t work.”

She tilts her head. “And if they did work?”

He smiles, faint and tired. “Then we’d be poets instead of soldiers.”

She tucks that away, like a pressed flower in a book.

She is three years old, and her hands are too small to hold a weapon, but her mind is sharp, and her will is steady. Her chakra hums when she calls to it. Her balance improves by the week. Her understanding deepens with every scroll, every spar, every breath.

She knows war is coming.

She remembers what it took from her once already.

And this time, she will not be helpless.

This time, she will be ready.

Chapter Text

“You could start at the academy early, if you want,” her father says one morning.

They are sitting in the quiet of the garden, where the moss creeps up the stones and the air is filled with the low hum of cicadas. She’s balancing on one foot atop a flat rock, arms outstretched in a kata pose, chakra threaded delicately through her core for stability.

His words make her shift, gently lowering her foot to the earth.

She looks at him. His face is unreadable - calm, as always, but with something behind his eyes. A tension she’s come to recognize. Not fear. Worry. Measured, deliberate worry.

“When you’re five,” he adds. “That’s the youngest they’ll allow.”

She tilts her head, fingers still curled into the shape of the last hand sign she'd been practicing. “Do you want me to?”

He doesn’t answer immediately. The breeze moves the leaves above them, dappling light across his face. She watches him closely - she has learned to read his silences better than any scroll.

Eventually, he says, very softly, “I don’t know if I have a choice.”

She waits.

He sighs, rubbing a hand along the back of his neck. “If you start any later… they’ll wonder why I kept you away. Why I didn’t send a Nara child to the academy at the earliest age. Especially one as…” He trails off, then meets her eyes. “As sharp as you are.”

There’s no pride in the way he says it. No boast. Just the truth. And worry.

She considers this. The academy. A place of children playing at war. She’s read about it in the clan records and overheard whispers from passing shinobi in the village. She’s seen glimpses of it through the fence when they walk past - boys too loud, girls too fast, kunai glinting in the sun like playthings.

“I would have to act like them,” she says. “Pretend not to know things. Be quiet in the ways they expect.”

“No,” her father says. “Not if you don’t want to.”

She considers this. She thinks of the scrolls she’s read, of the names whispered in the shadows of her father’s meetings with Shikaku. Of the coming storm they’ve all been dancing around since the day she was born into this world.

“All right,” she says at last. “I’ll go when I’m five.”

Her father exhales. Something flickers in his eyes - relief, maybe. Or regret.

She takes his hand, small fingers curling into his larger ones. “But you’ll keep teaching me, too. Even if the academy doesn’t understand.”

“I’ll always teach you,” he says, voice low. “They’ll only ever see a piece of who you are. I know the whole.”

And she believes him.

~

Shikaku begins to stop by more often.

There’s no pattern to it - no rhythm she can trace. Sometimes it’s late at night, his silhouette framed by the door while the lanterns still flicker. Other times, it’s in the hush of morning, when the air still clings to the last breath of dew. His presence is always quiet, always unannounced, but never unwelcome.

He doesn’t say much to her, not at first.

But he watches.

Sometimes, he arrives in the middle of her training. She’ll be in the garden, barefoot on the stones, working through her katas with careful precision, or perched in a low stance while her father murmurs chakra control exercises. She feels Shikaku before she sees him - his chakra presence is different from her father’s. He’s sharper around the edges, more tightly wound, as if every breath is measured against a thousand possible outcomes.

He leans against the doorframe or folds his arms under a tree, watching in that half-lidded way of his that never fools her. There’s nothing lazy in his gaze.

He sees everything.

Sometimes, he makes a comment - never cruel, never dismissive. Just a quiet correction. “Shift your balance back.” “Lower your elbow before the turn.” “You’re holding your breath again.”

She adjusts each time.

Once, after she finishes a particularly difficult series of hand seals with no hesitation, he whistles low under his breath. “Three years old and sealing faster than half the academy graduates,” he mutters. “Troublesome.”

Her father gives him a look, but Shikaku only smirks.

Later, they retreat indoors, and she hears them speaking in the next room - low voices, murmured strategy, the rustle of scrolls and the soft clink of teacups.

She presses her ear against the paper wall once, but their words are dense, layered in meaning she can’t yet reach. Still, she hears fragments:

“… chakra reserves larger than expected…”

“… her control is incredibly refined for a child…”

“… and if the elders start asking questions?”

“… we’ll manage it.”

And then her name. Tsukiko. Spoken like a code, like a secret that must be protected.

When they emerge, Shikaku glances at her, and their eyes meet.

He doesn’t smile. But he nods, just once. Just enough.

And she nods back.

They don’t need to speak. Not yet. But they understand each other in that way quiet people sometimes do - those who live at the edges of the room, who notice everything and say nothing until it matters.

He keeps coming back.

And every time, she trains harder. Not for approval. Not for praise.

But because she knows what he sees.

He sees a storm coming.

And he’s trying to decide what kind of weapon she will be.

~

She is four when her father teaches her her first jutsu.

The Kawarimi no Jutsu. The Body Replacement Technique.

They’re in the forest behind the house, where the trees are tall and the light falls in dappled shards. A breeze rustles the leaves, and somewhere in the distance, a deer calls. It’s quiet. Familiar. Safe.

Her father stands in front of her, a thin branch in one hand. “You’re ready,” he says simply. “We’ll start with Kawarimi.”

She knows the theory already. She’s read it - more than once. The mechanics, the requirements, the chakra control it demands. But hearing him say it still sends something warm through her chest. A soft, low thrum of excitement.

She nods.

He shows her the seal sequence - boar, ram, snake, tiger - and explains how to anchor her chakra to a nearby object, how to feel the pull of space and momentum and use it to slip free just before impact.

“It’s not about disappearing,” he tells her. “It’s about redirection. About understanding the moment before pain, and using it.”

She understands. More than he knows.

He lifts the branch slightly. “Ready?”

She doesn’t answer with words.

Her fingers move - boar, ram, snake, tiger - and her chakra surges, spiraling into the pattern she’s memorized, into the feel of intention.

He moves, quick and sure, the branch coming down toward her shoulder in a soft arc.

And then - 

She’s gone.

A puff of smoke. The faint echo of displaced chakra. The branch cuts through air.

She reappears three meters to the left, standing in the shade of a maple tree, a smooth rock now lying where she had been. Her breathing is steady. Her stance is firm.

And for the first time in this life - truly - she smiles.

It feels like magic.

Like what she’d once had.

Not exactly the same - no wand, no incantation - but the rhythm is familiar. That sense of calling something from deep inside and shaping it with sheer will. This was what she missed most: the flow of energy becoming action, the echo of power that wasn’t destructive but elegant.

Her father blinks, caught off guard for once. Then his expression softens.

“You got it,” he says.

“On the first try,” she murmurs, voice filled with quiet wonder.

He walks over, crouches to meet her eye level. There’s no fanfare, no lavish praise. Just the weight of his hand on her shoulder and the pride in his eyes.

“You’re going to be exceptional,” he says.

She looks down at her hands - small, trembling just a little from the aftershock of chakra expenditure - and nods.

I already was, she thinks. And I will be again.

But aloud, all she says is, “Teach me the next one.”

~

He teaches her the other two of the Academy Three not long after.

The Bunshin no Jutsu - Clone Technique - is first. It’s simple in theory, difficult in execution: an illusion, a mirage of herself created by molding chakra just so. No substance, no weight. Only a trick of the eyes.

She picks it up within the week.

Her clones are still at first - too still - but she studies the way her own shoulders rise and fall, the shift in her balance when she exhales, and learns to mirror it. Soon, her illusions breathe like she does, tilt their heads like she does. They even smile, faint and knowing.

“They’re eerie,” Shikaku mutters when he sees them. “In a good way. Mostly.”

Her father only nods. “She understands subtlety.”

Next comes the Henge no Jutsu - Transformation.

This one she enjoys more than she expects. There's something strangely satisfying in it, something almost artistic. She’s always been a student of details - how people move, how they carry their weight, how they tilt their heads when they're thinking. She remembers Hermione’s posture when she lectured, the way Harry’s shoulders curled when he was unsure, the precise way Professor McGonagall folded her hands.

She imitates them all with uncanny accuracy.

She turns into elders, into other children, into animals and birds. Her father watches in silence and gives precise, measured corrections. He rarely praises, but when he does, it’s deliberate.

“You understand people,” he says once. “You don’t just copy their faces. You feel how they move.”

But even as she learns and refines them, as her chakra grows steadier and her transitions smoother, neither of these jutsu settle in her bones the way Kawarimi does.

The Substitution Technique remains the one closest to her heart.

There’s something sacred in it. Something resonant.

Because Kawarimi is not just escape - it is grace under pressure. It is the stillness in the breath before impact, the quiet courage of slipping free rather than breaking. It is the art of surviving not by force, but by knowing exactly when to let go.

It is her, in every way.

She practices it even when her father doesn’t ask her to. Alone in the forest, switching with stones, with fallen branches, with leaves that catch the wind. She practices until it becomes instinct, until she can summon the chakra with a whisper of thought and vanish like mist.

She tells no one, but each time she uses it, she thinks of the cellar beneath Malfoy Manor.

Of the girl who couldn’t run. Of the girl who stayed - not out of choice, but because they’d taken away every last option.

And she vows - never again.

Substitution is not flashy. It is not feared.

But it is hers.

And she wears it like armor.

~

​​She is four and a half when her father hands her the chakra paper.

They sit beneath the old persimmon tree in their garden, the scent of late summer thick in the air. The fruit above them is just beginning to ripen, hanging heavy and orange against the leaves. Her training that day had been lighter - her father had watched her movements closely, with a strange tightness around his mouth, as if weighing something unseen.

And then, after their morning tea, he reaches into the sleeve of his vest and produces a small, thin rectangle of paper.

It looks ordinary, at first. Slightly yellowed, fibrous, delicate.

But she knows what it is. She’s read about it.

Chakra paper.

A tool meant to reveal the natural affinity of one's chakra. A mirror for something buried deep in the soul.

Her heart stirs, not with fear - but curiosity. Anticipation.

He hands it to her wordlessly.

She balances it on her palm, small fingers careful not to crease the edges. For a moment, she closes her eyes, breathing deeply, centering herself. She finds the hum of her chakra as easily as breath, gathering it at her fingertips, letting it flow gently into the paper.

The change is instant.

The paper trembles, then splits.

One half crumbles, disintegrating into soft, earthy grit that scatters across her lap like sand.

The other half dampens, curling inward as if kissed by morning dew, the fibers darkening with moisture.

She blinks.

Earth and water.

There’s a stillness in the garden. The leaves rustle. Her father says nothing for a long moment.

Then, quietly: “You take after both of us.”

She looks up.

He’s staring at the crumbled half of the paper, eyes shadowed - not with disappointment, but something deeper. Memory, maybe.

“My chakra affinity is earth,” he explains. “Your mother’s… was water.”

Tsukiko feels something settle in her chest. A quiet tether. She hadn’t known that. Not truly. 

She brushes the damp and dirt from her hands and studies what remains of the paper. Earth and water. Steady and flowing. Solid and yielding.

“I like it,” she says softly.

He gives her a long look, then nods.

“I thought you might.”

~

The next day, her father gives her a choice.

They are in the dojo this time, doors slid open to let in the morning light. The training mats smell faintly of polished wood and sweat, and the air is thick with the quiet expectation that always seems to follow him when he’s preparing to teach something new.

“You’re ready to begin,” he says simply. “Either elemental jutsu… or the clan technique.”

She looks at him. There is no pressure in his voice, no suggestion. Just a quiet offering.

And she already knows her answer.

“Shadow possession,” she says without hesitation.

His brows lift slightly, the smallest flicker of surprise. “Not elemental jutsu?”

She shakes her head. “Anyone can teach me water or earth release. I can find scrolls. Read theory. Practice forms.” She looks him in the eye, steady and clear. “But you’re the only one who can teach me this.”

There’s a pause. A long, quiet pause.

And then - he smiles. Faint. Small. But real.

She’s seen it before, in glimpses - pride hidden beneath layers of restraint - but this time, it lingers a moment longer.

“Well reasoned,” he murmurs, and gestures for her to sit.

He begins the lesson with theory, as he always does.

“The Kagemane no Jutsu is the core technique of the Nara clan,” he explains, voice low and calm. “You extend your shadow using chakra, and when it connects with another’s, it binds them. Makes them mirror your movements. It was developed as a control technique. Shikaku and most of the clan use it that way - to hold, to stall, to trap.”

She nods. She’s read some of this in passing. The basics are familiar.

“But that’s not how I use it.”

She blinks. “No?”

Her father shifts, the shadows around him bending ever so slightly as his chakra stirs, subtle and precise. “Binding takes too much energy in drawn-out battles. Too much focus. And against multiple opponents, it’s dangerous to hold them in place. So I learned to use it differently.”

He holds out his hand, palm flat, and a thin line of shadow snakes from his feet, curling with precision across the floor.

“I don’t bind,” he says. “I alter.”

She watches closely as the shadow reaches the edge of a rock on the floor and nudges it - just so. Not a full grab, not a strict mimicry. Just a shift. A tilt. Enough to send it rolling away instead of straight. 

“I guide movements. Break stances. Knock a kunai half a degree off course. Turn a step into a stumble. It only takes a moment of imbalance to end a fight.”

She stares, breath caught in her throat.

It’s elegant. 

Silent. Subtle. Not brute force, but precise application. She sees the beauty in it immediately - like a masterstroke of ink with no wasted motion.

“It’s harder to learn,” he says. “But it suits you.”

She nods slowly. “Yes.”

And she means it.

Anyone can teach her to move earth, to shape water. But this? This art of shadows, of redirection and delicate control - this is his , and he’s chosen to pass it to her.

And she will learn it. Not just because it’s the Nara way.

But because it’s theirs.

~

​​They begin the training that same afternoon.

He draws a circle on the dojo floor in charcoal, dark and deliberate, and has her sit in its center. The shadows stretch gently across the tatami mats, softened by the slant of the afternoon sun.

“First, you learn the feel of your shadow,” he says. “Not just how it moves - but how it thinks.”

She doesn’t question the phrasing. She understands. Shadows, like chakra, are an extension of intent. You don’t move them - you ask, and they answer.

She closes her eyes.

Feels her chakra pulse through her limbs, coiling gently at her core. Then she breathes out, lets it slide down through her arms, into her fingers, and out into the mat where her shadow lies curled like a sleeping cat. She senses it - dim and soft at first. But present.

“Good,” her father says. “Now extend it.”

She pushes - not hard, but with focus. Will. She feels her shadow stir, drag itself just a little farther, slithering toward the line of the circle. It flickers as it hits the edge - her control faltering for a moment - then holds.

“Again,” he murmurs. “Steady.”

They repeat the exercise again and again. She extends, retracts, reaches farther, pulls back. By evening, sweat beads at her temple, and her chakra feels like candlewax stretched thin.

But she doesn’t stop.

Each time her control improves, her precision grows. Her father corrects her gently when she wavers, but his words are always sparse, always purposeful.

“The goal isn’t to overwhelm,” he says. “It’s to shift the outcome. Barely. Precisely.”

He sets a small twig upright on the mat before her and gestures.

“Move it.”

She nods, lowers her hands into the beginning of a half-seal, and lets her chakra flow.

The shadow creeps forward, hesitates - and nudges.

The twig trembles, wavers… and falls.

A clean hit.

She exhales slowly, chest rising and falling with fatigue, but also quiet satisfaction.

He crouches beside her and studies the spot where the twig fell. Then he looks at her, and something softens in his face - not pride exactly, but recognition.

“You see the space between moments,” he says. “That’s rare.”

She meets his gaze, and for once, she lets herself smile.

“Magic,” she whispers. “It’s still here. Just… in a different shape.”

He doesn’t ask what she means. He doesn’t need to.

Instead, he nods once and says, “Tomorrow, we try it on moving targets.”

And she feels it then - not just purpose, not just progress.

But belonging.

For the first time in this life, this world, this clan - she feels herself not as a girl with secrets, or a child born strange, or even a shinobi in training.

She feels like her father’s daughter.

~

The next morning, the dojo is darker than usual.

Rain murmurs against the roof like an old story being retold, soft and rhythmic. The light is muted, shadows pooling thick and generous across the floor. A perfect day for learning to move among them.

Her father says nothing as she steps barefoot onto the mat. He only nods once, the faintest approval in the set of his shoulders. She’s already slipping into position before he speaks.

“Moving targets,” he says simply, and releases a wooden training dummy from its stand.

It glides across the room on silent wheels, slow at first, circling, shifting, turning like a dancer searching for a partner.

She sits in seiza, breath steady, hands resting lightly on her thighs. Her chakra pulses just beneath the surface, warm and waiting.

Feel. Don’t force.

She reaches inward - downward - and her shadow answers, sliding forward like an echo. It brushes across the floor, elongated by the lanternlight, and stretches toward the dummy’s path.

Timing is everything.

She waits. One breath. Another. And then, just as the dummy turns, she flicks her will.

Her shadow twitches - sharp and surgical - and the dummy stutters, its wheel catching on uneven footing. It lists to the side, enough to open it wide.

She doesn't strike. There is no follow-up blow. That isn’t the lesson today.

Today is about the shift. The moment between balance and fall.

Her father watches from the edge of the room, arms folded, but his silence is no longer distant. It is involved. Focused. She feels it like a second heartbeat pressing softly behind her.

Again and again, they run the drill.

The dummy shifts speeds, angles. She adapts.

Her chakra begins to burn in her limbs, not painfully, but insistently. The kind of ache that says: you are building something.

Each time she touches the target’s movement, it falters. Not clumsily - elegantly. A breath missed. A shoulder dipped too low. A blade that would have struck clean now glancing off air.

The shadow possession is not domination.

It is persuasion.

By midday, the dojo smells of rain and effort, and her legs tremble slightly as she stands. Her father steps forward and places a hand on her shoulder. His fingers are warm, grounding.

“I was wrong,” he says quietly. “You don’t take after both of us.”

She looks up at him, puzzled.

“You are both of us,” he murmurs. “The strength to alter, and the grace to let go. Your mother would have seen it too.”

Her breath catches at the mention of her mother. It’s rare, those memories. He guards them like scrolls too fragile to open.

But today, he shares one. And in it, she feels whole.

She nods, pressing her small hand over his.

Outside, the rain continues. The shadows stretch like reaching hands across the floor.

And in the hush between one breath and the next, she feels it:

She is becoming.

Not just a shinobi. Not just a child of another life reborn.

But herself, in every deliberate, gentle, powerful step.

And the shadows are learning her name.

~

The rain does not let up for days.

It becomes a lullaby, a rhythm her body begins to move with - soft-footed on damp soil, breath syncing with the patter against the roof, chakra flowing like water down a mountainside. The world outside is all mist and hush, and inside, the training deepens.

They leave the dojo. Her father takes her into the woods beyond the garden, where the trees are tall and the undergrowth soft with moss. Shadows live differently here - not the clean, obedient ones cast by lamps and paper walls, but wildshadows. Stretching between roots. Flickering against bark. Shifting with the clouds.

“Nature doesn’t offer control,” her father tells her as they walk. “Only opportunity.”

She nods, absorbing the lesson beneath the words.

They stop in a small clearing. The light filters through the canopy in fragmented patterns. There are no dummies today. No drills. Just the earth, and breath, and her father’s calm voice.

“Extend your shadow,” he says. “Not like a weapon. Like an invitation.”

She kneels and breathes, her palms pressed against the wet leaves.

The shadow comes easily now - at her call, it glides across the forest floor like ink in water. It weaves between the roots, curling with curiosity, sensing the terrain. She doesn’t push it. She lets it explore. Learn. Adapt.

A bird flutters nearby, startled by the motion. She doesn’t follow it.

She doesn’t need to chase every motion. Only the right ones.

She understands now - this jutsu is not about force. It is about intuition. About watching the world shift and knowing exactly where to place the thread that unravels it all.

Her father sits on a nearby stone, watching her - not judging, not instructing. Just witnessing.

She glances at him once, and he meets her gaze.

“There will come a time,” he says, “when you must choose how to use this. To hold, to alter, to end. The technique will not decide for you. Your heart will.”

She lets the words sink into her.

She remembers a wand, long since lost. A war fought in corridors of stone. Pain and hope and blood-soaked promises.

And she remembers surviving it all.

Her fingers curl slightly into the moss.

“I’ll choose well,” she says softly. “Even if it costs me.”

Her father nods, slow and solemn. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” he says. “And why I trust you.”

The rain is softer now, more mist than storm.

She stands, her chakra steady, her stance firm. The shadows draw close to her like threads waiting to be woven.

And for the first time, she doesn't feel like she is learning the technique.

But like it has learned her.

~

A month before her fifth birthday, her father begins teaching her how to move with the shadows.

Not just through them - not just alongside them - but with them. As them.

He says nothing about the significance of the date, but she feels it all the same - that quiet urgency in his presence, the subtle way his gaze lingers longer on her form, on her control, on the flicker of her chakra just beneath her skin. He is preparing her. Not for the academy. For something deeper.

For the world.

“This is where the clan stops,” he says, one morning as they stand in the clearing, barefoot in the damp earth. “And where we begin.”

She nods.

He calls it shadow-woven taijutsu - a method not written in scrolls or shared with the wider clan. His own creation. Born not of tradition, but of necessity.

“Most use the Kagemane to bind, and then strike from a distance,” he explains, adjusting her stance with the gentle pressure of his hand. “But that’s only half the dance.”

She watches as he steps forward and moves with deliberate grace, his shadow curling beneath him like smoke. He lunges, and as he does, his shadow touches, not to bind - but to tip the imagined opponent off balance. His foot pivots - clean, sharp - and in the next heartbeat, he is behind the phantom, hand poised for a silent, final blow.

He looks at her then. “Taijutsu is rhythm. Balance. Timing.”

“And shadow possession is…” she trails off, thinking.

He answers anyway. “Distortion.”

She breathes it in. Rhythm and distortion. Like jazz. Like spellwork.

~

They begin with footwork.

Step, slide, pivot. Breath. Pull chakra down the spine, out through the soles, through the shadow stretching at her heels. Move again. Let the shadow follow. Not too quickly. Let it listen.

It is exhausting.

Not physically - her conditioning has long since matched her age - but mentally. The act of balancing her own center while disrupting another’s. The precise moment where chakra must flicker out, subtle as a sigh, to shift an enemy’s weight without binding them completely.

She falls. Often.

Not hard. But enough to bruise pride.

Her father never chastises. Never calls her sloppy or slow.

Instead, he says, “You’re learning to speak in a new language.”

And she is.

By the second week, she can shift a sparring dummy’s step just enough to knock it off its path.

By the third, she can feint into a kick and use her shadow to tug - lightly - at the opponent’s center of gravity, so the kick lands cleaner. More honest.

It isn’t flashy. It isn’t loud.

But it’s devastatingly efficient.

By the fourth week, she’s begun to improvise - letting the shadow curl past its target, sweep back in from a new angle, respond to motion rather than pre-empt it.

He watches her then, a slow nod forming at the edge of his stillness.

“Soon,” he says. “It’ll be muscle memory. You won’t even think about it.”

She already doesn’t.

Not really.

The shadow is becoming an extension of her thoughts. Of her breath. Of her will.

And when she moves through a kata now, she doesn’t just strike. She orchestrates.

Her body is the melody. Her shadow, the dissonant harmony.

And together, they make something no one else in the clan quite understands.

Not yet.

~

It is beautiful.

Luna - no, Tsukiko , for she wears this name now like silk in the rain, soft and sure - thinks of it not as a technique, not as training, but as a kind of music.

The kind only she and the shadows know how to hum.

She moves across the clearing, each step measured not by pace, but by feeling. The earth beneath her is damp, rich with memory, and the sky above is grey, but kind. Her hands lift - not with force, not even precision, but with awareness - and the chakra at her center unspools like thread drawn from a spindle.

Her shadow dances behind her.

Not quite hers, not only hers - it is itself, in a way. A silent partner. A living echo.

There is grace in it. Strange, subtle grace.

Not the kind found in perfect lines or mirror-perfect stances, but the grace of wind winding through pine needles, of moonlight caught in water. She sees it now - what her father meant, what her mother might have seen too. That this jutsu is not about binding. Not about holding still.

It is about movement. The intimate pause between moments. The breath before a choice.

And her body… her body remembers.

Not just this life, but the last. The way her wand used to feel, quicksilver-light in her fingers, the way spells would spark and crackle like poems made of lightning. And yet - this, here, is not lesser.

This is deeper.

No incantations. No flourishes.

Just breath. And will. And a shadow that trusts her enough to follow.

She finishes a sequence - palm extended, foot turned, shadow curling like a ribbon from her heel - and stops. The silence that follows is not empty. It is full. Resonant.

She looks down at her feet, bare and dusted with soil. Her shadow stretches long behind her, still poised like a cat in mid-pounce, waiting for her next thought. Her next heartbeat.

And she smiles.

Softly. Quietly. The way you smile when no one is watching - and yet, you feel seen.

It is beautiful, she thinks again.

Because this isn't just ninjutsu. It’s truth. Movement as memory. Breath as devotion. Her body, her chakra, her shadow - all of them composing something gentle and dangerous and sacred.

She walks back toward her father, who stands still beneath the trees, arms crossed, unreadable - and yet she sees it now, the faint warmth in his eyes. The recognition.

Not of power.

But of poetry.

“You’ve made it yours,” he says. Simply. Not a compliment. A knowing .

Tsukiko bows her head, her voice a thread of wind.

“I didn’t mean to,” she says. “I just… listened.”

He nods. “That’s all it ever asks.”

And in that moment, standing in a clearing that smells of wet bark and something older than language, she thinks:

Even without magic, I was never without wonder.

The wand is gone. The castle is gone. The stars she once knew by name have new patterns now. But the hush between heartbeats remains.

The space between.

The place where shadow and song are the same thing.

And she?

She is learning to sing again.

~

It happens in the late afternoon, when the shadows grow long and gold filters through the trees like a hush.

She’s mid-step in a kata, one palm extended, the other low, her chakra flowing in a fine line from her feet into the shadow that trails behind her. It flicks forward like a ribbon, barely grazing the edge of the practice dummy, and she shifts her weight - just so - to send it stumbling.

Her footwork is fluid now. Her breathing, controlled. Her shadow no longer follows her - it moves with her, anticipates her intent before she fully forms it.

And when the dummy crashes to the earth, quiet and final, she hears it:

A low whistle from the edge of the clearing.

She turns, sweat clinging to her brow, and sees Shikaku leaning against a tree, arms crossed, eyes half-lidded in that deceptively lazy way of his.

“Well,” he says. “I’ll be damned. She’s already bending movement.”

Her father doesn’t look surprised. He steps forward, places a hand lightly on her shoulder. She can feel the warmth of pride there - quiet, unspoken, but steady.

“She’s ready,” Ensui says simply.

Shikaku approaches slowly, his gaze flicking between them - the girl standing tall despite her size, and the man known to their enemies only in whispers.

“The Shadow Thread,” he says, not unkindly. “I never thought you’d pass it on.”

Ensui’s expression doesn’t shift. “She’s the only one who could follow it.”

Tsukiko blinks, the words curling somewhere deep in her chest.

Shikaku stops beside her, crouching slightly to meet her eyes. His gaze sharpens.

“You know what he taught you, right?” he asks softly. “It’s not just clan technique. It’s a language most don’t even hear, let alone speak.”

She nods. “I’m learning its rhythm.”

That earns a huff of something close to laughter. “Spoken like a Nara already.”

He straightens and looks at Ensui. “The council will notice eventually.”

“I know.”

“They’ll call it dangerous.”

“It is.”

Shikaku smirks. “Good.”

Then he turns back to her, his voice gentler now.

“Keep moving like that, kid, and you won’t need to bind your enemies. They’ll fall apart just trying to keep up.”

And just like that, he vanishes into the trees, his presence folding back into the silence.

She turns to her father.

“The Shadow Thread?” she asks.

He meets her gaze, and for once, his voice holds the weight of history.

“That’s what they called me in the second war,” he says. “Because no one saw the end coming until it was already pulling at their feet.”

She nods, turning the name over in her mind. Not with fear. But w ith respect.

She doesn’t want to be feared like a weapon.

But she will be known. And the shadows will carry her name.

Chapter Text

Tsukiko turns five on a quiet, clouded day in early March.

Her father doesn’t throw a celebration. There are no candles, no guests, no brightly wrapped gifts. Just a small bowl of her favorite soup placed beside her in the garden, and a book - worn, old, and annotated - left on her pillow. Strategy and Subtlety: Patterns of Feint in Warfare.

There’s no inscription, but she doesn’t need one. She traces her fingers over the margin notes, the familiar looping brushstrokes, and understands the message: I see you. I believe in who you’re becoming.

It’s enough. More than enough.

~

The academy begins in April.

It comes faster than she expects, despite all her preparation. One moment she’s training in the woods with her father, shadow leaping ahead of her like a companion, and the next she’s standing at the threshold of a long, clean hallway filled with the scent of chalk dust and worn paper.

She arrives early. Of course she does.

The corridors are still and quiet, sun slanting through the high windows in slow, golden beams. She finds the classroom quickly - Room 1-A, scratched into a lacquered nameplate - and slips inside before even the instructor arrives.

The desks are arranged in neat rows, rising at the back. Too exposed. Too open.

She assesses them with the same clarity she’d apply to a battlefield.

The back corner. Right side. Next to the window. Her field of vision is wide from there, with minimal angles for blind spots. She’ll see everyone entering, can watch the front without craning her neck, and still has a direct path to the door if she ever needs to leave.

She takes the seat without hesitation, folds her hands on the desk, and looks out the window, where the trees sway gently in the breeze. The light is soft, the shadows long. She lets her chakra settle around her like breath.

She is calm. Present. Prepared.

And then the door slides open.

The second one in class is a boy.

About her age, maybe a little older. He walks like someone who’s been told to stand straight for so long he forgot how not to. His silver hair is gravity-defying, an unruly crown of pale strands. His face is half-hidden by a dark mask, and his eyes - sharp, dark, watchful - flick around the room like a kunai waiting to be thrown.

They land on her.

She doesn’t move.

He doesn’t either.

A moment passes - quiet, assessing. Not hostile. But not soft, either.

Then he walks to the opposite corner and takes the seat across the aisle from her, settling in the opposite corner - the second-best spot in the room.

Strategic.

She tilts her head slightly, just enough for her gaze to meet his fully.

He’s interesting.

Not just because of the mask, or the hair, or the sharp eyes - but because she can already tell he knows something. The way she does. The way soldiers’ children do. 

She doesn’t speak.

Neither does he.

But for the first time, she feels the slight shift of something new in the air - not threat, not opportunity.

Recognition.

~

The other students begin to filter in as the sun rises higher, voices loud, laughter careless, sandals slapping against polished floorboards. They enter in clusters - friends, siblings, classmates from the pre-academy programs - and she watches them all through lowered lashes, cataloguing posture, tone, and chakra signature.

They are older. All of them.

Six, some seven. A few nearly eight.

They glance at her as they enter, some with curiosity, others with the easy dismissal children use on anything small and quiet. No one sits near her or the silver-haired boy in the opposite corner. She doesn’t mind.

She prefers the distance.

She keeps her gaze soft and unfocused, fixed on the trees swaying outside the window, but she is listening. Always listening. She hears names tossed back and forth, hears complaints about the early hour, boasts about shuriken scores, and murmured gossip about whose parent is scariest.

And then the door slides open a final time.

Their instructor enters.

He’s tall and thin, hair drawn into a tight knot, flak vest worn but neat. His expression is unreadable in that way most seasoned shinobi carry - not unkind, just measured. He moves to the front of the class and surveys them all in a single sweep.

His chakra is calm. Strong.

“Take your seats,” he says, though most already have. “We’ll begin.”

She straightens slightly, hands still folded neatly atop her desk.

He takes a clipboard and begins roll call.

One by one, names are spoken. Children answer, some loud, some distracted, some too quietly to hear. She doesn’t recognize any of them. Not yet.

And then:

“Hatake Kakashi.”

A pause.

“Present,” the boy across the room says.

His voice is flat, efficient. No ornament. No hesitation.

She looks at him more closely now.

Hatake.

She knows the name. Everyone does. The White Fang of Konoha. War hero. Feared. Revered. There’s no warmth in the name, only reputation. The way children repeat ghost stories without knowing why they fear them.

So. That’s who he is.

He doesn’t look back at her, just stares forward, elbows on his desk, chin resting lightly on one hand. But she watches him for a moment longer.

There’s no arrogance in him. No eagerness for attention. Just stillness.

Discipline.

He’s like her in that way.

When the instructor reaches the end of the list, he pauses at her name.

“Nara Tsukiko.”

She answers clearly. “Present.”

The instructor glances up - just briefly. There’s recognition there. Maybe surprise. Maybe something more. She meets his gaze evenly, and he moves on without comment.

But in the breath that follows, she can feel it ripple through the room - the slow, creeping awareness that someone too young is here. Someone small. Someone strange.

She lets it pass.

She’s already used to the way people look at her. She doesn’t need them to understand.

She’s not here to be liked.

She’s here to learn.

~

They begin with assessments.

Standard procedure, the instructor explains - to gauge their current level, identify gaps, tailor instruction. Tsukiko nods along, her expression impassive, already reaching for the pencil before the test sheet is passed down her row.

It’s simple.

Painfully so.

Basic arithmetic. Pattern recognition. Shinobi history stripped down to dates and famous names. Definitions of chakra theory that feel like the preface to a book she’s already read a dozen times.

She works through each section methodically. Her pencil glides across the page with precision. Her handwriting is crisp, each character deliberate, evenly spaced. She doesn’t second-guess a single answer. She’s not trying to impress anyone. She’s just moving through the motions.

When she finishes, she sets her pencil down quietly and folds her hands.

The clock ticks softly in the background.

Exactly two minutes later, Hatake Kakashi sets his pencil down, too.

She glances at him.

He’s not looking at her, but he doesn’t look bored, either. Just… still. Like he’s waiting for something that hasn’t arrived yet. Their eyes don’t meet. But the moment passes between them all the same - quiet recognition, unsaid but mutual.

They are the first to finish.

The rest finish slowly - frustrated, rushed, heads bent and pencils clutched like weapons.

After lunch, the tone of the day shifts.

The instructor leads them to the training yard. A wide-open field with wooden dummies, soft soil underfoot, and faint chalk lines marking sparring zones.

“Physical assessment,” he announces. “Taijutsu only. I want to see how you move. How you think under pressure.”

Murmurs ripple through the class. Some are excited, some nervous. Tsukiko remains silent.

The instructor begins pairing students. Names are called out in twos, each pair stepping into the ring. The matches are fast and simple. There is little elegance or technique to their movements, just a simple, brutal honesty. She can appreciate it, but she will not copy them.

She doesn’t know how to anymore. 

Then - “Nara Tsukiko. Hatake Kakashi.”

A few heads turn.

She doesn't react. Simply steps into the ring, rolling her shoulders once to loosen tension. Her muscles remember the morning’s kata, the rhythm of shadow and breath. She’s not nervous.

But she is cautious.

Just as the instructor is about to call them to begin, she raises her hand.

“May I ask a question?” she says, calm and clear.

The instructor pauses. “Go ahead.”

“Are non-threatening clan techniques permitted?” she asks. “Only for disruption or movement assistance. Nothing binding or harmful.”

A few students whisper at that, glancing between her and Kakashi.

The instructor blinks. His surprise flickers across his face just long enough for her to catch it before it vanishes beneath professionalism.

He studies her for a breath, then nods. “If it doesn’t cause injury or immobilize your opponent, it’s permitted.”

“Thank you,” she says with a small bow.

Kakashi watches her now - more openly than before. Not judging. Just interested.

She steps into position across from him and lowers into a stance - not the standard academy one, but the soft, fluid posture her father taught her. Balanced. Ready. Her shadow pools naturally around her feet, faintly humming with restrained potential.

He drops into his own stance. It’s sharp. Crisp. Too precise for a boy his age.

And she thinks, This won’t be easy.

But then again - nothing worth doing ever is.

~

It feels almost like dancing.

Not the stilted rhythm of children mimicking what they’ve been told a fight should look like - but something real. Something flowing and instinctive. Like breath.

Kakashi moves first - fast, sharp, precise. A jab meant to test her reaction time, a step meant to corner. He’s good. Better than good. His footwork is clean, his angles tight. He fights like someone who’s been doing it longer than he’s been speaking in full sentences.

She responds without thought.

Not by matching his speed, but by redirecting it.

She pivots just enough to make his strike slip past her shoulder. Her hands barely touch him, but her shadow flickers at the edge of his stance - not binding, just tilting. Shifting his center of gravity by a fraction.

His next step lands an inch too far left.

She moves with the mistake.

It’s not aggressive, not dominating. It’s fluid. Disruptive. Subtle. She flows around him like water around stone, her feet brushing over the earth with practiced ease. Her strikes are measured - gentle but effective. She doesn’t need to land every blow. She only needs to create the opening.

It’s almost… beautiful.

She realizes, mid-spar, that she’s enjoying it.

Not the victory - she doesn’t know yet that she’ll win - but the connection. The movement. The give and take. The quiet conversation of bodies and breath.

He adjusts quickly. Learns her patterns. But so does she.

He feints high. She dips low.

He spins to his left. She follows with a sweep.

Their shadows catch once - his shorter, sharp-edged. Hers long and fluid. And for a moment, they overlap across the chalk line, and she wonders, distantly, if shadows remember each other after they part.

Then - he stumbles.

Just a little. Just enough.

Her foot taps his, her shoulder brushes his center of balance, and she uses her shadow to nudge.

Kakashi goes down - not hard, not clumsily, but almost gently. Like a leaf finally surrendering to wind.

Silence.

He lies there for a second, blinking up at the sky. Then he exhales and sits up with that same eerie calm he’s carried all day.

The instructor calls it. “Match to Nara Tsukiko.”

Whispers stir around the ring. Surprise. Curiosity. Something else.

Kakashi stands and brushes off his clothes. He doesn’t sulk. Doesn’t scowl. He walks to her, pauses, and says - 

“Good control.”

She bows slightly. “You’re fast.”

He nods once, thoughtful. “You don’t stop anything. You shift it.”

She tilts her head. “You noticed.”

“I notice everything.”

A quiet beat passes. Not tense - settled.

She thinks of her father’s words. Rhythm and distortion. That’s what this had been.

Not a fight.

A dance.

And she won. Not by being stronger.

But by knowing the beat of the song before it began.

~

“I’ve never lost to anyone my age before,” Kakashi says.

His voice isn’t bitter. There’s no edge to it, no bruised pride hiding behind his words. He says it like a fact. Like he’s turning the thought over in his mind, examining it from all sides. Weighing it.

She watches him quietly, brushing a stray strand of hair from her face. He studies her - not the way the other students do, with squinting suspicion or wide-eyed curiosity, but like a puzzle. Like a shinobi might study a trap or a formation.

He isn’t trying to diminish her. He’s trying to understand her.

“We should spar again sometime,” he says after a moment.

Not as a challenge.

As an invitation.

She smiles.

It’s a small thing - soft and sincere, one she doesn’t give often - but it feels right here, in this space between movement and stillness, between two children who are not quite children.

“I’d like that,” she says.

And she means it.

There’s something compelling about him - not just his skill, but his quiet. The way he carries the silence around him like a sheath. She’s seen that silence before, in her father. In herself. It’s not emptiness.

It’s control.

He nods, like that settles something between them, then walks back toward the group with the same efficient grace he fights with - no wasted motion, no backward glance.

She watches him go, then turns her eyes back to the ring.

Her shadow pools gently at her feet, still humming with the aftertaste of motion. Of rhythm.

She kneels to touch it, just briefly. A gesture of acknowledgment. Of thanks.

The other students murmur in the background. Some louder now. Her name passed between mouths like a question. Like a warning.

She doesn’t care.

Kakashi saw her. And he didn’t look away.

And in this world that is preparing to turn to war, to weight, to whispers and judgment - that matters more than anything else.

She straightens, breathes in, and steps out of the ring.

Tomorrow, she thinks, the dance will begin again.

And she will be ready.

~

The murmurs follow her as she returns to her seat.

She hears them - half-whispered comments and not-so-quiet speculations.

“That Nara girl’s weird.”

“She’s five. Five .”

“How’d she beat Hatake?”

“She didn’t even hit him that hard. He just… fell.”

“She did something. I saw her shadow move.”

Tsukiko slides into her chair without a word, spine straight, hands folded neatly atop her desk. She doesn’t acknowledge the stares. She doesn’t need to. She learned long ago that mystery is a kind of armor. Let them wonder. Let them whisper.

Let them underestimate her.

Out the window, the sun has begun its slow descent, casting long fingers of light across the training yard. Her shadow stretches beside her desk, still and silent once more.

She keeps her eyes there for a moment.

Her father’s voice echoes gently in her memory: You don’t need to overpower them. Just show them where the ground shifts.

She has.

Kakashi is already seated again, back in his corner, legs crossed beneath his desk, one elbow propped lazily against the sill. His face is unreadable - half-hidden behind his mask, as always - but his eyes flick toward her once, briefly.

It’s not a challenge.

It’s not even appraisal.

It’s something closer to… welcome.

Their gazes meet for the span of a breath. She doesn’t smile this time, but she nods, almost imperceptibly.

And he nods back.

The instructor resumes the day’s lesson, voice calm as he begins a lecture on chakra nature affinities - material she read years ago, but listens to anyway. It’s good to hear how others are taught. Good to know what they expect of five-year-olds. Of six-year-olds. Of shinobi in training.

But even as he speaks, her mind moves elsewhere.

Her chakra still buzzes faintly beneath her skin, stirred by the spar. Not strained - but alive. Her control is strong. Her instincts stronger. But her father always says that the moment you think you're finished learning is the moment you're already behind.

And Kakashi… he isn’t finished learning either.

They are different, but not opposite.

Two edges of the same blade.

One quieter. One sharper. Both honed young, too young.

And she knows now - truly knows - that he will not be a rival.

He will be a mirror.

And someday, when the world burns hotter than childhood can contain, that might be the only kind of ally worth having.

~

The day ends in a slow drift of noise - scraping chairs, laughter too loud, footsteps echoing through the halls. The other students burst from the classroom like they’ve been holding their breath all day, eager to be loud, to be seen.

Tsukiko takes her time.

She packs her things with quiet care, sliding her scrolls and pencil case into her satchel, smoothing the wrinkles in her uniform with the practiced movements of someone who finds comfort in the ritual of order. Her chakra has settled, but the stillness in her limbs hums with a familiar satisfaction - like after a long meditation. Like after surviving.

She’s just about to leave when he finds her.

Hatake Kakashi stands in the doorway, hands in his pockets, posture easy but eyes watchful. The mask hides half his face, but not the curiosity in his gaze.

He doesn’t speak right away. Just watches her a moment longer.

Then, as she slides the satchel strap over her shoulder, he says, “When did you want to spar again?”

No preamble. No awkwardness.

Just the question, simple and direct.

She tilts her head, studying him as she always does - not the way most people look at others, but the way she looks at patterns. His stance is relaxed, but not careless. His chakra is calm, but not inattentive. He means the question. Not as a formality. Not to test her.

Because he wants to understand her better. Because she’s the first variable he couldn’t predict.

A soft smile tugs at the corner of her mouth.

“Tomorrow?” she offers. “After class. There’s a grove near the north edge of the Nara compound. The shadows are good there.”

He nods. “I know it.”

Of course he does.

“Four o’clock,” she adds, and he nods again, the corner of one eye crinkling in what she thinks might be the beginning of a smile.

Then, without another word, he turns and walks away, movements smooth, already blending into the soft noise of the hall beyond.

She watches him go, then steps out into the corridor herself, her fingers brushing against the seam of her sleeve.

A sparring partner.

A peer.

An equal.

The wind stirs as she steps into the fading light, and her shadow stretches long across the stone path.

She smiles.

Four o’clock.

~

She tells her father that evening.

They sit in the garden as the sky softens into twilight, the faint scent of woodsmoke curling from the neighbor’s chimney, and a pair of fireflies blinking between the reeds. She’s reviewing a scroll on joint locks and counters, her knees tucked beneath her, her shadow pooling calm and still beside her.

“I’ll be back late tomorrow,” she says, eyes still on the scroll. “Kakashi and I are sparring after class.”

She hears the shift of his breath more than the movement - soft, subtle.

When she glances up, he’s tilted his head, one brow lifted just slightly. There’s no surprise in his face. Just the quiet flicker of understanding.

“The White Fang’s son,” he says, like he’s already known for some time. “Makes sense.”

She nods. “He’s… sharp. Controlled. Disciplined. He watches the same way we do.”

Her father hums low in his throat, folding his hands in his lap. “That boy doesn’t fight to win. He fights to understand.”

She smiles faintly. “Exactly.”

Ensui is quiet for a long moment after that, his gaze distant. The shadows stretch around them as the sun slips lower, long fingers reaching across the garden stones. Then:

“Be careful with him.”

She looks at him. “You think he’s dangerous?”

“No,” he says. “I think he’s like you.”

And then, softer - more like a thought than a warning:

“Two quiet children carrying more than anyone sees… sometimes that weight pulls in the same direction. Sometimes it doesn’t.”

She nods, thoughtful, then closes the scroll and sets it aside.

“I’ll be careful,” she says.

And she will.

But she also knows - deeply - that something about this… connection, this quiet mirroring between her and Kakashi, matters.

Not because it’s rare.

But because it’s true.

She’ll meet him at four. In the grove, where the shadows are strong.

And together, they’ll dance again.

~

The next day, she moves through class like a shadow in still water - present, but untouched by the ripples around her.

The instructor calls on other students. She listens. Absorbs. Corrects mistakes in her head but does not raise her hand. When they move to group exercises, she completes hers precisely, then steps back to observe the others. She’s used to being underestimated now - too young, too quiet, too composed - but it’s already starting to shift. They’ve begun to watch her when they think she isn’t watching them.

Kakashi doesn’t say a word to her all day.

He doesn’t have to.

At dismissal, their eyes meet only once, as the others scramble for the door. It’s not a question. Not a reminder.

It’s a confirmation.

She takes her time walking to the grove.

The path curves along the edge of the compound, where the trees grow denser and the shadows stretch long and layered. The Nara forest welcomes her with soft silence and a faint earthy scent that clings to the back of her throat. This place is hers. It knows her steps.

When she arrives, he’s already there.

Kakashi stands with his hands in his pockets, back resting against the trunk of a tall maple. The wind lifts his silver hair slightly, and his eyes are half-lidded, scanning the clearing like he’s memorizing its dimensions. He doesn’t look surprised to see her. Doesn’t straighten or shift.

“You’re on time,” he says.

“I said four,” she replies.

He steps away from the tree and into the center of the grove. “Same rules?”

“Taijutsu only,” she says. “Unless you want to test something else.”

A beat passes.

He tilts his head, considering.

“No. I want to know how you move.”

She smiles. “Then come find out.”

They begin with no call to start. No ceremony.

Just movement.

And this time, it is not a test. Not a spar for dominance. It’s a conversation made in the language only two prodigies - two children shaped too early by silence, legacy, and war - can speak.

He is faster than before.

She is sharper.

Their strikes don’t land often, but when they do, it’s clean - never cruel. They adjust to each other in real time, like ink meeting water, like wind curling around stone. Her shadow dances at her heels, extending only when necessary, a whisper of redirection.

Once, he nearly sweeps her leg, and she stumbles.

She shifts her chakra, lets her shadow pull just enough to catch her fall, and spins out of range.

He pauses.

“That wasn’t in the academy handbook.”

She straightens, breath steady. “That doesn't say much.”

His eyes crease slightly. The closest she’s seen to a smile.

They keep going.

Long after the sun begins to dip behind the trees. Until sweat beads at their temples and the wind cools their skin.

Eventually, they break apart, breath mingling with the dusk. He doesn't fall. She doesn’t either. It’s not a match with a winner.

It's something else. The end of a conversation, perhaps.

She leans against a tree, pressing her palm to the bark, the roughness grounding her.

Kakashi folds his arms. “You’re better than me.”

She looks at him. “You’re faster.”

He shrugs. “You’ll catch up.”

She nods once. “So will you.”

He says nothing to that.

But after a moment, he says, “Next week. Same time?”

She smiles again, this one softer, the kind that reaches her eyes.

“Of course.”

~

A month passes, and spring deepens.

The plum blossoms fall, swept along the academy courtyard in soft drifts. The air grows warmer. The sparring gets faster. The questions get harder.

Tsukiko and Kakashi remain at the top of every ranking board.

They don’t flaunt it. They don’t need to. The instructors know. The students know. Even those who don’t understand them can’t ignore the way they move, the way they never falter, the way they make everything seem inevitable.

She still sits in the back corner, by the window. He still sits horizontally across, the second-best vantage in the room. Their partnership becomes an unspoken rhythm: a nod at the start of the day, a shared glance during lessons, sometimes a faint twitch of a shoulder that means “Want to spar later?” without ever saying the words.

They don’t speak much. But what they do say matters.

One afternoon, midway through a weapons demonstration, the head instructor calls them both into the hallway.

They follow without question.

He doesn’t make them wait.

“You’re being moved up,” he says. “Both of you. One academic year. Effective immediately.”

He looks at Tsukiko first, as if expecting her to protest, or at least to ask why.

She doesn’t.

She’d known this was coming. The exams were too easy. The drills repetitive. She was beginning to answer questions before the instructors finished asking them.

Kakashi says nothing either. Just stands there, posture easy, hands in his pockets.

“Report to Room 2-B tomorrow,” the instructor finishes. “Congratulations.”

They bow, politely. Quietly.

As they walk back to the classroom to gather their things, Kakashi speaks - just once.

“They think we’re ready.”

Tsukiko glances at him. “We’ve been ready.”

He nods, almost imperceptibly. Then, after a beat:

“Do you think they’ll make us partners again?”

A rare note of curiosity in his voice - not hope, not worry. Just wondering.

She thinks about it. About all the students in the year above. Who throw kunai harder but without precision. Who move with strength but not strategy.

She shrugs, the corners of her lips lifting faintly.

“If they’re smart,” she says, “they will.”

He doesn’t smile. But he doesn’t argue.

They walk back to class in silence, side by side.

And the shadows stretch long and certain behind them.

~

It happens late in the day, just after one of their longer matches.

The grove is dappled in golden light, the shadows thick and luxurious under the canopy. Tsukiko stands with her hands on her knees, breath steadying after the final exchange. Kakashi is leaning against a tree, mask slightly askew, a smear of dirt on one cheek, his hair tousled from effort.

They’re both winded - but smiling in that small, rare way that only comes after a good match. No one’s won. No one’s lost. They’ve just learned - and that’s enough.

She’s about to suggest another round when she feels it:

A flicker of chakra at the edge of the grove. Soft. Measured. Not threatening - but unmistakably strong.

She straightens slowly, eyes narrowing as she scans the tree line.

And then he steps out.

Tall, lean, wrapped in standard-issue jonin gear worn like a second skin. His hair is silver and long, pulled back in a ponytail. His face is calm, lined gently with time and experience, and when he smiles, it’s with quiet warmth and a spark of amusement.

He doesn’t need to introduce himself.

There’s only one person he could be.

“So,” the man says, his voice deep but unhurried, “this is the Nara girl you’ve been telling me about.”

Tsukiko blinks.

Her gaze slides to Kakashi.

And to her delight, he’s actually flustered.

He straightens abruptly, the mask hiding most of his expression, but not the faint puff of air that escapes him - something between a sigh and a groan.

“Tou-san,” he mutters, with a note of complaint in his voice.

The man raises a brow. “What? I was in the area. Thought I’d see what all the fuss was about.”

Kakashi doesn’t answer. Just pointedly adjusts his mask.

The man turns his attention to Tsukiko, bowing slightly. “Hatake Sakumo,” he says. “It’s good to finally meet you.”

She bows back with practiced grace. “Nara Tsukiko. It’s an honor, Hatake-sama.”

He chuckles softly. “No need for the formalities. Kakashi’s told me a lot.”

She glances again at Kakashi, who is suddenly very interested in the leaves above him.

She smiles - small, but real.

“Good things, I hope.”

Sakumo grins. “He’s a kid of few words. But they were good.”

A pause.

“You’re as sharp as he said you were.”

She inclines her head. “And you watch quietly, like a man trained to understand the ending of a story before it’s told.”

That catches him off guard - just for a moment. Then he laughs, quiet and genuine.

“I see why he likes you.”

Kakashi lets out a quiet groan and turns his back to them both.

Sakumo raises his hands in surrender. “Alright, alright. I’ll stop embarrassing you.”

But Tsukiko can see it - the flicker of warmth in Kakashi’s posture. The fond irritation. The ease.

This isn’t a man defined by the stories others tell.

This is a father.

And something in her chest softens. Quietly. Longingly.

She stands straighter. “Would you like to stay and observe the next match?”

Sakumo raises a brow. “Only if Kakashi doesn’t mind.”

“I mind,” Kakashi mutters.

Sakumo smiles at her again. “I’ll watch from the trees.”

And just like that, he vanishes - soft as mist, leaving a faint ripple in the air behind him.

Tsukiko turns to Kakashi, who sighs and shrugs.

“He does that.”

She steps into position again. “He’s kind.”

“… Yeah,” Kakashi says, and his voice is softer this time. “He is.”

She lowers into her stance, shadow curling at her feet. “Ready?”

He meets her eyes, and beneath the mask, something shifts. His gaze steadies.

“Always.”

And the grove, now touched by memory and legacy, holds its breath for the next movement in their quiet dance.

~

She wins the first match, as usual. But during the second, something shifts. The rhythm falters - not hers, but his - and in the breath it takes her to adjust, the balance tips.

It’s subtle. Of course it is. He’s subtle. A half-second hesitation she mistakes for overcorrection, a weight shift that mimics a feint she’s seen a dozen times before. But this time, it isn’t mimicry. It’s precision. A trap dressed as familiarity.

He ducks beneath her counterstrike, plants a foot behind hers, and pivots - not with force, but with quiet certainty.

Her balance wavers.

She rolls through the stumble, lands crouched and poised to reset, fingers twitching toward her shadow - but it’s too late.

He’s already there.

One hand hovers above her shoulder, the other pulled in guard, his stance clean and unmoving. Centered. Grounded. His eye meets hers, steady and wide.

A clean point. A win.

She blinks.

Then she beams.

Not the soft, careful smiles she offers when she’s holding herself back. No. This one is unfiltered - wide and bright, the kind that glitters in her eyes and lifts her entire frame like laughter waiting to happen. It’s joy, unhidden. Something golden.

“You won,” she says, and it’s not just acknowledgment. It’s delight.

Kakashi doesn’t move.

He stares at her like she’s something he wasn’t expecting. Like her happiness is too much, too bright, like it’s curling under his mask and into the hollow places he’s only just begun to notice.

Then - slowly, visibly - his eyes go wide.

Color blooms across his face, unmistakable even with the mask. It rises from the line of his collar to the bridge of his nose, high along his cheekbones, even the tips of his ears. He blinks once. Twice.

His chakra stutters.

He looks away abruptly, like the force of her joy is something too sharp to meet head-on. His hand drops. He clears his throat behind the mask, voice half-muffled and too casual.

“It was… just luck.”

She tilts her head, still smiling, unabashed. “It was very well-earned luck.”

He fidgets. Actually fidgets. Brushes imaginary dirt from his sleeve with a level of focus that borders on devout. His shoulders twitch. His chakra hums with a rhythm she hasn’t felt before—offbeat and fluttering, like someone trying very hard not to trip.

He doesn’t know what to do with her joy. Or maybe, more truthfully - he doesn’t know what to do with the way it’s directed at him.

She stands, brushes her hands against her knees, and steps lightly beside him. “We should spar again next week,” she says. “I want to see if it really was luck.”

He freezes.

“You think I can’t win again?”

“I'm saying I hope you try.”

His gaze flickers sideways. His eye creases - not fully, just enough to suggest the ghost of something unspoken. And maybe it’s the light. Or maybe it’s not. But she’s almost certain he’s smiling.

Then - from the trees - a low, satisfied chuckle.

Sakumo, lounging against a branch, arms folded, watching like a fox who’s just witnessed something excellent.

“Well,” he calls, “that’s the best thing I’ve seen all week.”

Kakashi groans. A full-body kind of groan, quiet and despairing.

Then he turns and walks away, limbs stiff.

Tsukiko just laughs, soft and silver, and follows.

~

“You should come over for dinner tonight,” Sakumo says casually, as though he’s merely commenting on the weather. “I’m making nabe.”

Tsukiko looks up at him, tilting her head. The offer is warm. Genuine. And completely unexpected.

She opens her mouth to reply - but Kakashi gets there first.

He turns on his heel, so fast it's almost comical, staring up at his father in something just short of horror.

“Tou-san,” he hisses, the word a warning, a protest, a desperate plea all at once.

Sakumo lifts an eyebrow, utterly unfazed. “What? You’ve mentioned her, she’s clearly talented, polite, and I don’t think you’ve ever sparred this well with anyone. I’d like to get to know the girl who keeps knocking you off your balance.”

Kakashi turns slightly, and even with the mask, it’s obvious he’s glaring at a very specific patch of moss on the ground. His ears are red again.

Tsukiko presses her knuckles to her mouth to hide the smile threatening to spill over. “That’s kind of you, Hatake-sama. But - ”

“Oh, come on,” Sakumo cuts in with a grin. “Call me Sakumo. And don’t let Kakashi scare you off. He pretends he doesn’t want people around, but he does, I promise.”

Kakashi audibly groans. “Tou-san.”

Tsukiko can’t help it - she laughs. A soft, melodic sound that surprises even her. “I’d like to,” she says finally, once she’s composed herself. “If it’s alright with my father.”

Sakumo nods, all approval. “Of course. You’re welcome anytime.”

Kakashi mutters something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like, “I’m never sparring near home again.”

But he doesn’t protest further.

And as they walk back through the trees - Kakashi still sulking in the way only emotionally ambushed children can - Tsukiko glances up at the canopy, light filtering through in scattered gold.

She hasn’t had dinner with another family in this life.

And now, maybe, she’ll have her first.

She walks beside Kakashi, quiet and thoughtful.

And thinks: I’m glad I lost today.

~

When she returns home, the scent of incense lingers faintly in the air - sage and cedar, a grounding blend. Her father is in the garden, seated beside the koi pond, sketching diagrams in his notebook. Shadow manipulation patterns, she notices. Fluid arcs. Disruption angles.

She approaches softly.

“I lost today,” she says quietly, a faint smile lingering in the edges of her voice.

“Good.” He flips a page. “That means he’s learning.”

She smiles wider, just a little. “He asked me to spar again next week.”

“I assumed as much.”

She kneels beside him, hands folded neatly in her lap. “His father invited me to dinner.”

That gets his attention.

He looks up, dark eyes meeting hers, a flicker of something behind them - curiosity, calculation. And then - 

A small, almost imperceptible smile.

“Hatake Sakumo,” he says, like he’s tasting the name. “You’ve made an impression.”

“I said I’d go, if it was alright with you.”

Ensui’s gaze lingers on her a moment longer, as if weighing something unsaid. Then he nods.

“You may go.”

She inclines her head in a respectful bow. “Thank you, Tou-san.”

He returns to his notebook without further comment, but as she turns to leave, he adds, casually:

“Try not to terrify him with your table manners.”

She glances back, surprised. “You think I will?”

He lifts a brow. “You terrify everyone eventually.”

She snorts. “I’ll be good.”

“I never doubted that.”

But when she slips out the door, the light behind her catching in the shadows of their home, she swears she hears the faintest sound of a laugh behind her.

Vaguely amused.

Almost proud.

~

She arrives just before dusk, the sky streaked with lavender and gold, the streets hushed in that tender pause between day and night.

In her hands, she carries a small, carefully wrapped bundle: a dark lacquered box tied with a simple cord of woven twine. Inside is a collection of pressed herbs - dried chrysanthemum, wild mint, lemon balm, and yarrow - each sealed in a labeled paper sachet. Calming, grounding, restorative. Her father helped her choose them from their garden stores, though he said little. He only handed her a jar of honey to add to the bundle, then returned to his shadow diagrams with the faintest quirk to his mouth.

Now, standing at the gates of the Hatake home, Tsukiko breathes in once, then knocks.

Sakumo answers the door himself, sleeves rolled to his forearms, the scent of simmering broth wafting into the evening air. He smiles as soon as he sees her.

“Right on time,” he says, stepping aside. “Come in, Tsukiko-chan.”

She bows as she enters, shoes clicking softly against the wooden floor. “Thank you for having me.”

“And what’s this?” he asks, noting the box in her hands.

“A gift,” she says, offering it with both palms. “For the household. Herbs from our garden.”

Sakumo lifts his brows, clearly pleased. “Thoughtful and polite. Kakashi didn’t exaggerate.”

She glances toward the hallway beyond, voice soft but dry: “He told you about my table manners.”

Sakumo laughs. “He did mention something about the Nara gift for unnerving silences.”

She allows herself a small smile.

He unties the bundle carefully and peers inside. “Ah - yarrow. This is a healer’s box.”

“My father taught me the blends,” she says. “He said it’s good to repay kindness with care.”

“Wise man,” Sakumo murmurs. He places the box gently on the sideboard. “You’ll have to show me how you prepare the lemon balm. It’s a favorite of mine.”

“I’d be happy to,” she replies, meaning it.

Before she can say more, there’s a soft shuffle in the hallway - and then Kakashi appears, dressed down in a loose shirt and slacks, mask still in place, hair only marginally more orderly than usual. He stops mid-step when he sees her.

She raises a brow.

He looks at the gift box, then at his father, then back at her. “You brought something?”

“Of course.”

Sakumo pats his son on the back as he walks toward the kitchen. “She’s got better manners than you ever did.”

Kakashi mutters something incomprehensible into his mask, but when she passes him on the way to the dining room, she catches the faintest shift in his chakra. Not irritation. Not embarrassment.

Something warm.

And when she looks at him - truly looks - he’s watching her with that same unreadable gaze.

She smiles at him again. Not sharp, not teasing.

Just genuine.

And this time, he doesn’t look away.

~

Dinner is warm in the way Tsukiko hadn’t realized she missed - full of the soft clatter of bowls, the rich scent of broth and vegetables, and the flicker of firelight against wood.

Sakumo serves them himself, ladling steaming portions of nabe into each bowl with the ease of someone used to doing things with care. He offers a small bowl of grated daikon to Tsukiko with a kind smile, and she accepts it with a quiet “thank you.”

Kakashi sits opposite her, spine straight, movements precise. He hasn’t removed his mask - of course not - but he’s pulled it down just enough to eat. She catches a glimpse of his mouth once or twice, pale and composed, lips pressed in a thin, neutral line.

He looks like someone who is bracing for impact.

Which is when Sakumo, utterly relaxed, says:

“So, Tsukiko-chan, did you know that when Kakashi was three, he tried to trap the neighbor’s cat because he wanted to ‘study its movement’?”

Kakashi freezes mid-bite.

Tsukiko blinks. Slowly.

Sakumo continues, cheerful. “He set up this whole series of tripwires using our clothesline and a pile of shuriken. It almost worked, too. Until he tripped over his own wire and fell into the laundry.”

“Tou-san,” Kakashi groans, hand dropping to cover his face. “Why would you - ”

“You liked that cat,” Sakumo says. “You were just too proud to admit it.”

Tsukiko presses her knuckles lightly to her lips to suppress a smile. “Was the cat alright?”

“Perfectly,” Sakumo says. “Kakashi landed in the laundry. The cat walked away with a leaf on its head and refused to make eye contact with him for a week.”

Kakashi slumps slightly in his seat, cheeks flushed, and glares into his soup like it personally betrayed him.

Tsukiko can’t help it - she laughs. A soft, musical thing that bubbles up from somewhere low in her chest.

Kakashi glances at her.

And even through the faint embarrassment still coloring his ears, she sees something flicker behind his eyes.

He likes that she’s laughing. Even if it’s at his expense.

Even if he’ll never admit it.

Sakumo, meanwhile, is entirely unfazed. He refills their bowls with practiced ease and tosses out another story about Kakashi trying to substitute with a log the first time he was scolded for skipping chores - and ending up stuck in a chicken coop for half a day because he miscalculated the distance.

Kakashi groans again.

Tsukiko listens, and watches, and memorizes these moments - not as shinobi, not as future weapons, but as people. As something soft and rare and deeply human.

And for the first time in this life, she lets herself want more evenings like this.

Even if Kakashi turns red every time his father opens his mouth.

~

Tsukiko is delighted.

Not in the sharp, cruel way some children are when they find something to poke at, but in the soft, rare way of someone who has never had this kind of warmth pointed in her direction before - who sees in Sakumo’s teasing not mockery, but love. The kind that wraps itself in laughter and gentles the weight of memory.

She’s never seen Kakashi flustered like this. Never imagined that the endlessly composed boy who spars like a whisper of death and speaks in clipped precision would ever be the subject of such mundane, affectionate stories. It softens something in her chest.

And she treasures each one.

Sakumo leans back after refilling their bowls, tapping a finger to his chin as if searching for the next tale. “Did he tell you about the time he got stuck in a tree because he was trying to escape a squad of overzealous squirrels?”

Kakashi’s head hits the table with a thud.

“I was four.”

“You were convinced they were spying for the enemy,” Sakumo says, entirely serious.

“They were following me!”

“They were eating walnuts.”

Tsukiko can’t hold it in anymore. She laughs - openly, brightly, her shoulders shaking slightly. The image of Kakashi crouched in a tree, mask askew, glaring down at a group of unimpressed squirrels is too vivid to resist.

Kakashi glares at her now, but it lacks bite. His eyes are narrowed, yes, but there’s the faintest shimmer of reluctant amusement behind them.

“You’re enjoying this way too much,” he mutters.

She straightens, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear, utterly composed again except for the way her eyes still sparkle. “Immensely.”

Sakumo grins, wholly unapologetic. “Good. Someone has to keep him humble.”

Kakashi groans again and starts eating faster, clearly hoping to escape before any more of his childhood becomes public knowledge.

But Tsukiko’s still watching him - watching the way his posture has eased, the tension in his shoulders softened, the way his chakra is brighter, less coiled. She sees how much he loves his father, even if he rolls his eyes at him.

And more than that - she sees how rare this is. How precious.

When dinner ends and they start clearing the table, Sakumo thanks her again for the herbs. “You’re welcome any time, Tsukiko-chan,” he says, and she believes him. Fully. Fiercely.

“Next time,” she says, “I’ll bring tea to go with the stories.”

Sakumo chuckles. “You’ll fit right in.”

Kakashi groans one last time, but when he sees her off at the front door, he murmurs - barely audible - 

“Thanks for coming.”

She glances at him, heart warm.

“Thanks for letting me in.”

Chapter Text

She’s still.

That’s the first thing Kakashi registers.

Not her seat choice - though he notes she’s taken the optimal spot, the one he would have chosen. Not the way she looks at him - though her gaze is direct, unnervingly so.

It’s the stillness.

But it’s not tactical. Not the poised stillness of a shinobi conserving energy. It’s different. Intentional, but not strategic. As if she’s settled into the silence like it’s familiar. Comfortable.

He doesn’t understand it.

He knows his own stillness is rooted in efficiency - less movement, fewer variables, better control. Hers isn’t that. It feels more like… a default. As if she belongs in silence the way others belong in motion.

He can’t explain why it bothers him.

She sits with her back straight, hands folded neatly, not fidgeting. No visible tells. Just… quiet. Self-contained.

When her eyes flick toward him - pale, steady - he expects curiosity. Or appraisal. Or even veiled judgment.

Instead, he finds neutrality. Not indifference. Not friendliness either. Just… observation. As if she’s assessed him already and filed the results away.

It’s unsettling.

People usually either admire him, resent him, or fear him. But she doesn’t react at all. It’s not that she doesn’t see him - it’s that she does, and for some reason, that’s worse.

Still, he doesn’t challenge her. Doesn’t tell her to move. Just takes the second-best spot and sits without comment.

Her posture doesn’t change. She doesn’t acknowledge his presence. She doesn’t need to.

Something about her says: I know what I’m doing. You can adjust.

And for some reason, he does.

~

That night at dinner, Kakashi doesn’t speak much. He’s reviewing the spar in his head - how she’d fought, how she’d moved. Her form had been unorthodox. Efficient. Disruptive. She’d used the terrain. Redirected his momentum instead of clashing with it.

She hadn’t overpowered him. She’d undermined him.

His father notices. Of course he does.

“You’re quiet,” his father says.

Kakashi nods. “Lost a spar today.”

Sakumo blinks. “Really?”

“Taijutsu class. Nara Tsukiko.”

Sakumo tilts his head, thinking. “Ensui’s daughter?”

Kakashi pauses. “You know her father?”

“Not personally. I know of him. They called him the Shadow Thread in the last war. Specialized in micro-adjustments to enemy posture mid-fight. Disruption over destruction.”

That tracks.

“She uses her shadow like that,” Kakashi says. “It’s not a bind. More like a recalibration.”

Sakumo raises an eyebrow, interested. “That takes control. Precision.”

Kakashi nods. “She’s not flashy. But she knows how to win.”

There’s a pause.

“You’ll spar again?”

Kakashi doesn’t answer directly. Just returns to his food.

But yes. He will.

He doesn’t understand her.

And he wants to.

~

He’s never liked losing.

But he’s also never lost to someone his age before.

Until now.

Again.

And now again.

They’re in the Nara forest - a training grove dense with tree cover and uneven footing, moss underfoot soft enough to absorb most impact. It favors evasive fighting, not direct strikes. She knows that. She uses it.

Kakashi exhales slowly, wiping mud off his palms. Tsukiko offers him a hand.

He doesn’t take it.

He doesn’t need to.

And she doesn’t look surprised when he brushes himself off on his own. She just lowers her hand, no shift in expression. No forced politeness. She offers, and she retracts. That’s all.

She’s not trying to embarrass him. That’s clear. He’s observed enough gloating to recognize its absence.

Still, it frustrates him. Not her. Himself.

He doesn’t know what she’s doing differently. She moves predictably. Efficiently. Her patterns are visible. But every time he closes the gap or prepares to strike, something shifts - a misalignment in his center of gravity, a step too long, a twitch of instability.

He suspects her shadow, but he hasn’t caught it in action.

Not directly.

She’s subtle. That’s the problem.

He’s not used to needing this many rematches. But he asks for one anyway.

Not to win.

To understand.

~

It’s been over an hour.

His shoulder aches from the last roll. His leg’s scraped raw along the calf. They’re both breathing hard - but she masks it better.

Kakashi narrows his eyes. Her stance is still steady. Not perfect, but controlled. He thinks he sees a tell - a shift in her footing. Her center dips. Maybe tired.

He moves. Fast. Low.

And then-

He trips.

Not from a strike. Not from a trap.

His toe caught a root, but he knows that wasn’t it. His movement was correct. He calculated the angle. His momentum should’ve carried him forward, not down.

Unless it was altered.

He hits the ground hard enough to lose his breath.

When he inhales again, she’s already crouched beside him.

“Are you alright?” she asks. Voice neutral. Not panicked.

He nods.

She offers her hand.

This time, he takes it.

Logically, it’s the most efficient way to get up. His muscles are momentarily compromised. Refusing would delay recovery. And she’s already here.

Her hand is warm. Steady.

She doesn’t pull - she just supports. Once he’s upright, she lets go immediately. No comment. No condescension.

He watches her for a moment longer than necessary.

Catalogues the data point: she will always offer help. She will never shame you for taking it.

He files it under things he didn’t know he needed to know.

~

It happens after his father interrupts them, just as the light begins to slant at that particular angle that makes gauging shadow movement harder. The grove’s natural terrain makes it ideal for training: soft earth for safe falls, a slight incline for tactical footwork, minimal wind to disrupt projectile trajectory.

He notes these things out of habit.

His stance is solid. Weight distributed evenly. Center low. Tsukiko moves left - he expects her to pivot and strike high. She always does when she uses her shadow feint.

She doesn’t.

Instead, she slips in just a fraction slower than usual, her momentum stalled - intentionally. He recognizes it too late. It's a setup. A trap.

Which he walks straight into.

But this time - he’s prepared.

Kakashi adjusts his stance. Drops under her strike. Hooks his foot behind hers and twists - not aggressively, but with just enough torque to unseat her balance. Predict the angle of her fall. Anticipate the reach of her shadow. Guard center. Control distance.

She lands. Controlled, of course. Always controlled.

But he’s already moved.

He steps in.

One hand raised above her shoulder, the other guarding his torso. His position is perfect. She’s out of position. Open.

A clean win.

There’s a beat of stillness.

Then - she looks up at him.

And smiles.

Not the faint, reserved kind she usually offers when a match goes well. Not the polite curve of the lips that signals mutual respect. No - this is something else. Something open. Bright. Her whole face transforms, and the delight in her eyes is unguarded. Real.

“You won,” she says, voice light with sincerity. “That was - ”

He doesn't hear the rest.

His brain short-circuits.

Because he wasn’t prepared for that smile.

Not for how it lights her up. Not for the sheer… joy of it. Not for the way it lands squarely in his chest and short-circuits every neural pathway he’s ever relied on for quick thinking. His posture falters by half a millimeter - enough that he notices.

She’s still talking.

He doesn't know what she said.

His mouth moves before he can stop it: “It was just a lucky opening.”

His voice is strained. Too casual. Wrong inflection.

She tilts her head and beams at him like he just told her the moon rose in her honor.

“It was well-earned,” she replies.

He looks away.

Adjusts his sleeve with a level of scrutiny that should be reserved for weapons inspections. Anything to avoid meeting her eyes again. His chakra’s off rhythm now. Unfamiliar frequency. Like static humming at the edges of something important.

He tries to reset.

Fails.

She’s standing beside him now, brushing dirt from her knees. Casual. Relaxed.

“We should spar again next week,” she says.

He doesn’t answer right away. Can’t.

He’s still trying to force his brain back online.

“Are you saying I can’t win again?” he mutters.

She shrugs, smile widening. “I’m saying I hope you try.”

His eye twitches.

Which is objectively mortifying.

He can feel the crease forming near the edge of his mask. His mouth is doing something traitorous beneath it. He suspects - horribly - that he might be smiling.

And then Sakumo, from the tree line, calls out: “That’s definitely the best thing I’ve seen all week.”

Kakashi groans out loud and walks away.

He doesn’t look back.

But he hears her laugh behind him - soft, silver, and worse, delighted.

And he knows - absolutely and with bone-deep certainty - he’s never going to hear the end of this. From anyone.

Especially not from himself.

~

He knows it’s a trap the moment his father opens his mouth.

“You should come over for dinner tonight,” Sakumo says, perched lazily in a tree like some smug forest spirit. “I’m making nabe.”

Kakashi’s spine goes rigid.

Tsukiko tilts her head - thoughtful, interested. Dangerous.

He pivots. “Tou-san,” he hisses, voice low and tense. “No.”

Sakumo raises one brow. Casual. Weaponized.

“What?” he says, too innocently. “You’ve mentioned her. She’s clearly talented, polite, and I don’t think you’ve ever sparred this well with anyone. I’d like to get to know the girl who keeps knocking you off your balance.”

Kakashi resists the urge to physically combust.

He stares at the ground like it might open up and swallow him. The moss beneath his feet is suddenly fascinating. He will not look at her. He will not confirm this disaster with eye contact.

Tsukiko, meanwhile, is doing that thing where she hides a smile behind her hand - like she’s not enjoying this.

“That’s kind of you, Hatake-sama,” she says, voice all Nara grace and diplomacy. “But - ”

“Oh, come on,” Sakumo cuts in, cheerfully ignoring her escape route. “Call me Sakumo. And don’t let Kakashi scare you off. He pretends he doesn’t want people around, but he does. I promise.”

Kakashi groans. Audibly.

His soul leaves his body. This is his actual, literal death.

Tsukiko laughs.

He’s never heard her laugh like that before - clear and bright and genuine. It’s a soft sound, but it cuts through him like a kunai through paper seals. It’s the kind of sound people write poetry about.

It’s the kind of sound he might write poetry about, if he was inclined to do that kind of thing, and that’s exactly the problem.

“I’d like to,” she says, once she’s composed again. “If it’s alright with my father.”

Sakumo nods, all approval. “Of course. You’re welcome anytime.”

Kakashi mutters, “I’m never sparring near home again.”

Nobody hears him.

Or worse - they do.

And as they walk back through the trees - Sakumo smug and humming under his breath, Tsukiko still far too amused - Kakashi contemplates the logistics of faking his own death and reapplying to the Academy under an alias.

The only thing stopping him is the thought of her laughing again.

And the fact that if he ever heard it be because of someone else, he’d want to burn the forest down.

~

He doesn’t panic when he hears the knock at the door.

He just… adjusts his collar. Straightens his sleeves. Pretends he’s not standing in the hallway like a civilian with too many emotions and no kunai to throw them at.

He hears his father answer it - calm, confident, barefoot. And then:

“Right on time,” Sakumo says, warm and welcoming.

A moment later: “Come in, Tsukiko-chan.”

Kakashi considers escape. The back door’s only seven meters away. He could make it. Probably.

But then he hears her voice.

“Thank you for having me.”

Polite. Measured. Even in tone.

He rounds the corner a second too late to stop the next part.

“What’s this?” Sakumo asks.

“A gift,” she says, offering something with both hands. “Herbs. For the household.”

Of course she brought something. Of course she did.

Kakashi steps into view - and freezes.

She’s standing in their front hall like she belongs there. Like she’s always belonged there. Her hair is pulled back neatly, and there’s a faint flush to her cheeks from the cold air outside, and she’s holding a box wrapped in neat twine and calm intention.

His brain hiccups.

“You brought something?” he asks, because apparently, that’s what comes out of his mouth.

“Of course,” she says.

Sakumo, the traitor, claps him on the back as he passes. “She’s got better manners than you ever did.”

Kakashi mutters something into his mask that no one hears and no one needs to.

But as she walks past him - barefoot now, her steps feather-light on the wood - he feels the shift in her chakra. It brushes his like a breeze through tall grass. Steady. Warm.

He glances up - and she’s looking at him.

Really looking.

And then she smiles.

Not a victory smile. Not a clever one.

Just… a smile.

Genuine.

And he thinks: I am so doomed.

~

Dinner is… fine. Objectively.

He’s sitting straight. His sleeves are clean. He’s pulled his mask down just enough to eat without dying. His father’s made his favorite variation of nabe, with the miso base and soft daikon, and the lighting is good, and Tsukiko says “thank you” after every serving like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

And Kakashi?

Kakashi is braced for impact.

Which hits right on cue.

“So, Tsukiko-chan,” Sakumo begins, too casually. “Did you know that when Kakashi was three, he tried to trap the neighbor’s cat to study its movement?”

No.

Kakashi freezes mid-bite.

Tsukiko tilts her head. Curious.

His father continues. Of course he does. “He used the clothesline and three shuriken. Almost worked, too. Until he tripped his own trap and landed in the laundry pile.”

Kakashi groans. “Tou-san.”

“You liked that cat,” Sakumo replies, smug. “You were just too proud to admit it.”

Tsukiko presses her hand to her mouth. Trying not to laugh.

He can tell. It’s written all over her face.

And then she asks, ever-so-softly, “Was the cat alright?”

Sakumo chuckles. “Perfectly. Kakashi took the full brunt. Cat left with a leaf on its head and never made eye contact with him again.”

Kakashi stares into his soup like it might open a portal to a world where this moment didn’t exist.

And then -

Then she laughs.

It’s not polite.

It’s real. A light, bright, startled sound, like something sacred let out by accident.

He looks at her.

And - yeah.

He wants to die.

But also - he doesn’t. Because she’s laughing because of him. Not at him. Not really. And something about that makes the whole thing… worth it. Somehow.

Even if his soul just tried to flee through the soles of his feet.

~

Sakumo’s not done.

“You know,” he says after refilling their bowls, “he once tried to use the Substitution Technique to avoid chores.”

Kakashi stiffens. “No - ”

“Ended up stuck in the chicken coop for six hours because he misjudged the distance.”

Tsukiko actually has to set her chopsticks down.

She’s laughing too hard to eat.

Kakashi sinks lower in his seat.

“Why are you like this,” he mutters.

Sakumo smirks. “Parental duty.”

Then: “Did he tell you about the squirrels?”

Kakashi’s head hits the table.

“I was four.”

“He was convinced they were spying for Kumo. Hid in a tree all afternoon.”

“They were following me.”

“They were eating walnuts.”

Tsukiko’s laughing again - shoulders shaking, hand to her mouth, eyes sparkling.

Kakashi glares at her. Weakly.

“You’re enjoying this way too much.”

She wipes her eyes. “Immensely.”

Sakumo raises his cup. “Good. Someone has to keep him humble.”

Kakashi starts eating faster just to stop himself from doing something deeply irrational, like smiling.

Because the thing is - this is the happiest he’s ever been while suffering a complete loss of dignity.

She’s watching him, still.

Not with pity. Not even amusement anymore.

With something warmer.

And he thinks, If she ever stops looking at me like that, I’ll burn down the village.

~

After dinner, they clear the table in silence. Sakumo thanks her for the herbs - sincerely, like he means it - and tells her she’s welcome anytime. She says she’ll bring tea next time, and Sakumo says she’ll fit right in.

Kakashi groans. Again.

He can’t help it.

But when they step down the hallway, and the door opens and the night air folds around them like a cool blanket, he walks a little slower than usual.

Not because he’s tired.

Because he doesn’t want the night to end.

He looks at her. She’s still glowing faintly from laughter, and he - he feels like he’s been opened up and stitched back together in better alignment somehow.

He should say something.

He doesn’t know what. So he settles for the only thing that doesn’t sound stupid in his head.

“Thanks for coming.”

It’s barely above a whisper.

But she hears him.

She glances at him, voice just as quiet. “Thanks for letting me in.”

And Kakashi - Hatake Kakashi, prodigy of Konoha, weapon in training, legend in progress - thinks:

If this is what losing feels like, I’ll do it again tomorrow.

And the day after that.

And every day she smiles at him like that.

~

He gets to class early the next morning. Of course he does. That’s standard. Routine. It has nothing to do with the way she’d looked walking away from his house last night, moonlight catching in her hair like she belonged to it.

He walks through the door and stops.

She’s already there.

Back corner. Right side. Same seat as always. Her scroll is open, pencil in hand, hair tucked behind one ear. She doesn’t look up - yet. She’s focused. Still.

His feet carry him forward before he finishes the thought.

He should go to his seat. The usual one. Second-best line of sight. Clear exit. He always sits there.

Instead, he turns.

And sits beside her.

There’s no logic to it. None that holds up, anyway. His brain scrambles to supply one anyway, because it has to. Because if he admits the real reason, he might actually pass out on the spot.

If they were attacked during class, proximity would matter. She fights with shadows - close-range coordination could give them the edge. It’s tactical. Strategic. Necessary.

It is not because the space between them yesterday felt too far.

It is not because he doesn’t want her laugh to belong to yesterday alone.

It is not because he woke up this morning thinking about the way she’d looked at him at the door, and it felt like standing on the edge of something stupid and irreversible.

She looks up.

And smiles.

Not wide. Not radiant. Just… soft.

Like she expected him.

And his heart - traitorous thing that it is - does something ridiculous. It kicks once, hard, then seems to forget how to beat for a full second.

He looks away.

Stares very intently at his own scroll.

He can feel the warmth creeping up the back of his neck. His thoughts, usually precise and fast, scatter like shuriken thrown by a beginner.

She says nothing. Doesn’t tease. Doesn’t comment.

Just goes back to her notes like it’s the most natural thing in the world for him to be here beside her, like he’s always been here, like she didn’t just undo every bit of carefully constructed distance he’s spent years perfecting.

And the worst part?

He wants to stay.

Even though he shouldn’t.

Even though he knows this is a mistake.

Even though it’s stupid and illogical and utterly unbearable.

He wants to stay anyway.

~

They eat lunch under a tree in the courtyard.

It’s quiet there - sheltered from the worst of the noise and sun, a little out of the way. Students laugh and shout in the distance, but here, there’s only the soft rustle of wind through new leaves and the occasional chirp of a bird overhead. It’s peaceful. Controlled.

He likes it.

He likes it more with her there, which is… problematic.

Tsukiko sits beside him, legs tucked neatly beneath her, her lunch wrapped in dark cloth, movements careful and quiet. She eats slowly, precisely, and doesn’t fill the silence with words.

He likes that too.

It’s easy.

Or it would be - if his thoughts would stop misbehaving.

He opens his bento. It's basic, nothing special - he made it himself before school. Quick, efficient. Fuel, not anything worth offering.

And then -

“Here,” she says, and extends a rice ball toward him.

It’s small, shaped neatly, fingers notched just faintly into the sides. Seaweed folded with delicate symmetry.

He stares at it.

Not because he doesn’t want it.

Because he does. Too much.

He reaches out and takes it, trying to pretend this doesn’t mean anything. That his hand doesn’t brush hers for a fraction of a second. That his stomach doesn’t do that same strange lurch it did yesterday when she smiled at him across the dinner table.

“Thanks,” he mutters.

She gives no explanation, no teasing commentary. Just watches him with that quiet attentiveness that always makes him feel both seen and a little exposed.

He takes a bite. It’s perfect.

Of course it is.

He chews, swallows, and reaches into his own lunch before he can second-guess the impulse.

“Here,” he says.

She looks over. He’s holding out a wedge of orange - peeled, neat, glistening slightly with juice. It catches the sunlight between them, bright and golden.

She blinks. Then takes it with a kind of reverence that catches him completely off guard.

“Thank you,” she says, voice soft.

Then - her smile.

It’s different from the others. There’s joy in it, yes, but also something unguarded. Something delighted and a little surprised, like this small thing - a slice of fruit, offered wordlessly - has somehow made her day brighter.

“Oranges are my favourite,” she adds.

And Kakashi-

He doesn’t know what to do with that.

He feels like someone’s hit him with a transformation jutsu and forgotten to dispel it. His chest is too full. His thoughts are too loud. His mouth opens - then closes.

He files it away instead.

Oranges. Her favourite.

He’ll remember that.

He’ll remember this.

The warm sun. The hush between them. The shared food. Her smile.

And the way he suddenly, deeply hopes she offers him another rice ball tomorrow.

~

He packs extra orange slices the next morning.

Not because he plans to share them. That would be ridiculous. Sentimental. Weak.

He just… peels an extra one. Automatically. Doesn’t even realize what he’s doing until he’s layering the segments into a second section of the bento like it’s routine. Like it isn’t the first time he’s ever packed food with someone else in mind.

He closes the lid a little too firmly.

It’s fine.

She might not even offer him another rice ball.

(She will)

He tells himself not to expect anything. Not to hope.

He tells himself a lot of things he doesn’t believe.

~

They end up under the same tree again.

They don’t plan it. Don’t say anything. It just… happens.

She settles beside him with the same quiet grace she carries everywhere. He doesn’t speak, just opens his bento and pretends like his entire nervous system isn’t on high alert.

Then -

“Here,” she says, gently, like a repeat of yesterday was never in question. Like sharing is simply part of who she is.

A rice ball.

Small. Precise. A little off-center this time. He thinks maybe she packed it in a hurry.

He accepts it with a nod. “Thanks.”

He doesn’t mean to be pleased.

But he is.

So much more than he should be.

And when he slides the second tier of his bento toward her - carefully angled, not looking directly - she pauses.

Looks down.

Then up.

And she smiles.

That same smile.

Open. Surprised. Delighted.

Like he’s done something extraordinary when all he’s done is remember a fruit.

“You packed extra,” she says, like it’s a gift, not a coincidence.

“Didn’t want it to go bad,” he mutters.

It’s a terrible excuse.

She doesn’t call him on it.

Just takes a slice. Bites into it.

Closes her eyes for half a second - long enough to breathe the taste in.

And murmurs, “Still my favourite.”

He looks away.

Because if he doesn’t, he’s going to do something reckless.

Like offer her the whole box. Like tell her that maybe he doesn’t hate lunch breaks anymore. Like ask if she’ll sit here again tomorrow, and the day after, and -

“Want the last one?” she asks, holding out half of her last rice ball.

He stares at it.

Then takes it.

Tries not to smile.

Fails.

And doesn’t even care.

Chapter Text

It starts with seven words.

“My father wants to meet you,” she says.

Kakashi blinks.

His brain, normally a fortress of focus, stalls like a misfired jutsu.

They’re walking back from the training grounds, footsteps quiet along the path. He’s cataloguing her movements from their last spar - slight overcorrection on her second kick, shadow strike landed at 64% efficiency, chakra output consistent.

And then she says that.

My father wants to meet you.

He reruns it. Once. Twice.

It doesn’t change.

Her tone was calm. Neutral. Informative, not provocative. As if she’d just said, “It might rain tomorrow.” Or, “There’s a sale on tea.”

“Why?” he blurts out before he can stop himself.

She looks at him like he’s missing something obvious. “Because I keep mentioning you.”

That doesn’t help.

“Mentioning me?”

“To him,” she says, like it’s obvious. “After training. At dinner. In the evenings.”

He’s going to die.

Not from embarrassment - from complete psychological destabilization.

He tries to walk calmly. Tries to keep his expression blank. But inside, his brain is doing something catastrophic. Alarms, traps, evacuation routes.

“Is he going to interrogate me?” he asks, too sharply.

She blinks. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

“He just wants to know who I spar with every week.”

Kakashi stares at the road ahead like it personally betrayed him. He adjusts his mask. Resets his breathing. Runs a mental diagnostic.

Nothing helps.

This is not a training mission. There is no strategic value. There is no protocol for meet the parent of the girl whose laughter rewires your cardiovascular system.

She looks at him sidelong. “You don’t have to come.”

He’s going to say no. That would be the logical choice. He doesn’t do family dinners. He doesn’t do meeting people. He doesn’t do implied significance.

But what comes out is:

“... When?”

She tilts her head, expression thoughtful. “Tomorrow evening. At six.”

He nods. Once.

Why did he agree again?

She smiles, soft and happy and grateful. “Thank you.”

Ah. That’s why.

~

Later that night, Kakashi sharpens a kunai.

The sound is familiar. Comforting. Repetitive. Steel against stone. Like breathing. Like counting. Like pretending everything is still under control.

“You’re making that edge too fine,” Sakumo says without looking up.

Kakashi ignores him. Keeps sharpening. Keeps his grip steady even though his hands feel too warm and his pulse is too loud in his ears.

He sharpens until the edge gleams unnaturally bright under the lamp, too thin to hold its bite in a real fight.

“You’re distracted,” his father adds, more observation than rebuke.

Kakashi stares at the blade. “She invited me to dinner. With her father.”

There’s a pause. He hears Sakumo’s cup settle onto the table. A soft sound. Like something slotting into place.

“I see,” his father says, and somehow manages to sound like he actually does.

Then he smiles. Knowingly.

Kakashi bristles. “It’s not like that. We’re just sparring partners. Not even friends. Her father's just - curious about me. That’s what she said.”

“Mmh.” Sakumo hums thoughtfully. “And I assume you pack extra orange slices for all your sparring partners?”

Kakashi freezes. The kunai slips slightly in his grip. “That’s - how do you even know about that?”

Sakumo arches an eyebrow. “Because I notice things?” he says, like it’s the most obvious answer in the world.

Kakashi scowls, and it feels like his entire face is too hot. He wants to disappear into the floor. Or throw the kunai across the room. Or rewind time and not mention anything at all.

Sakumo lifts his hands in mock surrender, clearly enjoying this. “Don’t panic. Just be yourself.”

Kakashi doesn’t answer. Doesn’t trust himself to. Because that - being himself - is the part that feels most dangerous.

He mutters, “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”

Sakumo laughs, warm and unbothered. Like there’s no possible way this situation could go wrong. Like it’s simple. Like he hasn’t just turned Kakashi’s entire internal equilibrium inside out.

Kakashi grips the kunai again but doesn’t sharpen it. Just holds it. Quietly spiraling.

Later, when he’s alone, he stands in front of his closet for too long. Arms crossed. Staring.

He doesn’t know what he’s looking for. He just knows he doesn’t want to look like he tried. But he really doesn’t want to look like he didn’t.

So he picks something in the middle and tells himself it doesn’t matter.

Then changes his shirt three more times anyway.

~

Dinner is served in three courses.

Kakashi does not relax.

Ensui, for his part, is a good host - unfailingly courteous, his movements smooth and unobtrusive. He doesn’t press. Doesn’t pry. The conversation stays rooted in safe ground: technique, mission structure, the academy curriculum. Nothing overt. Nothing personal. Just enough to make Kakashi wonder if the whole thing is personal.

He answers every question with polite restraint, keeping his tone neutral and his posture perfect. Doesn’t fidget. Doesn’t speak out of turn. Doesn’t touch the napkin folded neatly at his side because he’s ninety percent sure he’ll knock over the teacup if he does.

Tsukiko sits beside him, serene as ever. She eats with small, precise motions - measured bites, quiet sips. It’s not cold, exactly. Just… composed. Like everything she does is an extension of some internal ritual. Like she’s already memorized the entire room and knows exactly how much space she’s allowed to take up in it.

Kakashi tries not to watch her too obviously.

He fails.

It’s not that she’s doing anything different. She’s just sitting. Breathing. Existing. But something about the slope of her shoulder as she reaches for her tea, the quiet tilt of her head as she listens to her father speak - it draws his attention like a blade drawn half an inch from its sheath. He doesn’t understand it. He doesn’t want to understand it. But it’s there.

The meal continues. Miso soup. Grilled river fish. Pickled vegetables, crisp and sour. He eats slowly, methodically, the way he was taught. Every motion feels rehearsed. Performed. He knows how to behave in rooms like this. He’s been trained to pass inspections far more intense than this one.

And still.

Still, he feels like he’s walking a tightrope barefoot, over something much deeper than protocol.

At one point, Ensui refills his tea without a word. The gesture is quiet, efficient. Not deferential, but… kind. It startles him.

“Thank you,” Kakashi says, almost too late.

Ensui only nods. “You’re very disciplined.”

It’s not a compliment. Not really. Just an observation. A truth spoken aloud, like so many of the Nara clan’s truths tend to be. But it lands strange in his chest. Like a weight. Like something being measured against something else.

Kakashi lowers his eyes. “I try.”

Tsukiko, beside him, glances over. It’s brief. Barely a shift.

But he feels it.

They finish the meal in silence. At some point, Tsukiko clears the dishes, her movements smooth and practiced. Kakashi instinctively begins to stand, unsure if he’s meant to help, but Ensui gestures for him to remain seated.

“She’s capable,” he says. “And stubborn.”

Something about the way he says it makes Kakashi’s ears burn.

He doesn’t respond. Just folds his hands in his lap and stares at the place where his teacup used to be.

Eventually, the silence stretches long enough to break gently under its own weight. Ensui rises first, and Tsukiko returns with a small tray - fruit and yokan for dessert. Kakashi accepts the slice she places in front of him with both hands, unsure how to respond to the casual domesticity of it all.

He doesn’t know what this is. A test? A trap? A... kindness?

But he eats.

And it tastes like something offered, not owed.

~

When dinner finally ends, Kakashi stands automatically.

He bows to Ensui with the clipped precision of a mission debrief. Thanks him with just enough formality to be respectful, not so much as to seem rattled.

He does not bolt for the door.

But every nerve is screaming retreat, retreat, retreat.

He walks like a soldier withdrawing from the site of a recently defused explosive tag. Cautious. Upright. One breath from combustion.

Tsukiko follows him.

The corridor is quiet, lined with paper-paneled doors and fading light. The scent of steamed rice lingers, mingling with ink and polished wood. She doesn’t speak at first. Just walks beside him, her presence as steady as always, fingers loosely linked in front of her.

And then - 

“You look like you just walked out of a war zone.”

He halts.

His hand hovers near the doorframe. He blinks. Once. Then again.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, he turns to look at her.

She’s watching him. Face composed. Voice dry.

But her eyes are smiling - just a little. Not mockery. Not teasing. Just… soft amusement. Precise. Accurate.

He calculates his options.

Deny it? Obvious and false.

Deflect? She’d see through it.

Pretend he didn’t hear? Cowardly.

He exhales instead. Quiet. Controlled. His mask shifts slightly with the breath.

“I was vastly outnumbered,” he mutters.

Tsukiko tilts her head, lips quirking. “Is my father that terrifying?”

He glances sideways at her. Considers how disastrous it would be to say yes.

She’s smiling now. Barely - but it’s real.

And something in his chest - tight and coiled since he walked through her front door - unwinds. Just a little.

“You lived,” she adds, reaching to slide the door open for him.

“Barely.”

Her eyes crinkle at the corners. “He likes you.”

Kakashi freezes.

She tilts her head again, curious. “You didn’t notice?”

No. He absolutely did not.

… Or maybe he did. Somewhere in the static. But noticing isn’t the same as accepting, and Kakashi is six and fundamentally unequipped for this kind of psychological warfare.

He shrugs. A valiant attempt at casual. “Tactical misread.”

She raises her eyebrows at him. “Mm.” Thankfully, she doesn’t press.  

They step outside. The air is cool, brushing against his skin like a reset.

“Thank you for coming, Kakashi,” she says. Quiet. Sincere.

And Kakashi - who should say something normal, something safe, something like you’re welcome or thank you or never again - just nods.

And thinks:

He would endure a hundred more interrogation dinners if it meant she’d say his name like that again.

~

When Kakashi finally makes it home, it’s late enough that the house is quiet - washed in the hush of evening, light dim and slanted through the hall. He toes off his sandals, closes the door behind him, and stands there for a long moment.

Trying not to think about the way she said his name. How gentle it’d sounded in her voice, how soft the normally harsh syllables had been. How she’d made it sound like a secret.

Failing. Miserably.

There’s the soft clink of a teacup from the kitchen.

Then: “You’re late,” comes Sakumo’s voice. Mellow, unhurried.

Kakashi doesn’t flinch. Just drifts into the kitchen like a ghost with too many thoughts and absolutely no ability to deal with any of them.

Sakumo’s sitting at the table, feet up, tea in hand. He glances over the rim of his cup with an easy smile.

“Well?” he says, far too casually. “What happened this time?”

Kakashi chokes. “Tsukiko didn’t do anything.”

Sakumo raises an eyebrow. “I never mentioned a name.”

A beat.

Kakashi glares at the wall and considers walking back out the door and into the nearest ravine.

Sakumo snorts.

“I’m just saying,” he drawls, “you’re looking a little dazed. Little glassy-eyed. Bit shell-shocked.”

“I’m fine.”

“You look like a kid who got caught in a genjutsu and didn’t mind it.”

“I said I’m fine.”

Sakumo hums. “She’s a sweet girl.”

Kakashi slumps into a chair. Buries half his face in his arms. “She’s weird.”

“Uh huh.”

“She notices everything. Everything. It’s like talking to a Byakugan.”

“Mm.”

“She smiled at me,” he mumbles into his sleeve, voice muffled and faintly accusatory. He doesn’t add she said my name, because even in his head that sounds absurdly pathetic and his father would absolutely laugh at him over it.

There’s a pause.

Then Sakumo grins, slow and warm. “Ah,” he says, with far too much satisfaction. “So that’s what happened.”

Kakashi doesn’t answer. Just sinks lower into the table.

Sakumo lets it sit for a moment, then sobers - just a little. Sets his cup down. Leans forward.

“You’ll figure it out one day, you know.”

Kakashi doesn’t lift his head.

“Figure what out?” he grumbles.

Sakumo’s voice is quieter now. Not teasing. “Why it matters.”

Kakashi doesn’t say anything.

He just sits there, limbs heavy, thoughts heavier. He doesn’t understand what’s happening. Doesn’t understand her. Doesn’t understand himself, either - not really.

But he remembers the way her eyes crinkled. The way she’d opened the door for him like it meant something. The way his name sounded in her voice.

Soft. Like maybe he wasn’t as difficult as he felt.

He buries his head deeper into his arms.

He’s fine. Everything’s fine.

He’s just going to need a thirty-year nap to recover.

~

That night, he lies awake longer than he should.

The ceiling is the same as always - whitewashed, cracked slightly in the left corner where a kunai once ricocheted during training. The silence is familiar. The air still smells faintly of the broth his father made two nights ago. Everything is still. Still and ordinary.

And yet.

Something inside him is not.

He folds his hands over his chest, stares into the dark, and tries to make sense of himself. A familiar habit. Dissect. Analyze. Control. That’s how you master a technique - how you master anything. You break it down into parts.

But this?

This isn’t like ninjutsu.

This isn’t like anything.

He should have hated this. He thought he would. The dinner. The conversation. The vulnerability of sitting across from the man who raised Tsukiko and being asked questions that - while polite - felt like they meant something. Like his answers weren’t just being heard, but kept.

And then Tsukiko, walking him to the door, saying he looked like he’d come out of a warzone - with that little half-smile, all wry amusement and quiet understanding. Like she knew the storm her father had put him through, and found it… endearing.

Kakashi rolls onto his side and buries half his face into the pillow.

He should hate this.

He does hate parts of it.

The messiness. The unpredictability. The fact that there’s no manual, no flowchart, no tactical solution to why she makes his chest feel like it’s caving in when she looks at him with soft eyes and offers him half a rice ball like it’s nothing. The complexity of it all frustrates him. There’s no clean edge, no clear direction. Just… feeling.

He doesn’t know how to do this. And that’s what bothers him most.

He’s used to knowing. To instinct. To honed reflex and elegant efficiency. But she throws that all off course - without even trying.

And yet.

Despite the discomfort. Despite the way his thoughts keep looping in circles like he’s caught in a low-grade genjutsu. Despite the sheer messy uncontrollability of it all - he doesn’t mind.

Not really.

Because her father said she enjoyed sparring with him. Because she offered him food like it was natural. Because of how she’d smiled when he gave her that first orange slice, and it wasn’t the usual small, composed smile she gave after a spar - it was brighter. Softer. Like he’d done something right without trying.

He doesn’t understand it. But he doesn’t want it to stop.

Just because he dislikes the feeling of it doesn’t mean he minds it. Not really. Not if it means she’ll keep smiling at him like that. Not if it means she’ll keep sitting beside him at lunch. Keep walking him to the door. Keep saying his name like he’s more than sharp edges and silence.

Kakashi shifts onto his back again and lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

He’s six years old. And something is happening to him.

He doesn’t understand it. But he thinks, maybe, he can learn.

For her - he wants to learn.

~

Sakumo says it offhandedly a few weeks later, like it’s just a practical suggestion. Like he’s not aiming it with surgical precision straight through Kakashi’s spine.

“You should invite Tsukiko-chan over again,” he says, slicing vegetables with far too much casual grace. “She fit in well.”

Kakashi, halfway through sharpening a kunai at the kitchen table, pauses.

His grip tightens.

His brain tries very hard not to interpret that suggestion as anything other than what it is: a polite follow-up to a polite dinner with a polite guest.

Not a repeat invitation.

Not an opportunity.

Not something Kakashi had secretly been wanting to do for over a month and just didn’t know how to say.

“She’s probably busy,” he mutters, not looking up.

Sakumo hums. “Ask anyway.”

Kakashi doesn’t answer. He sharpens the kunai so hard it nearly sparks.

~

He asks the next morning.

Casually. Quietly. Between classes, just as she finishes tucking away her notebook and the hallway begins to clear.

“Hey,” he says.

She glances over. “Hmm?”

He hesitates - just for a breath. Then, as quickly and painlessly as he can manage: “Tou-san asked if you wanted to come over again. For dinner.”

He doesn’t look at her when he says it. His heart is already being obnoxious. He’s not going to encourage it.

There’s a pause. Then -

“I’d like that,” she says.

Soft. Certain.

She’s smiling again - that calm, quiet one that always makes it feel like the ground under him is steadier than it should be.

“Same time?”

He nods once, short and efficient. “Yeah. I’ll walk you after class.”

“Okay.”

That’s it. No drama. No hesitation.

She turns back toward the classroom like it’s nothing. Like it hasn’t just rearranged the atmosphere in his chest entirely.

He stares straight ahead, resolutely ignoring the way his pulse jumps.

He’s not pleased. He’s just… relieved.

For entirely tactical reasons.

~

Dinner is quieter this time.

Not tense - just… softer.

Sakumo relents, as promised. No stories about Kakashi’s early missteps. No commentary about squirrels or chicken coops. Just warmth. Steady questions. Sincere interest.

He serves the food with practiced ease, humming under his breath as he ladles broth into their bowls. Kakashi watches from his usual spot - next to Tsukiko, who sits with her hands folded neatly, eyes flicking over the table like she’s memorizing the way the light lands on the miso glaze.

“So, Tsukiko-chan,” Sakumo says once they’ve eaten enough to lull the tension, “tell me about yourself. What do you like doing? Outside of making my son chase his balance across the training field.”

Kakashi shoots him a look. Sakumo ignores it entirely.

Tsukiko tilts her head, thoughtful.

She doesn’t answer right away.

But then - quietly, with that unshakable calm - she begins.

“I like listening,” she says. “To quiet things. Wind through branches. Footsteps before a storm. The way ink sounds on paper. There’s always a rhythm, if you’re patient.”

Sakumo pauses mid-sip, clearly not expecting that.

Kakashi’s chopsticks still in his hand.

She goes on.

“I like walking in the woods when it rains. The trees sound different. The moss feels warmer. And sometimes you can see the deer if you don’t breathe too loud.” She glances down at her bowl, smile faint. “I think people miss most of what matters because they expect everything important to announce itself.”

Sakumo leans back, watching her with something that isn’t quite surprise. It’s gentler. Like respect.

Kakashi says nothing.

Not because he has nothing to say - but because he’s never heard her talk like this before. Not in class. Not during spars. Not even beneath their tree at lunch.

She’s always quiet. Measured. But now -

She’s not just speaking.

She’s sharing.

“I like stories,” she continues, her voice still soft but steady. “The old kind. The ones where the heroes are kind first, and clever second. I think most people forget that kindness is a kind of strategy.”

Sakumo hums low in his throat. “That’s a good one. I’ll remember it.”

She smiles at that - more freely than Kakashi’s used to seeing.

And then she looks over at him.

“I like oranges,” she adds.

His heart stutters.

Not because she’s teasing - but because she isn’t.

And for a single, disorienting moment, he forgets how to breathe.

~

He feels strange, after that. Like something inside him, something about the way he sees her, has shifted. 

He’s never heard her say anything like that before. Never heard anyone say anything like that before.

Afterward, when she’s helping clear the bowls, her sleeves rolled up just slightly and the kitchen quiet around them, Kakashi catches himself watching her - not the way he watches targets or terrain or mistakes-in-the-making.

But… differently.

The way her fingers move over the rim of the bowl. The way she dries the cup in small, perfect circles. The way she hums - barely audible - a tune with no name.

She notices everything. But not to analyze. Not to prepare.

To marvel .

And for a moment he wonders what it must be like, to live in a world that still feels new. That still feels like something worth marveling at.

He glances away before she can catch him staring.

But her voice still echoes in his mind -

Kindness is a kind of strategy.

And now, he thinks maybe he’s starting to understand her. Not fully. But enough to want to listen. Enough to want to see the world the way she does. If only for a moment.

~

Later, after she’s gone, Kakashi sits on the steps outside the house.

The air is cool, tinged with the scent of moss and smoke. The lantern near the gate flickers once, then steadies. He doesn’t move. Inside, Sakumo’s washing the last of the dishes, whistling low and off-key. Comfortable.

Kakashi is not comfortable.

He’s… something else. Something restless and still at the same time, like chakra held too long in his lungs.

Tsukiko’s voice won’t leave his head.

I like listening. To quiet things.

He keeps hearing it.

Keeps replaying the way she said it - not to impress, not to perform. Just… because it was true. Because that’s how she lives. Like she’s paying attention to everything the world whispers that no one else hears.

And she said it to his father. In his kitchen. Over his dinner table.

Like it was normal. Like she belonged there.

And the worst part - the most treacherous, irrational part - is that he hadn’t just tolerated it.

He’d wanted it. He’d liked it.

All of it.

The way she quietly thanked his father, twice, once with words and once with the way she dried the dishes like she’d been doing it her whole life. The way she just - comfortably existed in a space that had previously been occupied by him and his father alone. And the way she looked at the steam curling off the soup and said, doesn’t it almost look like breath?  

Who talks like that?

Who sees like that?

Not him.

He catalogs the world - tracks threats, files patterns, commits weak points to memory.

She sits in it like it’s a poem. She speaks like everything deserves to be remembered.

And Kakashi doesn’t know what to do with that.

He shouldn’t want to hear her speak like that again. He shouldn’t want to pack oranges again. He shouldn’t be sitting on these steps hoping his father will say something like, She should come over again, just so Kakashi has a reason that isn’t a feeling.

But he is.

And when Sakumo finally comes out, drying his hands on a cloth, he glances at Kakashi once. Then sits beside him and says, “She sees the world differently.”

Kakashi doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. Because Sakumo just smiles - low and quiet and knowing.

And Kakashi -

Kakashi just stares at the gate Tsukiko disappeared through.

And thinks,

Maybe I want to see it like that too. If only for a moment.

~

Sakumo doesn’t press. He never does.

He just sits there beside Kakashi on the step, the silence companionable, folding around them like the dusk. The night hums softly with the usual sounds - wind through leaves, a distant dog bark, the faint clink of metal from a forge three streets over.

Kakashi doesn’t move.

He’s still watching the gate.

As if, by force of will alone, he can conjure her back. As if she might step through it again, barefoot and soft-voiced, carrying something strange and thoughtful, like dried lemon balm and stories about rain.

Sakumo exhales once, long and even. “You liked having her here.”

It’s not a question.

Kakashi doesn’t answer right away. His hands are clenched on his knees.

“I didn’t mind it,” he mutters eventually, because anything more would be too much.

Sakumo’s chuckle is quiet and unintrusive. “Mm. That’s how it starts.”

Kakashi narrows his eyes. “How what starts?”

Sakumo just shakes his head. “You’ll figure it out.”

Kakashi scowls. He hates that tone. That you’ll see tone. It’s smug. It’s irritating.

It’s right.

Because the truth is - he had liked it. More than liked it.

He liked watching her listen to his father. He liked that she sat just a little closer than necessary. He liked that she spoke slowly, like she chose her words with care, like every sentence had weight. He liked that she wasn’t afraid of silences - that she understood them.

He liked that she looked at him like he was something to marvel at, not fix.

And he liked the way his world felt quieter - not emptier, but clearer - when she was in it.

“I don’t understand her,” he says suddenly.

Sakumo glances at him.

“I don’t,” Kakashi insists. “She doesn’t fight like anyone I know. She doesn’t think like anyone I know. She’s not trying to prove anything, and she still…” He falters. “Wins. Every time.”

Sakumo hums again. “Maybe she’s not fighting to win.”

That makes Kakashi pause.

Because he is. Always. Every match, every test, every moment in the academy is a measurement. Strength. Efficiency. Precision. It’s the only way he knows how to move.

But Tsukiko -

She doesn’t fight like that.

She moves like she’s dancing. Like the battle isn’t the point - it’s the motion. The conversation. The exchange.

“Then what is she fighting for?” he asks. And it slips out quieter than he means it to.

Sakumo doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he rises slowly, stretches his arms over his head, and says, “Maybe you should ask her.”

Kakashi stays sitting. Stays quiet.

But later, when he closes the door to his room and stares out the window at the pale wash of moonlight on the stones below-

He thinks:

Maybe I will.

Not because he’s curious. Not because he wants an edge in their next spar.

But because he wants to know. Wants to understand her. Because something in her smile tonight made the world feel new. 

And he wants to see it again.

~

The next day, Kakashi is the first to arrive at the classroom.

It’s not intentional.

(It’s always intentional)

He takes the same seat as yesterday, as the day before yesterday and the day before that - her row, beside her, not across the aisle like before. Not in the one with the second-best sightlines and escape routes. Not the one he sat in all year, up until she started laughing at his father’s squirrel stories and making the world sound like it was something worth marveling at.

He sits down. Drops his bag with practiced efficiency. Opens his notebook.

And stares at the blank page.

Ask her.

It should be easy.

He’s trained to give concise commands. Clean reports. He can explain the mechanics of chakra control in twenty-five words or fewer. He knows how to say things.

But not this. Because this is -

It’s not tactical. It’s not clean. It’s her voice in his ears saying wind through branches, and footsteps before a storm, and ink has a rhythm, if you listen.

It’s the way her words stay in his chest long after she’s done speaking, like smoke that won’t clear.

And he wants more.

But how does he ask that?

How does he say Can you say something strange and beautiful again so I can write it down in my head and pretend it doesn’t matter?

He tries.

Could you… talk more, sometimes?

Too vague.

I like listening to you.

Too vulnerable.

I think you notice things in ways no one else does.

I want to hear what else you’ve noticed.

I don’t want today to be ordinary if you’re in it.

He slams the notebook shut.

Too much.

Too much .

They’re just sparring partners. They’re still in the academy. They're kids.

And he doesn’t even like talking.

Except -

He does. With her.

He likes the way she says I think kindness is a kind of strategy , like it’s not a contradiction. He likes the way she chooses silence not because she’s afraid, but because she’s listening.

He likes that yesterday, for three full minutes, she explained why rain sounds different when it hits maple leaves instead of pine needles.

And he’s not sure what that means. Only that she should be here by now.

He glances at the door before he catches himself.

Then again.

A minute passes. Then another.

And when he hears her steps - quiet, deliberate - his breath catches in a way that makes no sense at all, so he doesn’t think about it.

She enters with her usual grace, satchel hugged close to her chest, hair slightly windblown from the walk. She sees him - seated where he always is now - and her eyes crinkle just a little in greeting.

“Good morning,” she says, soft and even.

He nods. Tries to respond. Fails.

She sits. Unpacks her notebook. Starts writing.

And the moment stretches, fragile and perfect.

He opens his notebook again. The page is still blank. But this time -

He writes something. Just one line.

Do you think stories live in the trees?

He doesn’t show her. Not yet.

But he will. Eventually.

When he finds the words that don’t burn to say.

~

She doesn’t speak right away.

Just writes - quiet and methodical, her pencil gliding across the page with a kind of reverence. Like the act of writing itself is a ritual. Like the words are already there, waiting, and she’s just giving them shape.

He watches her out of the corner of his eye.

(He’s not subtle. He doesn’t care)

He wants to say something. Not a question, not training-related. Something real. Something that pulls her voice out again - soft and strange and so unlike the way everyone else speaks. Something that will make her smile the way she had over orange slices and warm broth.

His hand moves before he’s made the decision.

He tears out the top page of his notebook - clean, unmarked - and rewrites the line.

Small. Tidy.

Do you think stories live in the trees?

It’s stupid. He knows it’s stupid.

But it sounds like her.

He folds it once. Places it gently on the edge of her desk, where her hand will find it.

Then he sits still. Pretends to focus. Every heartbeat feels like it echoes in his teeth.

She notices it a minute later. Pauses. Reads.

She doesn’t look over. Not at first. But she stills. And then - 

She writes something.

He doesn’t dare look until she slides the note back. He unfolds it.

Her handwriting is softer than his. Curving, deliberate. A little uneven, like she’s still getting used to sharing her thoughts on paper.

Yes , it says. I think the tall ones hold longer stories. The old ones remember.

A beat later, under that:

The willows tell the kind that don’t need words.

He reads it once.

Then again.

Then again, slower.

And something in his chest folds inward. Not painfully. Just - quietly.

He picks up his pencil. Writes back.

Which ones do you think would tell yours?

He almost doesn’t pass it back. But then - he does. No hesitation, this time.

She takes longer to respond.

This answer isn’t neat. It takes her several lines.

When she gives it back, the paper is warm from her hand.

Maybe the white-barked ones, she writes. The ones that look soft but don’t bend easily. Birch trees. They look delicate, but they keep growing after storms. My father says they’re stubborn. I think they’re just good at staying.

Then, after a pause - another line, added lightly:

What about you?

He stares at that last sentence.

It’s an invitation. Not a challenge. Not a test. But a window, opened just slightly.

He breathes once. Then writes:

Maybe pine.

A little too sharp. A little too still. But they don’t fall, even when it snows for days.

He adds nothing else.

Just hands the note back, heart loud and unruly in his chest.

She reads it. Then folds the paper carefully. Once. Twice. Tucks it into the inside pocket of her notebook. And smiles.

Not surprised this time. Not shy. Just glad.

And Kakashi thinks that this -

this -

whatever this is -

he wants more of it.

~

They eat lunch under the tree again. Their tree. Not that he’d ever call it that.

She sits beside him like it’s routine now. Like this is normal. Like his whole internal structure isn’t actively disintegrating under the weight of her presence and shared space and how easily she exists beside him.

He passes her the orange slices without looking. She accepts them without comment. Hands him a rice ball in return.

He tells himself it’s fine.

It’s not.

He’s halfway through his food when she speaks. Quiet. Thoughtful. Like it’s just another observation.

“Do you think pine trees are lonely?”

He freezes. Not visibly. He’s trained not to show things. But internally?

He absolutely malfunctions.

Her voice is soft, but not unsure. She’s not asking to be reassured. She’s wondering aloud. Like it’s safe. Like he’s safe.

He doesn’t know how to handle that.

“Pine trees?” he repeats, because his brain - his entire nervous system - is stalling.

She nods, looking up at the branches overhead. Her voice is too calm. Too gentle.

“You said they don’t fall, even when it snows. But they don’t grow as close together as birch. They don’t lean toward each other. Their branches don’t touch.”

He can’t look at her.

He knows the look that’ll be on her face. That wide-eyed thoughtfulness. Like the world is made of stories waiting to be named.

He doesn’t know how to stand in the presence of someone who means what they say that much.

So he stays still. Very still.

“Maybe,” he says. It comes out clipped. Barely audible. The bare minimum.

Because if he says more, he might say too much.

Because what he wants to say is something like -

What if they’re just trying to stand still because everything else keeps changing? What if they’re holding something up? What if they’re not leaning because they’re afraid to need anything?

But he doesn’t say that.

Because he doesn’t say things.

He survives. He assesses. He catalogues the terrain. He holds the line.

Not… this.

And then - just to make things worse -

She smiles. Still looking at the trees.

“But… they do still lean, don’t they?” she murmurs, her voice soft and thoughtful. “Just… towards the sky.”

He short-circuits.

Internally, not outwardly. Outwardly, he’s composed. Stoic. His grip on his chopsticks doesn’t shake. His posture doesn’t shift. His expression remains blank enough that any passing classmate would think he’s just zoning out, not dying inside.

But his brain?

His brain is on fire.

Because she just said that. Because she says things like that. Because she says them like they’re obvious, like they aren’t slowly excavating the earth under his ribs.

They do still lean, don’t they? Just… towards the sky.

What is he supposed to do with that?

What is anyone supposed to do with that?

He’s not built for this. He’s built for footwork, for chakra control, for tactical efficiency. He knows how to analyze a fight, how to spot a weakness in a defense, how to memorize the rhythm of an opponent’s breath.

Not this.

Not… her.

Not the way she looks up at the trees like they’re old friends. Not the way she speaks like everything in the world is trying to be kind if only someone would listen hard enough. Not the way she folds the word sky into a sentence like it belongs somewhere near the heart.

He doesn’t respond.

He physically can’t.

His jaw is locked. His brain is trying to reboot. His heart is doing something erratic and embarrassing and probably dangerous to long-term cardiovascular health.

So he does the only thing he can.

He reaches into his bento and offers her another orange slice.

It’s clumsy. He nearly drops it. His fingers brush hers when she takes it.

And she smiles at him again. Soft. Gentle. Like she hasn’t just destroyed him.

“Thank you,” she says.

He nods. Once. Too sharp.

And then, to make things worse - again - she adds:

“You always remember.”

He swallows. Hard.

Because he does. Of course he does. Every word, every look, every time she’s said something that has rearranged the inside of his skull like a trap he didn’t see coming.

He wants to say something back. Something calm and cool and clever.

What comes out is:

“I listen.”

Which is… true. Objectively.

But it sounds like a confession.

She doesn’t tease him. Doesn’t tilt her head or press further. Just looks back at the trees and says, “I know.”

And that -

That knowing -

That’s worse than anything.

Because he can’t pretend anymore.

Not when she sees him that clearly. Not when she says things like leaning toward the sky and I know and thank you like they mean something.

They finish lunch in silence.

He doesn’t taste a single bite after that.

~

Dinner that night is grilled fish and miso soup, set out neatly on the table just like it always is. Kakashi sits where he always sits, chopsticks in hand, rice bowl in front of him.

And does absolutely nothing with any of it.

He stares at his fish like it personally insulted him. Picks at the rice like it holds answers. Doesn’t notice when the soup cools.

He’s not thinking exactly. He’s just… stuck.

Stuck on the echo of they do still lean, don’t they? just… towards the sky. Stuck on you always remember. Stuck on I know.

His brain’s been a locked door ever since lunch.

He should be reviewing genjutsu theory for tomorrow’s test. He should be present enough to at least eat.

Instead, he’s trying to figure out what she meant.

No - he knows what she meant. He just doesn’t know why it feels like that. Why it’s still sitting in his chest like a warm stone. Why it makes everything else seem too loud and too sharp and too far away.

He picks at a grain of rice.

Across the table, Sakumo chews slowly, eyes narrowing with that familiar father-knows-too-much expression.

Then -

Without preamble, without mercy, with the kind of smile that means I am absolutely going to enjoy this -

“What did she say this time?”

Kakashi jerks his head up like he’s been struck.

“What - who - no one - nothing -” he stammers, voice rising a full octave against his will.

Sakumo leans back with infuriating calm. “Mmhm.”

Kakashi scowls at his soup. “We had lunch. Like usual.”

“You’re stabbing your fish,” Sakumo observes, casually sipping his tea. “Like it owes you answers.”

Kakashi looks down. Realizes, with horror, that he is . He places his chopsticks down very deliberately.

Sakumo raises an eyebrow. Waits.

Kakashi presses a hand to his forehead.

“She said something about trees.”

Sakumo blinks. “... Trees.”

Kakashi glares at him. “Pine trees. And birch. And the sky.”

A beat.

Then Sakumo makes a thoughtful sound. “Ah.”

“That’s it. That’s all she said.”

“And now you’re in emotional paralysis over botany?”

Kakashi makes a strangled sound. “It’s not - I’m not - ”

“She’s good,” Sakumo murmurs, biting into a piece of fish. “Very effective.”

Kakashi slumps over the table.

“I hate you,” he mutters into the rice.

Sakumo pats his shoulder. “No, you don’t. You’re just emotionally constipated. Clinically.”

“Not a real diagnosis.”

“It should be.”

Kakashi exhales. Long. Quiet. Resigned. And says nothing else for the rest of dinner.

He’s still thinking about the way she said sky .

~

Later, he sits on the roof.

It’s dark by then - Konoha’s windows glowing soft with lamplight, the air cool and still. Clouds drift above the treetops, silver-edged, soft. The wind carries the faint scent of rain that hasn’t fallen yet.

He pulls his knees up to his chest and stares out across the rooftops like he’s on guard duty, not spiraling into a gentle and completely unmanageable crisis.

She said they still lean, just… toward the sky.

Who says that?

Who says that and means it?

And worse - who says that to him, like he’ll understand?

He buries his face in his arms. He’s handled live shuriken drills with less disorientation than this.

Because she hadn’t even looked at him when she said it. She’d said it like it was just true. Like it was something beautiful and obvious and worth saying out loud. And then she’d smiled - not at the trees, not at the sky, not even at herself.

At him.

Like it wasn’t a risk. Like he was someone who could hear a thing like that and carry it without dropping it.

And now it’s lodged in his chest like a senbon, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.

He thinks, half-crazed:

Next time I see her, I’m not saying anything. Not a word. Not even a nod.

He also thinks:

What if she doesn’t say something like that again.

And that -

That thought physically hurts.

He pulls his mask down and rests his chin on his knees, cheeks burning in the night air. The stars overhead blink dimly through clouds, and he wonders which ones she’s named already.

He doesn’t want to feel this way. Not that he knows what this way even is. Not that he has a name for the fullness swelling in his chest right now.

It’s illogical. It’s distracting. It’s stupid.

He doesn’t want to need her to say soft, impossible things just to feel like the world makes sense again.

And yet -

The next morning, he wakes up early. Earlier than usual.

And when he peels an orange for his lunch, he still peels two.

~

It’s raining at lunch.

Not just drizzle - real rain. The kind that taps steady and insistent against the windows, turning the courtyard into puddled earth and silvered leaves. Most of the students groan when they see it. A few complain. One kid tries to convince the teacher to let them eat in the hallway.

But they end up staying in the classroom, as expected.

Kakashi sits at his desk beside Tsukiko, lunch box unopened in front of him. He doesn’t eat. 

She’s looking out the window.

Her chin rests in her hand, her hair a little frizzed from the humidity, her bento untouched. She’s not frowning, though. She’s smiling - just faintly. The kind of smile most people wouldn’t even notice.

But he does. Of course he does.

He watches her for exactly three seconds too long. Then - without meaning to, without thinking - he blurts out:

“Do you want to go outside?”

The words hang there.

Heavy. Loud.

He immediately wants to dissolve into smoke.

Tsukiko blinks. Slowly turns her head toward him, surprised but not confused.

“You want to… go out in the rain?” she asks.

“No,” he says too quickly. Then clears his throat. “I mean. Not really.”

Her eyebrows lift slightly.

“I mean you do,” he mutters, defensive now, like he’s been accused of a crime. “You said you liked walking in the rain.”

She doesn’t answer right away. Which is excruciating. He picks up his chopsticks just to have something to do with his hands. Doesn’t use them. Just holds them like they’re a lifeline.

She looks at him again. And - of course - she smiles.

A real one. Not huge, not radiant, but warm. Surprised. A little delighted.

“You remembered that?”

He stares at his rice.

“You said it,” he mutters. “It’s not hard to remember.”

(He has remembered every word she’s said since the day she came over for dinner that first time, including the thing about willow trees and stories without words, but no one needs to know that)

“Well,” she says gently, “yes. I would like to.”

His heart does that weird, stupid little thing again - trips over itself, then pretends nothing happened. He shoves the rest of his orange slices into his lunch box with military precision.

“Five minutes,” he says. “Then we come back before the next bell.”

She nods like this is a perfectly normal arrangement and not an emotionally-walled-off academy student’s poorly disguised offering of… something.

He stands. Doesn’t look at her. But when she stands beside him, brushing her fingers against her sleeves, there’s a quiet sort of gravity between them.

They walk to the door. Pass through it in silence.

The rain hits them at once - cool, clean, and steady.

He should hate it. It’s impractical. It’s damp. His shoes are going to make that awful squelch all the way through taijutsu drills. His hair is already getting heavier.

But Tsukiko tips her face up toward the sky and laughs - low, soft, breathless.

And Kakashi -

He thinks he might stand in the rain a thousand times if it means he gets to hear that sound again.

~

The rain isn’t warm.

It’s sharp, brisk, the kind that soaks through your sleeves in seconds. The kind that seeps cold into your collarbones and leaves the tips of your ears tingling.

Kakashi doesn’t flinch.

He stands beside her just off the classroom porch, arms crossed, hood forgotten, his hair plastered in awkward angles against his forehead.

She steps out first. Not far - just into the courtyard proper, where the water darkens the stone path and puddles bloom beneath the trees.

She tilts her face toward the sky. Closes her eyes. And smiles.

That same strange, quiet smile she wears when she’s listening to things most people don’t notice. The rhythm of the rain. The breath of the wind. The shape of a moment.

He watches her. For too long. Again.

She doesn’t speak. And neither does he. Because if he says anything now, it’ll come out wrong. Too much. Too honest.

He doesn’t know how to explain that his heart’s doing a full-speed kata in his chest because she’s standing there, letting the rain touch her like it’s welcome. Because she looks like she belongs here - among the dripping branches and pale light - as if the world was built to hold her just like this.

He steps forward. Not too close.

Three paces. Enough to share the same stretch of sky.

Rain slides down his neck. It’s miserable. Objectively. He tries to remember the reason for this decision.

Right. She likes the rain. She does. This is for her.

Definitely not because he wanted to see her here, like this. Definitely not because her voice said I would like to and his brain folded in half.

She opens her eyes after a moment. Looks at him. Not surprised. Not confused.

Just… there. Present.

She doesn’t tease him. Doesn’t ask why he’s here if he clearly hates getting wet. Doesn’t call him out on the faint blush he knows is creeping up his ears.

Instead -

“It sounds different on stone than it does on leaves,” she says softly.

He blinks. “What?”

“The rain.” She turns in a slow circle, arms at her sides, fingers spread just a little, like the feathers on a bird’s tail. “It’s heavier here. Louder. But the trees soften it. Listen -”

He listens. And she’s right.

He catalogues the sound. Registers the variance in echo, the density of canopy coverage, the direction of water impact.

It’s real. It’s measurable. But somehow, the way she says it -

It feels like poetry.

She glances back at him. Smiles. This time, it's smaller. Quieter. But it stays.

He wants to say something. Anything.

He doesn’t. Because there’s nothing tactical to say in response to a girl who sees the world like it’s always singing.

So he just nods. Tight. Efficient.

She doesn’t seem to mind.

They stand there until the bell rings.

And when they walk back in - soaked, silent, shoulders brushing just barely in the narrow hallway - Kakashi feels something under his ribs ease.

Just a little. Like maybe he is leaning.

Just not the way he thought he would.

Chapter Text

It happens a week before the exams.

The two of them keep getting moved up. Quietly, efficiently, with very little fanfare. One grade, then another, then another. Every time they sit for an assessment, the answer is the same: advance them.

Too fast, maybe. But that’s what happens when you’re a prodigy. Or when you’re two of them.

Kakashi adapts. Of course he does.

He logs more hours on the training field. Keeps his answers short and precise in class. Learns to win with fewer words, less effort. He ranks top of every drill. Beats opponents twice his age. Reads ahead when no one asks him to.

It’s easy.

And Tsukiko is always there. Always beside him. Sometimes ahead of him. Shadow-close. Quiet. Steady. She matches him in everything, but without the sharpness, without the need to win. She absorbs knowledge like soil drinks rain. She doesn’t chase ahead - she settles in.

And, somehow, they meet in the middle.

She passes him notes during theory lessons. He shares his lunch when she forgets. They spar more often now - sometimes with instructors watching, usually not. He starts to learn the difference between the way she moves when she’s holding back and when she’s not.

And then -

A week before the final exams, he’s walking home, calculations running automatically through his mind - jutsu review, chakra control ratios, escape formations -

And the thought hits him like a kunai, straight through center mass.

There’s no guarantee we’ll be placed on the same team.

He stops walking.

The street is quiet. Just the sound of wind through paper banners and the occasional rustle of leaves. He stands there, absolutely still, trying to breathe around a pressure in his chest that has no name.

It’s logical, he thinks, trying to shove the reaction back down. Statistically probable, even. Team assignments depend on balancing strengths and weaknesses. Skill distribution. Personality compatibility. Mission style.

It’s not personal. It’s never personal.

Except -

He remembers the way she said, Do you think pine trees are lonely? He remembers standing in the rain with her, soaking and silent. He remembers oranges in his bento and stories about birch trees and you always remember.

And he realizes - horribly, undeniably -

He doesn’t know what it’s going to feel like to sit in a room and not have her next to him. He doesn't want to know.

He scowls. Shoves his hands into his pockets. Keeps walking.

This is stupid. It's emotional noise. It's not relevant to the outcome of the exam. Not helpful. Not useful.

He doesn’t need her. They’re not even - they’re not anything. They’ve never said they were even friends. They just - exist. Next to each other. And he wants to keep existing next to her.

He gets home and doesn’t talk to his father. Just trains until his muscles ache and his hands sting.

He goes to sleep that night forcing himself to think of strategy. But he dreams about shadows curling beside his and a laugh in the rain and a soft, wide-eyed look of wonder. And when he wakes up, the first thing he thinks is:

I hope they see what we are.

Then, quickly, like a wound being stitched over:

I hope they don’t separate us.

~

They graduate. Of course they do.

No one’s surprised. Not really.

The instructors nod like they’ve been waiting for this inevitability. Some of the older students whisper behind their hands, but no one says it out loud:

They’re just kids. Too young. Too small.

But not when it comes to numbers. Not when it comes to the mission tables and the war still simmering on the borders. Not when you’ve got a Nara who can silence a squad with a flick of her shadow and a Hatake who can disarm a chuunin by instinct.

So they graduate. They’re given headbands that feel too heavy and a congratulations that feels too brief.

But that’s not what he’s afraid of.

Kakashi wasn’t afraid of the final exam. He never has been. He’s already done the work, already mastered everything twice over. He isn’t afraid of the title, or the rank, or the assignments.

No, instead, he’s afraid of tomorrow, when the teams will be announced. Because there were twenty-six graduates this cycle.

That means eight three-person cells. Twenty-four genin in the standard three-person teams.

Which leaves two. Two leftovers. Two question marks. And in every scenario his mind has gamed out - there are three possibilities:

A two-person team.

Two solo apprenticeships.

Or being paired with someone else.

He can’t - he doesn’t want -

He refuses to think about what happens if they get separated.

He doesn’t do hope. It’s not tactical. It’s not efficient. Hope doesn’t make you faster on the field or sharper with a kunai.

But that night - he hopes. Helplessly. Pathetically. He stares at the ceiling and hopes so hard it hurts.

Please. Just let me stay with her.

~

The next morning, they gather in the classroom.

He gets there early, as usual. She joins him quietly, just before the instructors arrive. Their shoulders don’t touch. But they’re close enough that he can feel the edge of her calm.

The room is full of too many voices. Too much noise.

His stomach twists. His heart pounds. He feels vaguely nauseous. He tells himself it’s nothing.

One by one, names are called. Teams are formed. Students murmur, shuffle, move to join their new squads.

It’s like the world is narrowing. Like there’s less and less space for this to go right. And then -

“Team Seven,” their teacher announces. “Nara Tsukiko.”

Kakashi’s heart stops. Just - stops.

He doesn’t breathe. He doesn’t move. He braces for the next name like it’s going to hit him in the throat.

“And Hatake Kakashi.”

He blinks. Once.

The teacher continues, unfazed. “You’ll both be under Namikaze Minato.”

Silence.

Then - sound. His own heartbeat. Her breath.

He turns, slowly.

She’s already looking at him. She doesn’t smile, but her eyes are warm. Like she knew. Like it was always going to be this way.

Him. And her. 

Just them.

Together.

Kakashi stares back, frozen. Every joint locked. Every emotion trying to crawl out of his chest at once and tripping over each other on the way.

He doesn’t speak. He can’t speak. Because if he does, he’ll say something dangerous.

Something like thank you. Something like I’m so glad I don’t need to do this without you. Something like I didn’t know how scared I was until I wasn’t anymore.

So instead, he nods.

Once. Sharp. Contained.

And when they walk across the room to stand where Team Seven is meant to be, their steps fall into rhythm without trying.

~

They meet their new jonin instructor at the far end of Training Field Three. Minato is already there. Early. Relaxed. Blond hair tousled by the breeze, hands tucked loosely into his pockets, his gaze turned toward the horizon as though he's been patiently waiting all morning. Not impatiently - just quietly.

Kakashi assesses everything in an instant. Posture: deliberately relaxed but poised for action. Eyes: sharp but gentle, carefully observant. Chakra: smooth, far too smooth - controlled in a manner that suggests either rigorous training or something more inherently dangerous. 

He runs through a mental list of known facts about their new sensei. One - he set records with his Academy graduation scores. Two - he foiled an attempted kidnapping of Uzumaki Kushina by Kumo when he was just a genin. Three - he reverse-engineered the Nidaime’s Hiraishin and made it his own.

Not a man to underestimate.

“You two are even smaller than I expected,” Minato says, a faint smile on his lips. “But I've heard enough not to make that mistake.”

Kakashi remains silent, evaluating and cataloguing threat, predictability, risk. Beside him, Tsukiko bows - fluid and polite, as always.

“Thank you for taking us on, Namikaze-sensei.”

“Minato is fine,” their new instructor replies, crouching slightly to meet their eyes. “We’ll be working closely.”

The phrase lands oddly, settling in Kakashi’s chest like a misfired seal - familiarity he isn't prepared for, intimacy he instinctively resists. He doesn't know Minato. Knows of him only by reputation. Trust is earned, not freely given, and certainly not immediate.

Minato straightens and withdraws a single silver bell from his pouch. He attaches it casually to his waistband.

“The rules of the test are simple. There’s a single bell,” he says. “Both of you will try to get it. Only one of you will succeed. The other is transferred to the genin corps.”

Kakashi freezes - not visibly, but his breath catches just briefly. One bell, one pass. His hands tighten slightly at his sides. Those are the rules. 

The genin corps - going there is unthinkable. That’s where the rejects go - the leftovers, the ones not good enough to advance. Going there means failure. Going there means ridicule. 

Cold logic dictates the next steps clearly. Remove obstacles, secure the objective. It’s textbook - straightforward.

Except it isn't.

His mind stalls - briefly, sharply - on the notion of passing without her. The thought refuses to process fully, glancing off the surface of his logic like a blunt kunai. The objective is clear. The action required is straightforward. He knows exactly what he's meant to do, yet the certainty slips through his fingers when confronted by the quiet presence beside him.

Tsukiko stands calm as water, perfectly still. Not tense, not defensive - but trusting. Kakashi’s breath hitches again.

Before he can speak, Tsukiko breaks the silence.

“No.”

Her voice is quiet and firm, calmly absolute. Minato blinks, slightly surprised.

“No?”

“No,” Tsukiko repeats, her tone balanced on the edge of a blade. She meets Minato’s eyes evenly. “I won’t fight Kakashi for it.”

The world narrows down sharply - the breeze, the distant cry of a crow, the quiet glint of the bell between them.

“Kakashi’s my teammate,” she states simply, like it’s immutable fact. “More importantly - he’s my friend.”

Friend. The word hits Kakashi like a physical blow, unsettling the careful architecture of rules and logic he's constructed. She says it like it matters. Like it holds meaning beyond victory or duty.

She turns toward him, steady and open.

“I’ll help you get the bell. I won’t abandon you. But I don't want it.”

Kakashi stares at her, raw and brittle beneath the surface of his mask. If it were anyone else, he’d suspect trickery. But he knows Tsukiko - she wouldn’t say that if she didn’t mean it. 

“But you'll fail,” he hears himself say. “You’ll go to the genin corps -”

She tilts her head slightly, gaze gentle, impossibly calm. “So?”

The single syllable, small yet defiant, fractures something carefully fortified within him. She smiles, gentle and without bitterness.

“That's not such a big deal. Not to me.” Her eyes look like moonlight on water, still and unwavering. “I’ll still be able to become a chuunin. Still be able to advance. It’ll be harder without a jonin-sensei, of course, but it’s not impossible.”

Not to me. The phrase echoes through the hollowed spaces within him. Kakashi swallows hard, fists tightening at the raw ache these words create.

He should take it. She’s backing off - more than that, she’s offering to help him win despite no apparent gain for herself. And yet - and yet - 

The admission emerges before logic can intervene, low and painfully honest:

“But I don't want to pass if it means leaving you behind.”

The words settle heavily around them. Kakashi does not regret them, not immediately. He knows instinctively there are fates far worse than failing. Losing her - losing the chance to stand beside her - is something he wouldn't know how to survive.

She’s not wrong about the genin corps. It’s possible to advance despite the absence of a jonin-sensei. He’s giving up a chance to learn under an incredible shinobi, but in doing so, he’s choosing to stand next to her instead.

The thought crystallizes in his mind, unbidden - 

I’d rather fail with her than pass alone.

Minato’s quiet voice breaks gently through the silence:

“You both pass.”

Kakashi's head snaps toward him sharply.

“But - ” he begins instinctively, confusion evident in his tone, “neither of us got the bell.”

Minato smiles softly - not amused, not mocking, just quietly proud. He stands fully upright, casually slipping hands into pockets, the silver bell chiming softly at his waist.

“The bell doesn’t matter - not really,” Minato says quietly. “I needed to see if you'd prioritize victory over each other.” His gaze falls meaningfully upon Kakashi. “You didn't.”

The warmth of approval laced through Minato’s voice is something foreign, something Kakashi doesn’t quite know how to process. He’s still reeling from the certainty of his own decision.

“You passed the real test,” Minato continues, quiet pride suffusing his words. “You chose each other.”

Something shifts inside Kakashi - something long-hidden and defensive softens and yields.

He hardly hears the rest of Minato’s instructions, barely registers the man’s gentle dismissal. He only feels the quiet certainty radiating from Tsukiko, the gentleness in her smile, the unshakeable belief that she chose rightly.

Kakashi doesn’t know what to do with that.

Yet, when Tsukiko steps away from the field, he follows automatically, falling into quiet step beside her. The long walk home passes in silence, shoulder occasionally brushing shoulder. Each light touch sends a sharp jolt of awareness through him, unsettling but strangely welcome.

At the gate of her home, she turns, offering a quiet farewell.

“See you tomorrow, Kakashi.”

He nods stiffly, awkwardly, throat suddenly tight. Watches silently as she disappears behind the gate.

~

That night, sleep evades him. He lies awake, thoughts circling relentlessly around the unfamiliar warmth of Tsukiko’s smile, her quiet certainty, her simple declaration of friendship. The word feels heavy and strange within him, something dangerous yet infinitely precious.

Minato had said he’d made the right choice. So had his father, when Kakashi had told him about the bell test. And yet something still feels unsteady within him, a little off-kilter, like the world had shifted two inches to the right and now he’s trying to reorient himself. 

Because that moment - that choice - had been the first time he’d ever not chosen to win. The first time he’d put anything at all above advancement, above the mission, above his ambition. 

It’s… unsettling. Minato and his father approve, but Kakashi isn’t sure he does - because shinobi aren’t supposed to put sentiment above the mission. Shinobi aren’t supposed to put anything above the mission. 

And yet he had. 

It had felt right, at the time - he never would’ve forgiven himself if he’d advanced without her. To leave her behind had been unthinkable. But now, laying in his bed, he’s not sure he’d make the same choice again. Not because he wouldn’t want to, but because he knows he shouldn’t - because the mission comes first. Always. No matter what. And it’s completely illogical to choose to fail when he could pass unhindered. 

He doesn’t know what he’d do if he’s confronted with the same choice again, but with higher stakes. He’d never forgive himself if he let her die - but he’d never forgive himself if he failed a mission, either.

Kakashi exhales slowly. He… doesn’t know where to go from here.

He turns onto his side, the rough fabric of his blanket catching at his shoulder, the faint creak of the mattress beneath him sounding too loud in the dark. The ceiling doesn’t offer any answers. Neither does the moonlight slanting pale and dispassionate across his floorboards.

Kakashi shuts his eyes. Opens them again. The shadows haven’t moved.

He doesn’t like this - this feeling of fracture. Of contradiction. The line between right and wrong, between pass and fail, between duty and danger - it’s always been clear. His books, the Academy, had drawn it in blood and steel and sacrifice. The mission comes first. Always. And if you forget that, people die. The village suffers.

And yet…

He remembers the way Tsukiko had said his name. Steady. Certain. Like she wasn’t asking him to choose - because she’d already made her choice. She hadn’t been waiting for him to join her, not really. 

It would’ve been easier if she’d hesitated. If she’d looked afraid. If she’d stumbled or doubted or even paused long enough for him to reassert the rules in his head. But she hadn’t. She’d looked at him like he mattered more than the outcome.

And for a single, breathless moment, he’d believed it. Had let himself believe he mattered more than the outcome.

He presses a hand to his chest, fingers curling against the cotton of his shirt. There’s no wound. No bruising. But something aches there anyway - dull and confused and heavy with questions he doesn’t know how to ask.

Because what happens the next time?

What happens when the price for choosing her is not just failure - but lives lost? A village in danger? A war unfought?

What if the mission isn’t a bell, but a battlefield?

Kakashi’s breath tightens in his throat. Would she still not care if he chose her? Worse - would he?

He doesn’t know. He hates not knowing.

Logic says this is a flaw. That hesitation is the first step to ruin. That attachments are weaknesses carved into soft places, easy to exploit and hard to excise. He knows this. Every teacher he’s had has hammered it home.

But Tsukiko had looked at him, soft-eyed and steady, and said friend . Had chosen him even knowing what it would cost.

And the worst part - the most damning part - is that some feral part of him had wanted that. Had craved it. Had wanted to be chosen, and had wanted to choose her back.

Even now, lying here alone with nothing but silence and splinters in his chest, that part of him still does.

He scrubs a hand over his face, breath unsteady.

There’s no protocol for this. No jutsu he can learn. No strategy that tells him how to be both a weapon and a person. How to be reliable and still care. How to be something more than a tool, but still sharp enough to be useful.

He’s six. He shouldn’t have to make these choices. But he does.

And one day - maybe not tomorrow, maybe not this year - but one day, he’ll be forced to choose again. Between the mission and her. Between survival and sentiment. Between being a shinobi and being Kakashi.

And he doesn’t know which choice he’ll make.

But he knows whichever one it is, it will break something.

Either in him.

Or in her.

Kakashi closes his eyes. The ceiling remains silent. So does the moon. And sleep, as always, stays just out of reach.

~

The morning is pale and grey when Kakashi arrives at the training ground.

Mist hangs low over the grass, not quite rain, not quite air - just that soft in-between that makes the world feel quieter than it should. His sandals leave dark impressions in the dew-damp earth. A crow caws once from somewhere unseen. He doesn’t know if he slept. Doesn’t think it matters.

Tsukiko is already there.

She’s seated cross-legged beneath the tall cedar that marks the field’s edge, a small notepad balanced against her knees, a pencil moving in slow, deliberate strokes. Her hair is loose this morning, half-fallen from its tie. It brushes her shoulder with every movement, catching faint glimmers of early light. She doesn’t look up when he approaches, but she knows he’s there.

She always does.

He stands a few feet away, hands in his pockets, breath clouding faintly in the morning chill.

There’s a long pause before he speaks. And when he does, his voice is quiet.

Too quiet.

“How do you choose between being a person and being a shinobi?” Kakashi asks. The words fall flat against the morning hush, as though even the air around them doesn't quite know what to make of them. “Because I don’t think I can be both.”

Tsukiko looks up.

She studies him for a moment - longer than a moment. Her eyes are soft, but not pitying. They’re calm in the way of still water. In the way of someone who has stood quietly in her own darkness and come back with gentleness instead of fear.

She closes her notebook, tucking the pencil inside the coils, and rests her hands lightly in her lap.

“You don’t have to choose,” she says, simply.

Kakashi looks away. Jaw tight. “Yes, you do. You’re supposed to. The mission - ”

“I know.” She cuts in softly. Not dismissing him. Not denying him. Just steady. “I know that’s what they tell us. That we’re tools. That we’re supposed to cut away everything that isn’t useful. That caring makes you weak.”

She turns her gaze back to the trees, breath rising and falling like the breeze itself.

“But maybe,” she continues, “it’s not about choosing. Maybe it’s about balance. About learning how to be both without destroying yourself.”

Kakashi doesn’t answer. He’s listening, though. And she knows that, because she keeps going.

“I think… being a person is part of being a shinobi. Or it should be.” She lifts one hand, fingers brushing gently across her sleeve. “How can you protect something if you don’t feel anything for it? How can you carry out a mission if you lose yourself along the way?” Her eyes are distant. “That’s why they put us in teams, isn’t it? Because we’re stronger when we have something to fight for.” Something flickers in those silvery-blue eyes - a memory, maybe. 

Kakashi’s breath catches. Not audibly. Not obviously. But she must see it in the way his shoulders tense, the way his eyes narrow, not in anger, but in thought.

She turns back toward him then. Fully.

“You’re already both, Kakashi,” she says gently. “Even if it doesn’t feel like it. Even if it hurts.”

He looks at her. Really looks at her. And she meets him there, without flinching, without looking away.

“You don’t have to figure it all out right now,” she says, voice soft as the mist. “You’re allowed to not know. I don’t know either.”

Her smile is small, barely a curve. But it’s warm. Honest.

“We can figure it out together.”

And somehow - somehow - that undoes him more than anything else she’s said. Not the wisdom. Not the softness. Not even the trust.

But the together .

It lodges in his chest like an anchor. Or a lifeline.

And for the first time that morning, Kakashi nods. Not in understanding. But in acceptance, as something inside him, something lost and adrift and unmoored, finally finds the north star. 

He’s still lost. Still undecided. Still uncertain.

But he’s not alone in this. Not anymore. And for now, maybe that’s enough.

~

Minato arrives with the sun.

He doesn’t announce himself - just appears with a flicker of chakra at the edge of the field, wind-ruffled and smiling, as though he’s been there all along.

“Morning,” he says easily, one hand lifting in greeting.

Tsukiko inclines her head. Kakashi straightens slightly from where he stands, spine drawing taut like a drawn bowstring. Still coiled from the conversation before, but steadier now. Grounded by her words. By her presence.

Minato surveys them both for a moment, then gestures lightly toward the center of the field.

“Spar me.”

Kakashi’s brows lift a fraction. “Together?”

“Together,” Minato confirms, already shrugging off his cloak. He moves with the kind of grace born from confidence - not arrogance, but surety. Like he knows how the wind moves before it does.

“I want to get a better sense of your rhythm,” he adds, dropping into a ready stance. “Find out how your files hold up to the real thing. Let’s see how you move.”

There’s no countdown. No formal start. They don’t even look at each other. Just the faint shift of chakra - and they’re moving.

Kakashi moves first, swift and sharp, a feint from the left - testing, calibrating. Tsukiko flows in behind him, not following but complementing, already mid-arc as he draws Minato’s attention forward.

They don’t speak. They don’t need to.

She fills the space he leaves behind, intercepts the counter before it forms. He adjusts to her timing without thinking. It’s not coordination - it’s instinct. Precision born from hundreds of silent hours spent together, sparring on rain-wet stone and sun-drenched grass.

They move like two sides of the same blade.

Minato makes a sound low in his throat - pleased, maybe, or surprised - and shifts back a half-step faster than human eyes can track. But even he can't stay untouched. Kakashi’s kunai skims the edge of his vest. Tsukiko’s palm nearly tags his wrist before he twists away, using her momentum to spin Kakashi off balance.

They land hard. Regroup. Move again.

It’s over in seven minutes.

Minato catches Kakashi’s leg mid-kick, redirects it into the dirt, and tags Tsukiko with two fingers just as she’s rebounding from the impact of a mistimed slide. Not quite enough to bruise, but enough to say stop .

The world stills.

They breathe hard in the sudden quiet. Grass bent beneath their feet. Hair mussed. Limbs aching.

Minato exhales, straightening with a thoughtful sound. “You’re both fast,” he says, tone almost meditative. “But what’s more impressive is how together you are.”

Kakashi doesn’t respond, but his shoulders lift minutely, not quite in pride - but close.

“You read each other well,” Minato continues. “Tsukiko sets the tempo. Kakashi adjusts the angle. She leads through misdirection. You follow through with precision.”

He turns toward Tsukiko.

“You’re not the physically strongest in the pair, but your timing is nearly perfect. And your ability to redirect is exceptional.”

Then toward Kakashi.

“You’re faster than her - by a margin. But she covers your blind spots. Gives you room to strike clean.”

Kakashi nods once. Tsukiko bows slightly.

Minato smiles. “You’re not ready for high-level missions yet - but you’re close. We’ll sharpen that edge.”

They train until midday.

Minato runs them through combinations - swapping roles, redirecting their tactics, forcing them to adapt and adjust. Tsukiko falters once, overcorrecting on a pivot, and Kakashi catches her elbow without thinking. Later, he misjudges Minato’s shadow clone placement, and Tsukiko covers the gap like she saw it coming before it began.

They don't speak much. But the rhythm holds.

By the time the sun reaches its peak, they’re both sweating lightly, hair sticking to their foreheads, lungs dragging in air that tastes of earth and summer.

Minato finally calls a break. “Lunch,” he says, tossing Kakashi a canteen and dropping onto the grass with a sigh. “You’ve earned it.”

They eat quietly beneath the cedar.

Kakashi peels a hardboiled egg. Tsukiko bites into a rice ball she’d wrapped herself. Minato eats something from a bento box with idle precision, occasionally glancing between the two of them with faint amusement. Kakashi glances at the orange slices he’d unthinkingly, instinctively packed, glances at Minato, hesitates for just a moment - because they’ve never done this with an audience before - then does the mental equivalent of a shrug and offers her an orange slice anyway. 

It’s logical, he tells himself. Either he ends the tradition and never does it again - which he doesn’t want to do - or he just… accepts Minato’s presence. 

She accepts the orange slice with a soft smile that warms him all the way to the tips of his fingers. Breaks off a piece of her rice ball. Hands it to him.

Kakashi takes it, then gives in and glances at Minato one last time. Minato’s eyebrows are raised, just a little, but - thankfully - he says nothing.

~

After, they head into the village for D-ranks.

There’s a fence to be repaired on the edge of the Uchiha district. A crate of scrolls to be delivered to the records office. Two very stubborn cats to retrieve from opposite corners of Konoha.

Kakashi doesn’t complain.

Tsukiko thanks the shopkeeper for the third time when she’s handed another sack of rice to carry.

Minato watches it all with quiet ease, correcting their posture now and again, stepping in only when necessary.

By the time dusk starts curling around the rooftops, the day is done.

They part ways at the village square, soft nods and murmured farewells. Minato vanishes in a flicker of light, his chakra slipping away like the last of the warmth from the sun.

And Kakashi?

Kakashi walks beside Tsukiko toward the Nara compound once more, the silence between them softer now, easier.

Not heavy.

Not uncertain.

Just... quiet.

A rhythm he’s beginning to learn by heart.

Chapter Text

They meet Minato-sensei at dawn, every day without fail.

Not the pale kind of dawn, mist-choked and reluctant - but golden. Soft. The kind that filters through branches like apology, painting the training field in a hush of light. The wind stirs the leaves, gentle as breath. And Tsukiko - who has always felt the world more than she has lived in it - feels each day unfold like a scroll meant just for them.

She stands beside Kakashi without thinking about it. Just as she has for months. Just as she will, she suspects, for many more.

Minato smiles at them both, hands tucked in his pockets. There’s something unreadable in the curve of his mouth - amusement, perhaps. Or awe. Or the quiet melancholy of someone who knows how fleeting peace can be.

They always train in the mornings. Minato now only spends the first hour or two training their agility, speed, reaction times, teamwork. He takes the rest of the morning to teach them elemental techniques.

Tsukiko learns by listening - by watching. Her water nature takes time. Patience. It isn’t like shadow work, which answers to stillness and silence. Water is movement in disguise. It shifts. Slips. Requires surrender. Minato teaches her to bend it with intent, not force. To sense the thread of it in the air, in the soil, in her own blood. Some days it comes easily. Other days it refuses her entirely, as if asking, who are you to command the tides?

Her earth affinity is steadier. She understands it instinctively, the way it waits and anchors. The way it holds memory beneath its skin. Minato shows her how to coax it gently, shaping footholds and pillars with the barest twitch of chakra. It’s not flashy. It’s not loud. But it’s hers.

Kakashi, meanwhile, blooms in lightning. He already knows a few jutsu from his father, but under Minato, he learns to incorporate it into his fighting. He is fast - so fast. Precision incarnate. His chakra crackles sharp against the air, a contrast to her quiet flow. But she doesn’t mind. She watches him out of the corner of her eye when he trains, admires the elegance in his destruction. He moves like a blade unsheathed. Like a storm bottled inside a boy’s body.

They do D-ranks in the afternoons. Menial tasks, mostly. Chores masked as missions. But they never complain. Tsukiko doesn't mind the simplicity. It gives her space to observe. To learn. To stretch her new limbs in a world that isn’t always trying to cut them down.

They work together now.

Not as opponents. Not as names on opposite ends of a match list. But as partners. As halves of a rhythm that feels older than either of them.

They don’t talk much during sparring drills - they don’t need to. One glance. One breath. She shifts left, and he covers the right. She sets up the opening, he strikes. She deflects, he counters. They move like wind over water - frictionless, fluid, inevitable.

Minato says he’s never seen anything like it.

Sometimes, after training, they linger. Sitting in the grass with bruised knuckles and scratched knees, watching clouds pass with a silence that doesn't feel heavy. Kakashi says very little. Tsukiko doesn’t press. She’s content to share the stillness. To let the wind speak for them both.

She doesn’t know what this is - this thing between them. This strange, tentative gravity. But she thinks, perhaps, it is the beginning of something sacred. Something steady. Something that will weather war when it comes.

And war is coming. She can feel it. Like a storm gathering on the horizon.

But for now, they train. For now, they are two children learning to walk the knife-edge of destiny. And for now - that is enough.

~

They get their first C-rank mission a month after becoming genin.

It’s the kind of task Minato says they’ll come to miss - an escort job to the outskirts of the Land of Fire, nothing glamorous. A middle-aged merchant and his cart of tools, bound for a farming settlement near the border. The pay is modest, the danger expected to be low.

Tsukiko had nodded when they received the scroll. Kakashi had said nothing. The client had looked at them both - two small, silent shadows beside their jonin-sensei - and asked, uncertainly, “They’re not too young for this?”

Minato had smiled. “They’re young, but they’ve proven themselves.”

They leave before dawn.

The road is long, winding gently through forests yellowed with early autumn. The leaves fall soft underfoot, the wind pulling at them in lazy eddies. Their client chatters now and again - about harvests, about weather, about his nephew in the capital - but Minato is quiet. And Kakashi is quieter still.

And so it falls to her to converse. Mostly, she listens. Occasionally, she’ll ask a question - about trade, about the capital, about the ebbs and flows of the merchant’s livelihood. She’s been sheltered so far, tucked away in the safe cocoon of her village, but there exists a world outside of Konoha, and she’s always been a Ravenclaw at heart. 

The merchant tells her about the places he’s been to. The people he’s met. The goods he’s sold. He tells her of rain-drenched ports where fish are traded at sunrise, of mountain towns that smell like firewood and honey, of a border village where the plum wine is sweeter than sin and the festivals last three days. His stories are meandering, full of laughter and embellishment, and she lets them wash over her like river current. She does not interrupt. She stores the names like seeds - places she might one day see, if she’s lucky. If she lives long enough.

Kakashi walks ahead, half a step behind Minato, gaze sharp and mouth set. Always watching. Always assessing. Tsukiko wonders, sometimes, if he ever listens to the path. If the rhythm of the road can reach him at all. She thinks it might. Not through the ears, maybe - but in the way his steps sync to the rustle of leaves, the way his eyes shift subtly with the shape of the land.

She walks behind them both. Keeps an easy pace beside the cart. Occasionally glances skyward to watch the clouds move. There’s a peace in this, she thinks. Not safety - but simplicity. Movement without urgency. Tasks without blood. 

Her hands occasionally brush the kunai hidden in her sleeves, in her pouch. Not from nervousness - from readiness.

They’ve never left the village for a mission before. She’s not afraid, exactly. But the world feels… different out here. Less cradled. Less watched. Like everything is stretched thin, waiting to break.

~

It’s a day and a half into the mission when Minato slows.

His eyes narrow faintly, then drift toward the north. He doesn’t stop walking, but his tone shifts - low, careful.

“There’s a group of bandits two kilometres ahead of us on the path,” he says, like he’s noting the weather. “Civilians, not missing-nin.”

The words drop into the air like lead. The merchant, used to this, goes quiet - not out of nervousness, but to let them talk.

Tsukiko doesn’t look at Kakashi. She doesn’t need to. She feels the stillness that slides through him, sharp and immediate. A breath held in the bones. Her own stomach clenches, cold and hollow. Because they all know what this means.

It’s protocol for shinobi to eliminate threats when possible. Bandits who attack trade routes, who target traveling civilians, are to be dealt with swiftly. With finality. They are not given the same considerations as rogue shinobi. They are not taken prisoner. There is no trial, no second chances.

They both know this. Have known it for years. But neither of them have killed before. Not yet. Until, it seems, now.

Minato’s gaze slides toward them, unreadable. Not cold. Not warm. Just… waiting.

“Are you ready?” he asks, gently.

Kakashi doesn’t answer immediately. His jaw tightens. His shoulders straighten. 

“Yes.”

It sounds like steel drawn against its own sheath.

Tsukiko breathes once. Deep. Steady.

“Yes,” she echoes, her voice quieter, but clear.

Minato nods. He walks a few more paces before speaking again, voice pitched low enough that only the four of them can hear.

“They’ve set an ambush at the narrow bend before the rise. Five of them. They’re… desperate.”

His tone does not judge. Does not flinch.

Tsukiko swallows against the dry in her mouth.

“We’ll leave the path before then,” Minato says, “cut through the woods. I’ll handle the one stationed on lookout. The two of you will circle behind the others and strike on my signal. Quietly. Quick and clean.”

The instructions land like a seal pressed to paper - firm, irrevocable.

The merchant speaks, finally. “You’ll leave me here?”

Minato’s smile returns, faint but easy. “Only for a few minutes. There’s no one else around. You’ll be safer on your own while we clear the threat.”

The man nods, clearly used to this rhythm of detours and danger. He pulls the cart gently to the side, adjusts the reins, and lowers his eyes.

Minato meets their eyes once more. “You’re not alone,” he says. “You won’t be alone in this.”

And then he vanishes into the trees.

~

The forest hushes as they slip off the road.

Tsukiko moves like a shadow. Kakashi like a blade.

They don’t speak. Don’t need to. They fall into formation like breath and heartbeat. She feels her pulse in her throat, but her hands do not shake.

They find the bandits easily.

Three crouch in the underbrush, muttering in the low, greedy tones of the hungry and angry. One sits high in a tree, watching the road. The fifth - already gone. Minato’s doing.

They wait. One breath. Two.

Then a faint whistle threads through the canopy.

Kakashi moves first - fast and lethal, a kunai drawn in silence. Tsukiko follows half a heartbeat later, her own weapon flashing silver in the filtered light.

It is over in seconds.

One bandit turns toward her, mouth parting to shout - and she slits his throat before the sound can leave it. Another tries to run. Kakashi catches him mid-step, blade sinking deep and sure.

The last one on the ground doesn’t even see her coming. Distantly, there’s a thud as one of Kakashi’s kunai finds the one in the trees.

Silence crashes down.

Tsukiko stands there, breathing hard. Blood clings to her kunai. It’s on her wrist, her sleeve, the edge of her boot.

She stares at it. And then at the body at her feet.

It’s a man. He looks older now than he had a moment ago.

Kakashi is quiet behind her. Not moving. Not speaking.

She turns, finally.

He’s staring at one of the men he killed, eyes unreadable, face blank beneath the edge of his mask. But his hand, she notices, is clenched so tightly around his weapon that his knuckles have gone bloodless.

She wants to say something. Doesn’t know what.

So she steps closer. Not touching, but near. Close enough to say, without words:

I’m here.

Minato arrives a moment later, footsteps soft. His eyes sweep over the scene - four bodies, two children.

Two children who are not quite children anymore.

“You did well,” he says softly. And he means it. But there is a weight in his voice. An ache.

Tsukiko finally breathes.

~

That night, after they’ve set up camp for the evening, after the watch rounds have been distributed and Tsukiko lands first watch, after Minato and the merchant’s breathing have deepened and evened out - she finds herself staring at the sky.

It’s a full moon tonight. Once, a full moon would’ve meant moonflowers blooming on the floor of the Forbidden Forest. It would've meant wood fairies emerging from the leaves, softly glowing and quietly chattering. It would’ve meant thestrals wreathed in silver, nosing gently at her sleeve, licking animal blood off her fingers. 

She wonders if thestrals had a taste for human blood, too. If they would’ve licked her hands clean after what happened this afternoon. If they would’ve still looked at her with those kind, gentle, unjudging eyes. 

And suddenly - she isn’t thinking about thestrals anymore. 

She wonders what her first father would’ve thought of her now. If Xenophilius Lovegood's face would’ve fallen in disappointment. If he would’ve understood instead, because this life - this world - is so much more brutal and unforgiving than her last. There, death had been a rare tragedy. Here, it is a constant companion. 

But never has she wrought it with her own hands before. Not as Luna. Not as Tsukiko.

Until now.

It feels... strange. Like the hollow, aching emptiness of grief, but tucked alongside it is a quiet undercurrent of shame. She grieves not just the men she killed, but for the part of herself she'd lost in doing so.

She stares at the moon she was named after in both lives, and feels a tear streak down her face. Her breathing hitches, ever-so-slightly. 

Tsukiko closes her eyes, and cries.

~

She isn’t sure how much time passes. Maybe a few seconds. Maybe a few minutes. Maybe a few hours. The tears keep coming, quiet, thick, relentless. The ache in her chest grows.

Soon, though, she hears a quiet rustle. She opens her eyes and blinks away the blurriness of tears to see Kakashi settling next to her, arms resting loosely over his knees. 

He doesn’t say anything at first. Just sits, careful and stiff beside her like he’s stepped into a dream he doesn’t know how to hold. His arms rest over his knees - tense, deliberate. His eyes flick toward her, then away, then toward the firelight trembling faintly through the trees.

And then, with a movement so tentative it barely stirs the air, he pulls something from his pocket.

A small, folded handkerchief.

It’s plain, white, a little wrinkled. Probably tucked there more from habit than forethought. But he holds it out to her with both hands like it’s something fragile. Like she might shatter if he touches her wrong.

Tsukiko blinks at it. Then at him.

His gaze is fixed just over her shoulder, like he can’t quite bear to meet her eyes.

“You’re - ” he starts, then stops. Tries again. “Here.”

It’s not graceful. It’s not eloquent. But he’s trying, and the gesture is offered like a peace treaty, and -  her breath hitches again. Not from grief, but from the way something gentle and awkward and softer than she expected blooms between them in the cold.

She reaches out and takes it. Their fingers don’t touch, not really. But the handkerchief is warm from his palm.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

Kakashi shrugs, jerky, uncomfortable. “It’s… fine.”

A beat.

Then he says, quieter, “I didn’t bring more, though. Sorry.”

And it’s so absurd, so Kakashi , that her next breath comes out as something like a laugh - a trembling, broken sound, but real.

Kakashi’s shoulders twitch, like maybe he hadn’t meant to say that out loud. But when he chances a glance at her, and sees that smile, small and wrecked and grateful - he doesn’t look away again.

“I’m glad you’re not hurt,” he says finally, gruff and too fast. “That you… didn’t freeze. Or mess up.”

It’s the closest thing he can offer to you did well .

Tsukiko dabs at her eyes with the cloth, holding it gently now, like something precious.

“I almost did,” she admits. “Freeze, I mean.”

Kakashi hums. “But you didn’t.”

“No,” she breathes. “I didn’t.”

The night folds around them, silver and still.

They don’t talk more. They just sit there, side by side beneath the full moon’s gaze - two shadows shaped like children, learning slowly how to carry what they’ve done.

And for the first time since the blood, since the body, since the world tilted sideways and didn’t right itself - Tsukiko feels a little less alone.

~

Silence falls like snow between them, soft and fragile. He settles more comfortably next to her and tilts his head up toward the sky. The moonlight catches in his hair, turns the silver strands to frost. His mask is still in place. His hitai-ate still on his forehead. But there’s something bare about him now, something solemn and small and very young, sitting there in the hush of the forest like he’s trying not to breathe too loud.

She doesn’t say anything. Not yet. Eventually, he says, “I didn’t think it would feel like anything.”

His voice is soft. Even. But she hears the splinter in it.

“I thought - I’d prepared for it. I knew it would happen eventually. I thought - if I didn’t feel anything - it’d mean I was strong.” He hesitates, and in that pause, she knows what he’s about to say. 

“But it did feel like something,” he whispers. Something raw and bare and achingly vulnerable flickers in his eyes. 

She doesn’t tell him it’ll be okay. Doesn’t reassure him with empty platitudes. Doesn’t say we followed orders or we did what we had to do.

She just says - 

“That doesn’t make you weak.” Soft. Gentle. But with certainty.

He looks at her, then. His eyes are dark and so, so young. 

“Doesn’t it?” he says quietly. “A good shinobi follows orders. A good shinobi isn’t affected by emotion or sentiment. A good shinobi does what’s best for the village, always. No matter what.” His voice sounds like he's reciting something from memory - someone else's words, repeated over and over until they were etched into his very core.

“But we’re not just shinobi, are we?” she asks gently. “We’re human, too.”

His breath catches.

Not audibly - not with sound - but in the subtle stillness that ripples through his frame. Like her words have struck something beneath the surface. Like they’ve landed somewhere he hadn’t realized was vulnerable until now.

He turns his gaze back to the sky, as if the moon might hold the answer. As if he’s afraid that looking at her too long will make the ache inside him show on his face.

For a moment, he doesn’t speak.

Then:

“I don’t know if we’re allowed to be.”

It’s not bitter. Not even resigned. It’s just… quiet. Honest. The kind of truth a child shouldn’t have to carry - but does anyway, because this world makes weapons out of children and calls it necessity.

Tsukiko’s heart twists. She shifts, just a little, until her knee brushes his. A touch like breath. Like snowfall. Like presence.

“I think,” she says slowly, carefully, “that if we lose our humanity - what we feel, what we carry - then all that’s left is the blade.”

Kakashi’s eyes flick toward her again. Something flickers there. Something searching. “Isn’t that what they want us to be?”

She doesn’t deny it. Can’t.

But her voice is steady when she answers, “Maybe. But I don’t want to be just a blade.”

She thinks of the last man she killed - his eyes wide, his mouth half-formed around a word that never came. Thinks of the way her fingers had trembled afterward, not from fear, but from the awful weight of finality.

She presses the handkerchief Kakashi gave her to her palm. It’s still damp with her tears. But it anchors her.

“I want to remember who I am. I want to stay soft, even when the world tries to change me.”

Kakashi is silent for a long time.

Then, so quietly it’s nearly lost to the wind:

“But doesn’t softness break?”

She turns her head. Meets his gaze fully now.

“It bends first,” she says. “But it doesn’t shatter.”

The moonlight glimmers between them - cold and pale and endless.

And something in Kakashi’s posture shifts. Not much. Just a slow, subtle uncoiling of his shoulders, a softening of the line in his brow. The kind of change only someone sitting right next to him would notice.

He doesn’t smile. But he doesn’t turn away either.

“… Do you think we’ll get used to it?” he asks eventually. Not hopeful. Just… wondering.

Tsukiko lets out a breath that feels too old for her lungs.

“I don't know,” she says.

He nods. They sit like that, side by side beneath the trees - two small figures beneath a sky too wide, too bright. Two children with blood on their hands and a hundred tomorrows ahead.

Not just shinobi. But human, too.

~

They drop the merchant off at his destination the next afternoon. He smiles slightly as he thanks them, but there’s no joy in it. Just sadness. Just grief that flickers to life every time he looks at her and Kakashi. 

They take their time going back to Konoha. The path winds back the way they came, but it feels different now. Quieter. As if the forest itself has absorbed their silence, softened its breath to match theirs.

They walk in single file at first. Tsukiko at the back. Kakashi somewhere in the middle. Minato ahead - but not too far. He slows often, never making a point of it, but always enough that the space between them stays manageable. Bearable. Never enough to feel alone.

The leaves rustle with the hush of late autumn. A squirrel darts across the path, unbothered by the presence of three shinobi with blood still drying in the folds of their clothes. Somewhere in the canopy above, a bird sings a few notes - soft, warbled, unfinished.

Tsukiko keeps her eyes on the road.

They don’t speak. Not because they’re avoiding it, but because there is nothing that needs to be said yet. They’d stepped across a threshold the day before, and some part of them still lingered there, unsure how to return.

Minato doesn’t rush them.

Once, when they pause near a stream to refill their flasks, he kneels beside the water with Kakashi and hands him a cloth. Says nothing. Just gives it to him gently and turns to show him how to clean his weapons, methodical and unhurried. Kakashi doesn’t speak either - but he watches. Follows. Mimics the rhythm of his sensei’s hands until the metal shines silver again.

Later, when Tsukiko’s foot catches on a root and she stumbles, Minato’s hand is suddenly at her elbow, steadying. She hadn’t heard him move. He doesn’t ask if she’s all right. He doesn’t need to. He just walks beside her a little while after that, quiet and present, like moonlight held in a lantern.

When they stop for lunch that day, he brings out an extra rice ball from his pack. Holds it out to her without a word.

She takes it with a soft, “Thank you.”

Minato smiles faintly. “You’re welcome, Tsukiko.”

Her name sounds different in his voice. Not heavy with pity. Not blurred by the distance others might place between themselves and children who kill. It’s… gentle. Like an affirmation. Like a reminder that she is still who she was, even now.

They camp that night just off the path, beneath the arching arms of a sycamore tree with bark pale as bone.

Minato offers to take first watch, and they don’t argue.

Tsukiko lies awake longer than she means to, staring at the weave of branches overhead, at the pieces of moonlight they hold. She hears Kakashi turn over in his sleep, the sound soft and restless. Hears Minato’s breath - calm and even - just a few feet away.

She doesn’t cry tonight. But her chest aches.

She thinks of plum wine in border towns. Of firewood and honey. Of places she still wants to see. Of blood on her hands and the way Kakashi had offered her a handkerchief like it was a lifeline.

She thinks of how Minato had looked at them after the fight - not proud, not disappointed, just… there. The way a lighthouse is there, for ships that drift too close to the rocks.

Maybe that’s what he is.

Not a shield. Not a blade. But a steady light.

And somehow, that thought lets her sleep.

~

They reach the gates of Konoha two days later.

No fanfare. No welcome. Just the quiet nod of the guards, the same soft crunch of gravel beneath their feet. But Minato stops just before they reach the mission office. Turns to them. Looks them each in the eye. And says again, low and firm, “You did well.”

Not perfect. Not painless. But well.

Kakashi doesn’t reply. He just nods once, short and sharp.

Tsukiko meets his gaze.

And for the first time since the blood, since the forest, since the moment everything shifted - she believes him.

~

It’s late by the time she makes it home.

The gates had felt too large. The road too quiet. The mission report too heavy in her hands. She’d walked slowly, deliberately, as though each step was a tether pulling her back into the body that had ended a life for the first time two days ago. Into the village that had made her what she is becoming.

The front door creaks softly when she opens it.

The lights are low. The house smells like tea and ink. Home. But different.

“Tsukiko?”

Her father’s voice drifts in from the study - faint, cautious.

She steps into the hall and removes her sandals. Her fingers fumble slightly at the ties of her pack.

Ensui appears a breath later, already halfway to her, stopping only when he sees her face.

She looks up at him, and he must see it. Not the blood - she’d washed that away.

But the rest. The heaviness behind her eyes. The silence on her skin. The ghost of men who had died beneath her blade.

Ensui doesn’t speak. He doesn’t ask what happened or if she’s alright. He just steps forward and pulls her into his arms.

It’s not a crushing hug. Not desperate or loud. Just arms around shoulders. A hand smoothing her hair. A steady heartbeat against her cheek.

Tsukiko doesn’t mean to cry. She thought she’d cried herself dry already, that her grief had been folded neatly into the forest floor and left behind with the leaves. But something in his scent - something like home, like jasmine and warm paper and quiet patience - breaks her open again.

He doesn’t flinch.

When her shoulders tremble, he holds her tighter. When she whispers, hoarse and small, “I killed people,” he presses his hand gently to the back of her head and says nothing.

Just breathes with her.

Just stays.

“I didn’t want to,” she adds, barely audible. “But I did.”

“I know,” he murmurs, voice thick. “I know.”

She leans into him like the world hasn’t changed. But it has. And they both know it. Still - he doesn’t pull away.

Eventually, her tears slow. Eventually, her fingers loosen their grip on his sleeve. And he leans back just enough to look at her, brushing her hair gently behind one ear.

“You’re still you,” Ensui says quietly. “Even now. Even after.”

She nods. Not because she believes it yet, but because she wants to.

“Will it always feel like this?” she asks.

His expression twists, soft and sorrowful. “I hope not.”

Then, after a pause - more honestly:

“But maybe. Some of it. Enough to remind you you’re not lost.”

She closes her eyes. Breathes deep. And then, because she doesn’t know what else to say, she whispers, “Thank you.”

Ensui kisses the crown of her head, rests his chin there a moment.

“Come on,” he murmurs. “Let me make you tea.”

And she follows him to the kitchen, the weight in her chest just a little lighter than before.

~

That night, as she lays in bed, she stares at the ceiling and wonders what her old friends would’ve thought of her now. She remembers Neville, eyes furious but hand steady. Hermione, shaking but unrelenting. Harry - oh, Harry - who had stood before death and refused to become it. And most of all, she thinks of Ginny, who had once nearly been swallowed by darkness, who had once lost pieces of herself, but who had fought tooth and nail to find herself again.

They had survived the war without staining their hands in blood. All of them - every last one.

And now here she is.

Hands red. Soul raw. Alive, but altered.

What would they think of the person she’s become? Would they still see the softness she’s fought so hard to carry, or would they see only the blood? Would they understand and grieve alongside her - or would they condemn her?

She doesn’t know. She’ll never know. And that - that not-knowing - is the hardest part of loss, she thinks. Because the pain of absence fades - but the unsteadiness of uncertainty never does. 

She doesn’t look for Hermione’s bushy hair in the crowd anymore. Doesn’t long for the brightness of Ginny’s laugh. Doesn’t ache with the absence of Neville’s quiet presence. But she doesn’t think she’s ever wished harder that she could speak with them, just once more. 

Tsukiko presses the heel of her hand to her chest.

The pain isn’t sharp anymore. Just dull. Settled deep. She’s learned not to look for them. Not to hope. That was the first grief she buried in this world.

But tonight, gods - tonight she would give anything to hear Ginny’s teasing voice call her Luna again, her voice soft and gentle and affectionate. To have Hermione read next to her, the both of them curled up on armchairs and tucked away from the noise. To have Neville slip a drawing into her pocket with trembling hands and a bashful smile. To hear Harry say, I’m glad you’re still here.

Even if they didn’t understand. Even if they couldn’t forgive the lives she’s taken. Even if their eyes widened just slightly when she told them what she’d done. Because they would still love her. She’s certain of that. If nothing else - that .

Her breath trembles out again, quiet in the dark.

The ache of not knowing - truly not knowing, with no letter, no spell, no mirror between worlds - is worse than absence. Because absence is clean. Grief is clear. But uncertainty is a wound that never fully scabs over.

She closes her eyes.

Tries not to remember the warmth of their hands in hers. The sound of her name in their mouths. The girl she once was reflected in their eyes.

She doesn’t cry.

But she doesn’t sleep either.

Only lies still beneath a silver-stained sky, mourning a world that will never know the woman she’s becoming.

~

Hours pass. The moon drifts steadily across the sky. And still, she gazes at her ceiling, hands folded neatly on her abdomen. 

She doesn’t regret choosing to become a shinobi. Not really. Because she’s always known what it would entail, what this path would ask of her - and she’d walked it anyway. Because her new father, the first person in this world who’d seen her and accepted her anyway, was already on that path, and she wanted to be strong enough to protect him.

Or maybe - maybe it’d been more selfish than that. Maybe she’s always been the girl who’d been dragged off the Hogwarts Express at sixteen. The girl who’d been imprisoned in the cellar of a manor, where the only light had been when they’d opened the door to toss her cold, barely edible food. Where she’d sat, cold and hungry and alone, wondering if anyone would come for her. Quietly aching that she hadn’t been strong enough to save herself first.

Maybe the reason she’d become a shinobi, beneath the pretty veneer of wanting to protect her new father, is this: 

She’d been helpless once. And she never wants to be helpless again.

The thought nestles into her like a thorn.

Not new. Not sudden. Just… finally admitted. Finally named.

She doesn’t flinch from it. Just breathes.

Because Tsukiko - Luna - has always known the shape of her truths. Has always carried them gently, even when they were jagged and unloved. Even when they whispered things she didn’t want to hear.

Yes.

Maybe that’s it.

Maybe it wasn’t just love, or loyalty, or a desire to be useful in this new, strange, blood-stained world. Maybe it was fear. Old and deep and rooted in the dark.

Fear of chains. Of silence. Of locked doors and no one coming.

Maybe she didn’t become a shinobi because she was brave. Maybe she did it because she remembered what it felt like to sit in that cellar - bruised and trembling and wrapped in shadow - and realize, with quiet devastation, that her wand was gone, that her magic wasn’t enough, that she wasn’t enough.

That no one could hear her scream.

She turns her head slightly on the pillow. The ceiling doesn’t change. The moonlight spills across it like water. Silver and silent. She watches it and lets the truth settle fully into her bones:

She became a weapon because she’d once been a ghost.

Because she’d learned what it meant to be powerless, and vowed, without words, never to be that girl again.

The girl who waited. The girl who hoped.

And now… now she doesn’t wait.

She acts. She cuts. She kills.

The hands folded on her abdomen are still slim, still pale. Still soft in the way that belies the steel hidden beneath the skin.

She flexes her fingers slightly. Feels the phantom weight of the kunai. The warmth of blood. The heat of choice.

It hadn’t been easy. It hadn’t been clean. But it had been hers. And maybe - maybe that’s what makes it bearable.

Not noble. Not good. But hers.

She swallows. Her throat is dry. Her lips crack in the stillness. She thinks of Ensui’s embrace. Of Kakashi’s silence. Of Minato’s steady gaze.

Of the way the last man had died with surprise in his eyes, not malice. Of the way she’d wanted to live. Not just survive.

Live.

And maybe, she thinks, that’s what the others would never fully understand - Harry and Hermione and Neville and Ginny, bright-hearted as they were.

They’d been brave in a world that gave them the space to be.

But here?

Here, there is no space. Only blades. Only breath. Only the burning need to never be locked in the dark again.

Tsukiko exhales softly.

And for the first time since returning from the mission, she lets the silence feel like peace.

Just for a moment.

Just enough to carry her to morning.

~

The days blur at first.

Not in the way that grief distorts time - but in the way that living does. Quietly. Gradually. Without announcement or fanfare.

Two months pass. And Tsukiko begins to mend.

Not all at once. Not dramatically. But slowly. In the way that roots mend under soil, unseen but sure.

She wakes one morning and realizes she no longer dreams of the men’s faces. Not every night, at least. Some nights, she dreams of plum trees instead. Of storm clouds rolling over distant hills. Of wind brushing against her cheek like a hand that never learned how to be cruel.

She trains. Not harder, not softer - just steadier. With more presence. There’s less shame in the silence now, less fear in her stillness. Her chakra doesn’t falter when she draws water from the earth. It bends. Listens. Follows.

She laughs once during a break with Kakashi. Just once. A soft huff of breath when he makes a dry, unintended joke about Minato’s overenthusiastic field notes. He blinks at her like he hadn’t meant to be funny - but doesn’t correct her. He smiles, a little, beneath the mask.

She walks home one evening beneath trees just starting to turn gold, and for the first time, she doesn’t glance behind her to see if someone’s following. Her hands stay at her sides. Her shoulders stay relaxed.

She writes a letter she never sends.

To the friends I left behind,

I did something I never thought I would. I became someone I never thought I could. And yet… I’m still me. Somehow, I’m still here.

And I think you would understand. I think you would still hold my hand.

I miss you. I hope the moonlight finds you, too.

She burns it the next morning. Watches the paper curl and blacken in the garden’s stone basin, and feels something lift. Not vanish. Not dissolve. But lift .

Ensui watches her more quietly these days, less like he’s afraid she’ll break, more like he’s learning the new shape of her. Not less loved. Just… more tempered. More real .

Sometimes, he brings home small sweets from the market. She never asks if they’re meant for her. He never says they are. But she finds them in her room anyway, beside the window, wrapped in thin paper.

She eats them while watching the clouds.

Kakashi doesn’t speak of the ambush again. Neither does she.

But sometimes they sit near each other after training, in the stretch of fading light between exertion and dusk, and share oranges in silence. He peels them for her. She pretends not to notice. He pretends not to care.

Minato never says “I’m proud of you.” But sometimes, when she finishes a kata or corrects a seal with subtle, practiced ease, his eyes soften at the edges. And that is enough.

There are still hard days.

There are still nights when she wakes breathless. When she presses her hands to her chest and feels the weight of her choices like stones.

But she breathes through them.

She gets up.

She moves forward.

Because healing, she’s learned, isn’t the absence of pain.

It’s the willingness to walk beside it - hand in hand - until it quiets.

And she does.

And it does.

Chapter Text

They’re walking back from a mission when she says it.

It was nothing urgent. A scroll delivery - routine, clean, dull. No one even tried to stab them. Kakashi had half-suspected Minato-sensei gave them the assignment just to make sure they slept more than four hours that week.

The sun’s dipping low, sky split between gold and the first hints of dusk. Shadows stretch long across the road, pooling like ink between the trees. Tsukiko walks beside him, quiet as always, her hands tucked into her sleeves.

They don’t speak much on walks like this. They don’t need to. Minato’s walking behind them, close enough to reach them if something happens, just far enough that he’s out of earshot. Which is why, when she does speak, it hits like a thrown blade.

“Can I call you Kashi?”

Kakashi almost dies.

His foot catches on nothing. He doesn’t fall, but it’s a near thing - his ankle does this weird twist-recovery like he’s a civilian on bad terrain, and his heart just - implodes . Implodes and then rockets into his throat.

What?

What??

That’s not - she can’t just - people don’t do that. Say things like that. Ask things like that. With her voice all calm and light like she’s wondering about the weather. Like it’s not the single most dangerous sentence he’s heard all month. All year. Quite possibly in his entire life.

Can she - Kashi?

That’s - no one calls him that.

No one’s ever called him that.

His brain is screaming . His face is on fire . He can feel the heat crawling up the back of his neck, latching onto his ears like shame-shaped parasites.

She said it so - casually. Like she wasn’t holding a kunai to his entire nervous system.

What does that mean? Why would she - what possessed her - 

She’s still walking. Just... walking. Like she didn’t detonate a very small, very specific emotional landmine directly inside his ribcage.

He tries to respond. He really does. But his throat is dry, his brain has short-circuited, and all he manages is:

“… I guess.”

He wants to explode. Or vanish. Or sprint into the forest and live with the squirrels. Anything but this.

His voice had cracked. He heard it. She probably heard it. She doesn’t say anything, but she definitely heard it, and now he’s going to have to commit to this new reality where Tsukiko says things like Kashi with her quiet, calm voice and he’s expected to survive it.

It’s not even the nickname itself. It’s - her. It’s the fact that she wants to call him that. That she chose it. Like it’s something softer. Closer. Something meant just for her.

It’s not a teasing thing. It wasn’t a joke. There was no sarcasm in it, no smugness. Just - intention. Something gentle. And that’s somehow worse .

Kakashi stares at the road ahead like it’s personally offended him. His heart is doing this erratic, hiccuping thing in his chest. Like it’s not sure whether it should shut down or burst into song. She hasn’t said anything since. Just kept walking, calm as always, like she didn’t just completely shatter his equilibrium with six syllables.

Kashi.

Oh no.

Oh no no no.

He’s so screwed.

~

Lunch the next day is ordinary.

Or, at least, it should be.

They’re seated beneath a tree on the west edge of Training Field Three - Minato-sensei in his usual spot across from them, legs folded neatly, bento balanced on one knee. Kakashi sits to Tsukiko’s right, as always. He has his own bento open in front of him, contents separated with military precision: plain rice, dried fish, pickled vegetables, orange.

Tsukiko’s lunch is simple, too. She peels her egg with calm efficiency, sets her vegetables in neat rows, and eats with the same quiet grace she fights with.

It’s the kind of silence that makes Kakashi feel less like he’s supposed to fill it, and more like he’s lucky just to be in it. He doesn’t think too much on his actions. He just does it - like he always does. He reaches for the orange. Peels it. The rind curls away in one long strip. His fingers are sticky with citrus oil. He breaks off a slice and hands it to her.

(he used to peel the orange in the morning, but sometimes the slices would get dry and brittle between the early morning and lunchtime. He doesn't care if it's him, obviously, the nutritional value of the orange is the same - but. Well. Tsukiko deserves more than dry orange slices)

(so.)

It’s a habit at this point. Something he’s been doing for over a year now. She likes oranges, but never brings her own, because he always brings them for her. He always peels carefully - always hands her the best pieces. 

Today should be the same. Except it isn’t. Because she takes it, smiles at him - soft and small and real - and says, like it’s nothing:

“Thanks, Kashi.”

Time dies.

Everything dies.

Kakashi stares at her. She doesn’t notice, or she pretends not to. Just bites into the orange slice and turns her attention back to her rice balls like she didn’t just completely dismantle his ability to function in the span of three syllables.

He can’t breathe.

Oh gods, he thinks. She said it again.

Not can I call you . Not hypothetical.

She did .

And it was casual. Effortless. Like it belonged.

Like he belonged to her, somehow.

His face goes hot. Not just his cheeks - his ears, his scalp, his everything. He’s gone red. He knows it. He can feel it. Blood rushing like a stampede. His hands freeze halfway through breaking the next slice. His brain blanks out so violently it might as well have blue-screened.

She said it like it wasn’t a big deal.

But it was . It is . It’s her saying it.

The next orange slice slips from his fingers.

Not dramatically. Not with flair. Just clumsily - fingers misjudging the angle, the wedge slipping from his hand and landing in the grass like a tiny, juicy betrayal.

Tsukiko glances at it. Then up at him.

“… You okay?”

He makes a sound. He doesn’t mean to, but it leaves his throat anyway - something between a wheeze and a squeak and an affirmative grunt. He immediately turns away. Looks at literally anything else. A tree. The horizon. A cloud shaped like suffering.

Across from them, Minato makes a very quiet noise. Kakashi’s eyes snap toward him - horrified, accusatory, pleading.

Minato is doing the thing. The thing where his mouth twitches and his eyes sparkle and his shoulders almost shake, but he’s trying really, really hard to seem composed about it.

He fails. He very visibly fails.

His bento wobbles on his knee as he lifts his chopsticks with exaggerated calm. “So,” Minato says, tone far too neutral. “New nickname?”

Kakashi contemplates death.

Tsukiko, completely unfazed, hums a soft mm of agreement as she finishes her orange slice.

“I asked if I could call him that yesterday,” she says.

Minato nods, chewing slowly. “I see. And he said yes?”

Kakashi opens his mouth. Nothing comes out.

Tsukiko answers for him, calm as a monk. “He did.”

“Just like that?” Minato presses. Kakashi wonders if it’d be too obvious if he Shunshins into a tree.

… Probably.

She tilts her head and amends, “He tripped, turned red, and then said yes.”

Minato bites his lip. Not to stop a laugh - no. Just to redirect it. “Ah. Sounds about right.”

Kakashi seriously considers setting himself on fire. He doesn’t speak for the rest of lunch. 

~

Kakashi is ruined. Absolutely, entirely, catastrophically ruined.

He’s seven years old and his entire world has collapsed around the soft syllables of a nickname.

He doesn’t remember the walk home. His legs moved. His eyes probably worked. But none of it registered, because all he could hear - over and over and over again - was:

Thanks, Kashi.

She’d said it like - it was real. Like it had always been real and she was just giving it voice. Like it meant something.

And that?

That was so much worse than anything else she could've done.

He’s in his room now. The door is closed. The windows are shut. His sandals are kicked off by the door in a way that would absolutely have made Sakumo raise an eyebrow. His gear is half-unpacked and forgotten on the floor.

Thankfully, mercifully, he is alone.

He’s lying flat on his back on the tatami, staring blankly at the ceiling like it holds the answers to every existential crisis known to man.

It doesn’t.

He'd checked.

"Kashi," he mutters aloud, just to hear how it sounds again.

He immediately covers his face with both hands. He’s never going to recover from this. This isn’t just flustered. This isn’t just a moment.

This is the collapse of a system. The shattering of an identity. He’s Hatake Kakashi, child prodigy, top of his class, terrifying in a spar, respected even by jonin - 

And now he’s Kashi.

Her Kashi.

And the worst - the worst - part is that he likes it. He likes it so much he wants to curl into a corner and die. Because it’s not about the name. It’s about her. It’s about the fact that Tsukiko is the one saying it, and when she does, it feels like she sees something soft in him and doesn’t mind it.

She could call him anything. Idiot. Useless. Just Kakashi.

But she called him Kashi. And smiled when she did it.

He groans into his hands. Rolls over. Smacks his forehead lightly against the floor.

He’s doomed. He’s seven and it’s already over. There’s no recovery from this. Not when he knows, with horrible, soul-destroying clarity, that he would let her call him that forever.

~

Kakashi doesn’t hear the front door open. He’s too busy lying face-down on his bedroom floor, silently perishing. His forehead is pressed against the tatami, his hands are fisted uselessly by his sides, and he’s been internally screaming for the past twenty minutes without pause. The orange peel is still in his pocket. He doesn’t even remember putting it there. 

He should be ashamed of that. He is ashamed of that. 

He is utterly compromised, and if Tsukiko says Kashi again - if she smiles at him like that again - he’s not going to make it. He’s just going to drop dead on the spot. Instant chakra failure. Official cause of death: emotional devastation via one (1) extremely calm girl. 

The hallway creaks. Kakashi freezes. 

Then: footsteps. Slow, measured. Familiar. 

Oh no. No no no no no no no -  

A knock at the frame. “Kakashi?” His father’s voice. Mild. Puzzled. 

Kakashi does not move. There’s a pause. 

Then the door opens with a soft whoosh. Sakumo steps inside. Kakashi sees his sandals first. Then his knees as he crouches down. Then his shadow stretching across the floor, long and warm in the late-afternoon light. 

“… What’d she do this time?” 

Kakashi’s head jerks up. 

“I - Tsukiko didn’t do anything,” he says, too fast, too defensive, voice cracking again, oh no -  

Sakumo hums. “I never mentioned a name.” 

Kakashi lets his forehead collapse back onto the floor with a thud. 

There is a long, long silence. 

Then Sakumo starts laughing. A quiet, delighted kind of laugh - light and knowing and absolutely, unforgivably smug. 

Kakashi groans into the floorboards. He is going to implode. His father is the worst. 

Sakumo sits down next to him, casually. Like they’re just going to have a chat. Like Kakashi’s soul hasn’t just been pulverized by the weight of three syllables. 

“I take it she said something,” Sakumo says mildly, leaning back on his hands. 

Kakashi doesn’t answer. 

Sakumo tilts his head. “Let me guess. It wasn’t rude. It wasn’t mean. It wasn’t even teasing. But you’ve been spiraling for the past hour like someone set your emotional operating system on fire.” 

Kakashi glares at the floor. “… She called me Kashi.” 

There is a beat of silence. Then -  

“Oh,” Sakumo says. And then, very softly, very gleefully: “ Oh .” 

Kakashi kicks weakly at the air in protest. “Don’t.” 

Sakumo laughs anyway. It goes on for an eternity. Kakashi closes his eyes and prays for a swift death.

Sakumo’s laughter finally dies down, tapering into soft wheezes. He wipes under one eye like this is the funniest thing that’s happened in months. Maybe years. Maybe ever.

Kakashi continues to lie there like a boy struck down by fate. He hopes the tatami swallows him whole. Or that an enemy kunai finds him on the next mission. Either outcome is preferable to this.

“You like her,” Sakumo says, with the casual confidence of someone tossing a match into a field of dry grass.

Kakashi lifts his head just enough to glare at him with the righteous fury of an offended child.

“I do not.”

“Mmm.” Sakumo nods solemnly. “Sure. That explains why you’re face-down on the floor over a nickname.”

“I’m not face-down because I like her,” Kakashi hisses, which is very close to a confession and he immediately regrets it. “It’s because - because - ”

“Because she said Kashi,” Sakumo supplies helpfully, as if he hasn’t already ruined his son’s entire life.

Kakashi rolls away from him with a strangled noise. The orange peel in his pocket curls in protest. He glares at the ceiling now instead of the floor. Bold of him. Brave, to be face-up instead of face-down.

“I don’t like her,” he insists again, arms crossed, voice just shy of pouting. “That’s not what this is.”

Sakumo hums like he’s watching a nature documentary on emotionally repressed children in the wild. “Right. Of course not.”

“I mean it.”

“Mmhm.”

“I mean it.”

Sakumo lifts a brow, clearly trying not to smile again. “Alright. Then what would you call it, exactly?”

Kakashi opens his mouth. Closes it. Squints furiously at the ceiling.

“I - she’s - ” He sits up, hair mussed and face still warm, hands gesturing wildly as he tries to logic his way out of this emotional cart crash. “She’s calm. And smart. And she doesn’t say things unless she means them. And she asked. She didn’t just - start saying it like some idiot. And when she says my name it sounds - ”

He stops.

The silence snaps into place like a trap.

Sakumo is beaming.

Kakashi throws himself backward again with a groan that could level a village.

“That’s not a crush,” he mutters mutinously. “That’s just… admiration. Shinobi respect. Professionalism.”

“Ah, yes,” Sakumo says, deadpan. “The classic signs. Sharing fruit. Collapsing on the floor. Blushing so hard you look like a ripe tomato. Completely professional.”

Kakashi covers his face with both hands and groans again, louder.

Sakumo chuckles and ruffles his hair - gently, so Kakashi doesn’t actually bite him.

“You’ll figure it out,” he says, softer now. “Eventually.”

“I hope I don’t,” Kakashi mutters.

But even as he says it, he knows he already has. Because the orange peel is still in his pocket. Because the shape of her voice saying Kashi is still echoing behind his eyes. Because when she looks at him like he’s something soft instead of sharp, it makes him feel - 

Ruined.

Completely, irreversibly, devastatingly ruined.

~

It’s late.

The house is quiet in that particular way it only is when his father’s asleep - no weight of presence, no slow footsteps across the hall, no rustle of gear being unpacked. Just the whisper of wind outside the shutters and the faint tick of the wall clock marking time like a heartbeat.

Kakashi lies on his back in bed, hands folded over his stomach, staring at the ceiling. He woke up two hours ago.

He hasn’t moved since.

The orange peel is on his desk. He’d finally taken it out of his pocket after dinner, stared at it for a while, then set it down like it was a live explosive. It still smells faintly sweet. Sharp. Like memory.

He can’t stop hearing it.

Thanks, Kashi.

It’s not the nickname itself. He keeps telling himself that, like a mantra.

It’s the way she said it. Like it meant something. Like he meant something. And worse - better - like she knew it meant something, and didn’t mind.

He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes.

This is so dumb. He’s a kid. This isn’t supposed to happen. Not to him. Not now. Not like this.

He groans and rolls over onto his stomach, muffling his face against the pillow.

And then, because the universe has no mercy, the thought occurs:

He should say it.

Not her name. The full version, anyway. No - the other one. The one that’s been sitting on the edge of his thoughts for weeks now. The one he’s never dared say aloud, not even once.

Tsuki .

It’s just a nickname. Two syllables. An abbreviation.  It doesn’t mean anything - except it does.

Because it’s hers. Because it sounds like quiet and shadow and moonlight on water. Because it’s the kind of name you give someone, not because they earned it, but because you want to hold a part of them a little closer.

Kakashi buries his face deeper into the pillow.

He can’t.

He can’t .

But - 

But.

He turns his head just enough to breathe, cheeks burning, and whispers it into the dark.

“… Tsuki.”

His voice cracks halfway through.

He freezes. Like the room might have heard. His ears feel like they’re on fire. His stomach twists into something awful and sweet. The name lingers in the air for a moment - half a breath - and then disappears like mist.

He stares at the wall.

He’s never said anything more dangerous in his life. Never said anything more sacred.

He covers his face with the pillow and lets out a strangled sound - half laugh, half groan, fully doomed.

He is never saying that out loud where she can hear it. Not unless he wants to combust on the spot. But in the dark, in the quiet, in the space where no one else can see - 

He says it again. Softer.

“… Tsuki.”

~

Kakashi is fine. Absolutely fine. Completely, totally, 100% fine. 

He’s definitely not counting the number of times Tsukiko’s called him Kashi this week. 

(it’s five)

He’s definitely not still hearing the one from this morning echoing in his ears.

(he’d begun thinking about developing his own lightning jutsu, and she’d looked at him with soft eyes and said, whatever you decide to make will be perfect, Kashi)

He’s definitely not wondering when the next time he’ll hear it is.

(so far, her maximum seems to be twice in one day. There’s a twenty-five percent chance she’ll do it again before the end of the day)

(... not that he's hoping. That would be foolish. Sentimental. Stupid. And Hatake Kakashi is none of those things)

He sits at an outdoor table, Minato in front of him, Tsukiko on his right. A few bamboo steamers full of dumplings sit in front of them. Minato had decided, in honor of their six-month anniversary of becoming genin, to treat them to lunch. Since he treats them to lunch approximately twice a week already, this isn’t exactly the reward he seems to think it is, but neither Kakashi nor Tsukiko are going to turn down free food, even if it is under the guise of team bonding. 

It’s mid-spring. The cherry blossoms have come and gone, but pink petals still lie scattered and swept to the sides of the roads. The blossoms have been replaced by bright green leaves, beginning to shade the streets once more. It’s comfortably warm out. Sunny, too. Quiet, since it’s the middle of a weekday. 

He feels a soft warmth flicker in his chest. It’s… nice. Here. With them. 

And then, with the force of a boulder crashing through a window, the peace shatters. 

“MINATOOOO!”

A blur of red hair and exuberant laughter appears at the end of the street. In the next instant, a woman’s barreling into Minato, wrapping her arms around his neck from behind in an all-out tackle. Kakashi’s hand reaches automatically for his kunai pouch, but Minato’s laughing and tilting his head back, so he forces himself to relax.

Then the woman spots him and Tsukiko. Bright violet eyes lock onto them like a predator locks onto prey, and Kakashi goes perfectly still. 

“Oh my gods,” the woman breathes. “These two are your genin?”

“They are,” Minato says, looking faintly amused. “Kushina, meet Hatake Kakashi and Nara Tsukiko. Team, meet Uzumaki Kushina.”

Tsukiko, looking completely unfazed at the sheer loudness of Kushina’s everything, dips her head politely. 

“It’s nice to meet you,” she says softly. 

Kakashi just looks at Kushina flatly and says nothing. Hopefully, she’ll take the hint and quiet down - 

Kushina gasps, clutching her heart. “Oh my gods,” she repeats, with emphasis. “You two are so precious! You -” she points, almost accusingly, at Tsukiko, “you look like some kind of forest spirit! And you’re so calm, and polite, and -” 

Her voice degrades into a high-pitched squeal. Then she turns to Kakashi, who feels his eyes widen involuntarily with fear. 

“And you -” She clenches her hands into fists, “are so grumpy. You’re so tiny but so full of rage! It’s like watching a kitten try to be scary -” 

Kakashi stares at her incredulously, deeply offended. He has a body count. He has killed people, and she’s comparing him to a kitten??

His eye twitches.

Kakashi has assassinated three enemy scouts. He has set bone-deep fear into the hearts of enemy chuunin twice his age. He once made a grown adult retreat through a trap-laced ravine with nothing but a look and a flash of steel.

And this woman - this force of chakra and chaos in human form - has just compared him to a kitten.

A kitten .

His hands are still in his lap. He’s very composed. Perfectly still. Only his ears are red. A minor, inconvenient biological betrayal.

“I’m not - ” he begins, with the strained patience of someone trying not to ignite an international incident, “a kitten.”

Kushina makes a delighted noise. “Oh my gods, he even sounds angry when he’s denying it! Look at him, Minato! He’s like, rawr , I’m dangerous! Look out! I have tiny, terrifying teeth!”

“I have kunai,” Kakashi says flatly, affronted to his very soul.

Tsukiko reaches for a dumpling. “He does,” she agrees mildly. “He’s very good with them.”

Kakashi glares at his plate. He’s going to eat six dumplings just out of spite.

Kushina is thrilled. “Oh, this is amazing,” she breathes, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “They’re like opposites in perfect harmony. The grumpy one and the gentle ghost-child. I love them.”

Tsukiko turns to look at her, head tilting slightly. There’s no irritation in her expression - just mild interest, like Kushina’s a creature of unusual coloring. But beneath the interest, there’s something quieter. Sadder. Almost nostalgic. 

Then she speaks, in that same thoughtful, lilting voice she always uses when she says something that breaks the world into poetry.

“You remind me of wildfire,” she says simply.

Kushina blinks. “What?”

Tsukiko continues, utterly unbothered. “The kind that crackles across dry plains in high summer. Loud and bright. Joyful. Full of warning, but not malice.”

There’s a pause.

Minato, face perfectly even, sips his tea.

Kakashi feels his fingers twitch involuntarily. He feels a sudden urge to grip the edge of the table and hold on for dear life.

Kushina gasps - gasps - and clutches her chest like she’s been shot through the heart.

“She’s a poet,” she breathes. “Minato, you didn’t tell me she was a poet.”

Minato gives Kakashi a look over the rim of his cup that can only be described as knowingly smug.

Kushina rounds on Tsukiko. “Say something else. No, wait - compliment me again. I’ve never been compared to a wildfire before. I need more. Go on. Tell me what my hair reminds you of. Is it molten lava? A thousand sunsets? A flame-wreathed goddess?”

Tsukiko considers. Her expression remains entirely serious. “It’s like a battle standard flying above a victorious army,” she says after a beat. “Messy. Brilliant. Brave.”

Kushina screams. She actually screams. The restaurant owner peeks out from behind the door, alarmed.

Minato calmly picks up another dumpling. Kakashi shovels two into his mouth in rapid succession to cope.

Kushina spins toward Minato again, eyes shining with sudden, dramatic purpose.

“I’m stealing her,” she declares. “I don’t care what you say, she’s mine now. I’m taking her home. She can live in my apartment and teach me how to sound mysterious.”

Minato lifts a brow, not even pausing as he picks up another dumpling. “You can try. But you’ll have to file paperwork with the Nara clan. Her father’s Ensui.”

Kushina freezes mid-reach for Tsukiko’s hands. “Wait -  really?”

Minato nods. “Mmhmm.”

She stares at Tsukiko, mouth falling open slightly. “ Nara Ensui? The guy who fought one of the Seven Swordsman using a puddle and half a leaf? And won?? That Ensui?”

Tsukiko nods once. “He makes very good miso soup.”

Kushina groans dramatically and drops her head to the table. “Of course he does. That explains the quiet. But - ” she sits up again, squinting in fascination, “where’d the poetry come from?”

Tsukiko blinks. Then, as if she’d been asked something simple, says with the same soft certainty she uses when cataloguing plants or planning drills:

“Silence is just another kind of listening. The longer you do it, the more the world starts to speak back.”

Kushina stares at her. Minato sips his tea, visibly pleased. Kakashi stares at the sky like it personally betrayed him by not swallowing him whole.

“Oh my gods ,” Kushina breathes, pressing her palms together. “You’re not a child. You’re an ancient forest spirit in disguise . You’re here to guide the chosen ones through a spiritual awakening.”

Tsukiko, entirely unbothered, picks up another dumpling.

Kakashi grabs one too, mostly just to do something. Anything. His chest feels too full. He is not blushing.

(not externally)

(not that it matters)

Because when Tsukiko turns and offers him the last dumpling on the steamer - wordlessly, like it’s something she’s always done - he doesn’t even hesitate before taking it. He just hopes she doesn’t notice his hand is shaking. 

He takes the dumpling, deposits it on his plate, and picks up the teapot. Refills his tea. Desperately tries to calm his sprinting heartbeat, because this is ridiculous, why is he so affected by this - 

And then.

And then.

“Kashi, pass the tea?”

The moment the word leaves Tsukiko’s mouth, Kakashi almost drops the entire teapot.

He doesn’t, of course. He’s very controlled. Perfect posture, clean hand-off. No visible twitch. No tell.

But inside?

His soul is imploding like a poorly-anchored explosive tag.

Kushina gasps. Hands to her mouth, eyes wide like she’s just witnessed divine intervention.

“Oh my gods,” she breathes, “that is the most adorable thing I’ve ever heard.”

Kakashi stiffens.

No. No, no, no - 

“Kashi,” Kushina says again, mimicking Tsukiko’s tone with theatrical reverence, as if just saying it could summon something. “She called him Kashi , Minato. With her tiny, poetic moon-voice. Like it’s normal. Like he’s not the grumpiest, most emotionally repressed little knife-child in all of Konoha. Like he’s not made of knives. Oh gods, you’re so doomed.”

“I’m not - ” Kakashi starts, voice high and too fast, cracking just slightly on the word not .

“She just melts you!” Kushina wails, eyes gleaming with chaotic glee. “I saw it happen in real time. That nickname isn’t a nickname. That nickname is a genjutsu. That’s forbidden-level softness. I should report this to the Hokage.”

“I’m fine,” Kakashi says, stiff as a plank, dragging his dignity back into place like it’s a sandbag in a storm. “It’s just a name.”

Minato hums behind his teacup, the picture of innocent observation. “Mm. Yes. He’s completely fine.”

Kakashi kicks him under the table. Minato does not react, but Kakashi knows he felt it.

Tsukiko, who has calmly resumed sipping her tea, frowns ever so slightly.

“I’ve called him that for a week,” she says, with the mild confusion of someone pointing out a logistical oversight.

“That just makes it worse!” Kushina cries, clutching at the edge of the table. “Do you know how much psychological warfare you’ve been committing?! He’s in turmoil! Look at him! That is a child actively suppressing a cataclysmic number of feelings right now!”

Kakashi stares straight ahead, chewing his dumpling with the same energy as a condemned man. If he doesn’t look at anyone, this moment might dissolve into mist and leave no trace behind.

He can feel the heat in his ears. The warmth blooming in his chest - too sharp, too big, too close.

And then Tsukiko tilts her head, quiet and curious, and looks at him.

“Should I stop?” she asks. “If it bothers you.”

Kakashi turns toward her slowly. His mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.

He wants to lie. He should lie.

But his throat has forgotten how to do that.

“… No,” he says at last. Quiet. Betrayed. Helpless.

Tsukiko nods, completely unfazed. “Okay.”

Kushina makes a sound. It’s half-gasp, half-laugh, and ends in a fluttery squeal that causes a passing civilian to glance over in concern.

“I love you both so much,” she says, wiping a tear from beneath one eye like this is the ending of a romantic epic. “I want to bottle this and drink it. I want to frame it on the wall. Minato, your team is a masterpiece.”

Kakashi, expression blank, takes his accursed tea and downs it in one shot.

He is absolutely, completely, 100% fine. 

And he’s never going to emotionally recover from this.

~

The walk home is a blur.

Not because of the sun, though it’s golden and low and soft enough to blur the edges of the rooftops. Not because of the wind, though it brushes through the streets like an apology.

Because Kakashi is, very simply, not okay.

He’s fine, though. For the record. Outwardly.

He’s walking straight. His hands are in his pockets. His sandals are quiet against the stone. He hasn’t said a word since lunch ended, but that’s not unusual. He’s always quiet. Nobody would notice. Nobody has noticed.

(except maybe Minato, who’d kept glancing at him like he’d been trying not to laugh)

Kakashi is not thinking about the tea.

He’s not thinking about how Tsukiko called him Kashi in front of a near-stranger, someone other than Minato. Not just someone else - Uzumaki Kushina, who reacted like she’d just seen a baby owl wear a tiny scarf and declare love in haiku.

He’s not thinking about the fact that it didn’t feel embarrassing - not really. It’d felt like something warm had been cracked open in his chest and poured out for someone else to see. Like he’d been exposed. 

He’s definitely not thinking about what Kushina said, about how it melted him, because that’s not true, and she’s dramatic, and it’s just a nickname.

And he is absolutely not thinking about the part that really, truly, irreversibly unmade him - 

Tsukiko’s voice when she said: You remind me of wildfire.

And: Like a battle standard flying above a victorious army. Messy. Brilliant. Brave.

Because, the thing is - he’s heard her say things like that before. He still thinks about the way she’d asked him do you think pine trees are lonely? sometimes and it never fails to make his mind go blank and his heart do something ridiculous in his chest. He’s treasured the rare moments she’ll let poetry spill from her lips, hoarded the memory of each phrase like a squirrel hoards nuts before winter. But - she’s never complimented someone in that way before. Not - beautifully. Poetically. Devastatingly. 

He’s heard her compliments. Been on the receiving end of them more than once. Tsukiko compliments the way she usually speaks - softly, gently, honestly. Bluntly. But that - that - 

That’d been a painting disguised as words. It hadn’t even been directed at him, but he’s still reeling from it anyway, because he hadn’t known she could do that - see directly to the heart of someone and tell them something that’ll crack them wide open with joy. 

He still hasn’t stopped hearing it. Those words. That voice. Not just the content - but the tone. The care. The weight.

That had been... for someone. A gift, not just an observation, not just a window cracked slightly open. She'd seen Kushina and had wanted to give her something beautiful. And she had.

And Kakashi - Kakashi is not jealous. It’s not that. It’s just - 

He wonders.

What would she say about me?

What would she see?

If she turned and looked at him - not just looked, but saw, the way she’d seen Kushina - what would she find? What image would take shape in her mind? Would it be soft? Would it be kind? Would it be something he could keep, folded up like a secret in his chest?

Or - 

Or would it be nothing at all?

Would she look and just see Kakashi? Not the battlefield, not the wind, not the storm or the bloodline - but just a boy with a mask and a sharp edge and a silence he doesn’t know how to fill?

He exhales too harshly through his nose.

No. He’s not going to ask. Because the truth is, he wants to know. So badly he aches with it.

But he’s also terrified. Because what if she looks at him and doesn’t see anything worth saying? What if she opens her mouth and stays quiet? What if her poetry isn’t for him?

He stops walking without realizing it, standing still at the edge of a bridge bathed in afternoon light. The wind lifts a few strands of hair across his forehead. His hands stay in his pockets. He stares at the water below. And thinks: What would she call me, if she saw all of me?

He doesn’t know. And until he’s brave enough to ask - 

He might never find out.

Chapter Text

The first time Tsukiko meets Kushina, her heart folds in on itself - quietly, almost reverently. Because Kushina laughs, and the sound is sunlit, careless, alive. It rings through the street like windchimes in summer. And Tsukiko - who does not often dwell on what she’s lost - feels the air go still inside her chest.

It’s the hair at first, of course, vivid as blood spilled on freshly-fallen snow. But it’s more than that. It’s the warmth, the brightness, the untamed joy. It’s the way Kushina seems to take up space like it belongs to her, the way light belongs to morning.

And in that moment, Tsukiko sees Ginny.

Not the Ginny from the very end, eyes too old for sixteen, laughter frayed thin by war. But the Ginny from before. The Ginny who had once danced in the Great Hall, barefoot. Who had spun in circles just to feel the air on her skin. Who had laughed with her whole heart and dared to love in full color.

She knows it isn’t her. Of course it isn’t. Kushina is not Ginny. Her chakra thrums differently, her presence crackles with something older, wilder, like ocean storms and midnight bonfires.

But still.

Still, Tsukiko says something soft - about her laugh, about her light - and Kushina beams, and Tsukiko watches the ghost of a memory shimmer in the corner of her mind like dust caught in sunlight.

It aches. Gods, it aches.

But it’s a tender ache. The kind that memory leaves when it brushes past your ribs and doesn’t linger. The kind that reminds you you’ve loved before. That you remember what it means to cherish.

And she is grateful. Not because she believes in signs, or in second chances. But because, just for a breath, someone reminded her of a girl who used to wear freckles like constellations and loved her like it was the easiest thing in the world.

She does not say any of this, of course.

She only smiles. And compliments her laugh.

~

As lunch draws to a close, as Minato dismisses them for the day with a smile - they stopped doing afternoon D-ranks two months ago once they started doing multi-day C-ranks - Kushina pounces on Tsukiko.

“Hey, Tsukiko-chan,” Kushina chirps, “wanna braid my hair? Or I can braid yours? Or we can make flower crowns and you can say more pretty, poetic things?”

Tsukiko considers this. She hasn’t braided anyone’s hair in this life. Or had hers braided by another person. She finds - to her faint surprise - she’s missed it. 

“Alright.”

Kakashi stares at her like she’s grown a second head. Or maybe like she’s revealed herself as a completely different species. Something not-quite-human, not-quite-comprehensible, just… other .

His eyes are wide. Not in alarm, exactly - more in betrayal. Like he’s just watched her calmly agree to a social interaction with more than three words and is now re-evaluating the foundations of his entire worldview.

Tsukiko blinks at him.

Then turns calmly back to Kushina, whose eyes are already sparkling like fireworks.

“Yes!” Kushina grins, all teeth and mischief and sun. “Okay, I have ribbons. And combs. Don’t ask why. And - Minato, we’re going to the park! Don’t wait up!”

Minato gives a long-suffering sort of smile and waves them off, though she catches the fondness tucked into it.

Kushina latches onto her hand with no hesitation, and Tsukiko lets herself be pulled along, light-footed and curious. Kakashi is still sitting at the table behind them, frozen with half a dumpling in one hand.

She glances over her shoulder. Just once.

He’s still staring. His expression is something between horrified and thunderstruck.

Tsukiko tilts her head at him thoughtfully. Waves. Then she turns away again.

She doesn’t know how to explain it - to herself, to him, to anyone. That it’s not about Kushina, not entirely. It’s about Ginny. Or the shape Ginny once took, before war and trauma and loss sharpened her into something harder. It’s about the brightness in Kushina’s smile, the laughter in her voice, the warmth of her chakra that all remind her of sweeter times. 

She likes Kushina. She does. She likes her honesty; the way she laughs, bright and honest and uninhibited; the way her smile feels like a mother’s hug, warm, soft, something that whispers nothing will hurt you while I’m here.

But Tsukiko is self-aware enough to know that it’s not just about who Kushina is as a person that she likes. And maybe it’s selfish, to indulge herself in the memory of Ginny through another person, but Tsukiko has never denied having flaws. She will allow herself this one sweet, tender thought of before - and then she will let it go. It’s not fair to Kushina, who deserves to be liked and seen wholly as herself, after all.

She’ll let herself have this, just for a moment. And then she will try her best to move on.

~

The park is mostly empty.

A few civilians drift down the shaded path, their sandals soft against the stone. Sparrows chatter from the trees. Somewhere in the distance, someone laughs, but it doesn’t reach them here - not beneath this canopy of pale green, where the sun filters like honey through new leaves and time seems to slow.

Tsukiko sits with her legs folded in the grass, still and composed, hands resting in her lap. Kushina kneels behind her, chattering cheerfully as she unpacks the little cloth bag she had pulled out of nowhere.

“I’ve got three combs, one brush, some ribbons - oh, this one has sakura blossoms embroidered on it! And this one’s blue, which would really bring out your eyes - Minato always says that about himself but I think it’s because he just likes blue, honestly - anyway, you’re going to look so pretty. ”

Tsukiko hums in acknowledgment, not really sure what to say.

Her hair is down - she almost always keeps it tied or braided, practical and precise - but she hadn’t hesitated when Kushina gestured for it. Hadn’t moved away. There’s something grounding about the feeling of hands in her hair that aren't her own. It’s familiar in a way that bypasses memory and lodges somewhere in her chest.

The ache is still there. But gentler now. Less like a wound, more like a weight she’s carried long enough to stop noticing.

Kushina hums as she works, careful with the strands, brushing through the pale blonde waves with surprising gentleness.

“You know,” she says after a few minutes, “you remind me of someone.”

Tsukiko blinks.

Kushina goes on, tone turning softer, almost wistful. “One of my friends from the academy. We were genin teammates. Mikoto. She’s an Uchiha, but she’s nothing like the way people think Uchiha are. She’s quiet, yeah, but she listens like she’s mapping the world while you talk. She always knows when something’s wrong, even when you haven’t said a word.”

Tsukiko tilts her head slightly. “That sounds like you care for her a great deal.”

Kushina smiles behind her. Tsukiko can hear it in her voice. “I do. She’s… steady. You know? Like a river. Calm until it isn’t. I used to throw tantrums and she’d just blink at me and wait until I stopped. You kind of have that same aura. Like you’re seeing everything, even the stuff people aren’t saying.”

Tsukiko considers that. She isn’t sure she wants to be seen like that. But she’s not sure she minds, either.

“Thank you,” she says, and means it.

Kushina begins weaving the first braid - tight at the top, then looser as it falls. Her fingers are deft, moving like this is something she’s done a thousand times.

“You don’t talk much,” she adds, a little amused. “But when you do, it’s always something I want to write down.”

Tsukiko’s lips curve faintly. “Words are meant to last. I try not to waste them.”

“Yeah, well,” Kushina says, “you’re doing great. I love your quiet. Makes it feel like everything else slows down, just a little.”

Tsukiko swallows. The ache returns - brief, bright. She doesn’t know if she’s hearing Ginny in Kushina or seeing Kushina through Ginny, and she doesn’t know which is more dangerous.

But she doesn’t say any of that. Instead, she says, “You remind me of something warm.”

Kushina pauses, just for a second. Then gently ties the ribbon at the end of the braid.

“You’re gonna make me cry,” she says, voice thick with humor but edged with something soft. “Now turn around. Your turn.”

Tsukiko does.

And when she lifts her hands to return the gesture - brushing Kushina’s wild, flame-colored hair back into some semblance of order - she’s quiet. Focused. But not distant.

She listens as Kushina talks. Lets the wind thread through the branches above. Feels the warmth of the sun, and of this new beginning, like the blooming of something tender in her chest.

And for a moment, she doesn’t miss Ginny.

For a moment, she’s just here. With someone kind. Someone real. Someone who might become hers, too.

~

Months pass. And then, suddenly, Minato’s voice is calm and even as he says, “I’m planning on signing you both up for Konoha’s next chuunin exams.”

Tsukiko blinks.

They’ve worn their hitai-ate for a year. Children, still, in most eyes. But children who walked out of the Academy in a single year, where others took at least four. Children who have already seen the breath between life and death and chosen to keep walking.

So no - perhaps it is not so strange, after all.

“When are they?” she asks, her voice a soft ripple. “The exams, I mean.”

“In five months,” Minato replies. “Konoha-only.”

She nods. So does Kakashi, though more slowly, more stiffly. They do not need it spelled out why the exams will test only Konoha genin. The world is coiling tight with tension, a storm gathering beyond the horizon. No village wants to reveal its hand when war looms. Best to keep your talent hidden - until it’s too late for your enemy to react.

Minato’s next words fall with deliberate care. “The only issue is that Team Seven is, at present, a two-person team. The chuunin exams require three.”

Tsukiko feels, rather than sees, Kakashi’s expression turn to stone. 

But she is not surprised. Not truly. This path has always demanded adaptability, and they have always given it. If anything, the thought that someone else will walk beside them in the exam is... grounding. A necessary shift. One they’ll weather, like all the rest.

She exhales, and takes it in stride. “Alright. When can we meet them?”

Beside her, Kakashi mutters under his breath, the faintest edge to his voice. “They better not be loud.”

Minato’s mouth twitches, part amusement, part relief. “Tomorrow.”

And just like that, the wind shifts. A new name will be spoken in their ranks. A third presence will enter the rhythm they’ve built. And the world, always in motion, tilts forward again.

~

The morning breathes in hush and gold.

Dew clings to the grass like half-formed thoughts, and the air - still, tender - wraps around the world as if not to disturb it. Training Ground Three feels like a secret held close. Even the trees are quiet, their leaves whispering only when touched by the gentlest of breezes. The birds are the only ones unafraid to speak.

Tsukiko stands at the clearing’s edge, hands clasped loosely before her, a single strand of pale hair shifting across her cheek. Her gaze is fixed on a small bird nestled among the branches - a bush warbler, its muted green feathers blending almost seamlessly with the new leaves of spring.

She remembers what they once called it in another life: the Japanese nightingale. But that had been a misinterpretation, like so many things in that other world. It sings not by moonlight, but at dawn. Uguisu , they call it here. Beautiful voice.

She listens, quietly. Its song is low and tremulous, like the sky’s first breath.

Kakashi appears beside her without a sound. He doesn’t speak, only follows her gaze upward, toward the uguisu.

Tsukiko’s voice is a murmur, soft enough that only someone listening closely would hear.

“In haiku,” she says, “the uguisu is not just a bird. It’s spring itself - melting frost, shy warmth, the sound of life waking up again.”

She tilts her head slightly, eyes still on the bird.

“It sings not because it is joyous,” she adds, more to herself than to him, “but because it remembers what silence felt like.”

And the uguisu trills again, as if in quiet agreement.

Tsukiko feels more than hears Kakashi shift beside her - an almost imperceptible weight in the air. He’s watching the bird too, or pretending to.

There’s a long silence. The kind that feels suspended, like a droplet clinging to the edge of a leaf, trembling with the effort not to fall.

Then he says, voice flat, “... That’s. Uh. Nice.”

She blinks, tilting her head to glance at him. He’s staring very intently at the uguisu. Too intently. His hands are in his pockets, shoulders stiff. There’s a faint pinkness climbing up the edge of his mask.

Tsukiko only smiles gently and turns her gaze back to the bird.

Kakashi always gets a little awkward when she says something poetic. She hasn’t yet figured out why. Though she’s curious about it, she hasn’t asked, not yet - he’ll tell her when he’s ready. What matters is that he’s never asked her to stop, and so she hasn’t. She doesn’t mind his fumbling - it’s almost comforting, like the way the stream always burbles at the same bend or how the wind stirs the same corner of her room at night. Predictable. Familiar. Clumsy, but honest. 

She closes her eyes for a moment, lets the birdsong filter through her chest like sunlight through water. “It is nice,” she agrees softly.

Kakashi makes a small, choked sound that might be agreement. Or disbelief. Or a barely restrained scream.

Tsukiko takes it in stride.

The uguisu sings again, a hush of spring rising gently in its throat.

~

She feels him before she hears him.

Minato’s chakra approaches like the sun cresting over the mountains - gentle, golden, impossible to miss. It brushes against her senses and settles behind them with the ease of belonging, like he’s always been there and only just remembered to say hello.

“Bird-watching?” he asks, amused, the warmth in his voice soft as spring air. “Or listening, rather?”

Tsukiko hums, low and content. She doesn’t open her eyes.

“The uguisu is singing,” she says. “They say it’s a sign that spring has truly arrived.”

Minato steps up beside them. She can feel the faint shift in the grass beneath his sandals. She imagines him glancing between the two of them - her with her hands clasped loosely, face tilted toward the sky; Kakashi beside her, straight-backed and rigid, probably trying not to look like he’s dying.

“Ah,” Minato says lightly. “I suppose that means the new season is just in time.”

Tsukiko opens her eyes.

The clearing still holds its hush, but something is beginning to stir in the air - something new and expectant, like the moment just before petals unfurl. The uguisu sings again, softer this time, as if echoing the sentiment.

She feels Kakashi shift beside her, just a fraction.

Minato smiles. “Your new teammate should be arriving any moment now.”

Tsukiko nods. Her gaze lingers on the branches a beat longer, then drifts back down to the path beyond the trees.

Somewhere, just out of sight, another thread waits to be woven into theirs.

~

They wait.

And wait.

And then they wait some more.

The sun climbs higher, soft gold sharpening into white. The hush of early morning fades. The uguisu, bored of their patience, has long since fluttered away into the canopy. A bee drones past lazily. Tsukiko watches it with mild interest. Kakashi has begun breathing in that very specific way that suggests he’s pretending not to be irritated. She thinks he’s almost managing it.

At the hour mark, the tension finally snaps. Kakashi turns to Minato, arms crossed, expression flat.

“When did you tell them to meet us here, again?” he asks, voice quiet but unmistakably displeased.

Minato exhales through his nose, vaguely resigned. “Six-thirty.”

There is a beat of silence.

“... It’s seven-thirty.”

“I know.”

Kakashi’s eyes narrow fractionally. He stares at the entrance to the training grounds with the kind of quiet judgment normally reserved for shinobi who forget to check for traps. “Hm.”

Tsukiko clasps her hands again, watching a leaf twist slowly to the ground. She doesn’t say anything, but privately thinks this does not bode well.

Another hour passes. Minato eventually sighs, murmurs something about double-checking, and vanishes. When he returns ten minutes later, he looks faintly bewildered.

“He left home two and a half hours ago,” he says. “According to his grandmother.”

“... How long does it take to walk here from his house?” Kakashi asks warily.

“Fifteen minutes.”

Kakashi stares at him.

Minato raises his hands in a helpless little shrug.

Two and a half hours have now passed. Kakashi begins pacing. Not impatiently, precisely - more like a shark that’s smelled blood in the water.

Tsukiko sits down cross-legged and begins braiding fallen flower stems into a little garland. She suspects this will be a good story one day.

At the three-hour mark, she’s starting to mentally draft a missing person’s report when - 

“WAAAAAAAIT!!! I’M HERE, I’M HERE, I’M HEEEEEERE - !!”

Something crashes into the clearing with all the grace and trajectory of a training dummy launched from a trebuchet.

It’s a boy.

A boy with the kinetic energy of a small natural disaster and the situational awareness of a startled deer. He’s tall-ish, flailing, and barreling forward like the concept of braking is entirely theoretical. His goggles are askew, his cheek has a smudge of dirt, and he’s panting like he just ran here from Suna. Which might not be entirely out of the question.

He skids to a dramatic halt directly in front of them - barely avoiding crashing into Minato - and immediately doubles over, hands on his knees, wheezing.

“I - sorry - I was - there was this old lady with groceries - and then a cat in a tree - no, wait, two cats - and then a kid got stung by a wasp - actually like three kids, same wasp, I think - and THEN - someone left a bucket in the middle of the road! Who does that?! I tripped! I tripped over a bucket!”

Silence.

The kind of silence that feels like a shared hallucination.

Tsukiko’s head tilts very slightly to the side, her garland finished but forgotten in her lap. Kakashi stops pacing mid-step and does not blink. Minato smiles in a way that suggests he’s long since accepted that the universe is run by chaotic gremlins and finds it charming.

The boy straightens at last and flashes a dazzling, winded grin. “Hi! I’m Uchiha Obito!”

His eyes land on Kakashi. Then Tsukiko. And he freezes.

There’s a beat of silence.

(Obito, Tsukiko recalls, had been in their class for the last six months in the Academy, in the graduating class. He was cheerful. Loud. Very much not a top student. Potentially at the very bottom. Kakashi, she knows without needing to look, is already internally screaming.)

Obito’s grin falters - not all at once, but in the way sunlight dims when a cloud drifts across the sky. His hands drop awkwardly to his sides. He stands there, panting, cheeks flushed from the sprint or the attention or both, staring like he’s only just realized where he is.

“…Oh,” he says, more quietly. “It’s you two.”

Kakashi exhales through his nose. Not dramatically. Just enough that Tsukiko - who knows the map of his silences - hears the unspoken you’ve got to be kidding me.

Minato claps his hands once, lightly. “Glad you could join us, Obito.”

“Right! I’m here! I made it! Technically not that late - well, maybe a little - but there were groceries and cats and - anyway, I’m ready!”

Kakashi turns away, jaw set. Tsukiko, on the other hand, studies Obito for a moment longer.

She’d never given him much thought at the Academy. He and the other students had always existed on the periphery of her awareness - she and Kakashi had barely paid attention to their peers.

In hindsight, it’d been an oversight. A mistake, really. Because she’s looking at Obito now, seeing him for the first time, observing the way his smile looks pasted and stretched too wide, the slight tremble of his hands as he hides them behind his back, the way everything in his expression seems to be bracing for rejection - 

And she realizes what a terrible thing she’s done. 

Not through malice - never that - but through omission. By failing to see him. And now, it’s all she can see: the wobble in his smile, the defensive brightness of it. The way he holds himself like someone already preparing to be the butt of a joke no one has told yet.

Guilt prickles gently along her spine.

Tsukiko looks down at the garland in her lap. It’s crooked. A few of the flower stems are bent too sharply to hold their shape. One dandelion is wilting already. It’s not beautiful, not really. But she’s made it with her hands, and that counts for something.

So she stands.

Kakashi shifts slightly, as if to intercept her. He doesn’t, of course. But she feels the flicker of his attention like a shadow across her skin. Minato watches too, curious but unintrusive.

She steps toward Obito.

His gaze flinches from hers - uncertain, wary - but doesn’t dart away completely. He stays rooted to the spot, like a tree just struck by lightning and still unsure whether the fire will catch.

Tsukiko pauses just in front of him. Tilts her head. Then, wordlessly, she reaches up and settles the garland on his head.

Obito goes very still.

“I made it while we were waiting,” she says. Her voice is quiet, but not shy. “Sorry it’s crooked.”

Obito’s mouth opens, but no sound comes out. His hands twitch again at his sides. Then - 

“... For me?” he breathes, like someone who isn’t used to being given things just because.

Tsukiko nods. “You tried very hard to get here. That matters.” She smiles at him, gently. “Welcome to the team.”

A long beat.

Then Obito lets out a sound that might be a laugh and might be a gasp. His eyes are suspiciously shiny. He doesn’t take the garland off. Instead, he straightens up slightly, like the crooked chain of flowers is a crown.

Minato smiles. Kakashi frowns visibly behind his mask, turning to kick at a pebble like it personally offended him.

Tsukiko doesn’t say anything more. She simply steps back to her place, standing now.

But Obito stands next to her without asking. And when he does, she lets her hand brush against his just once - deliberately, softly.

You are here. You are seen.

And perhaps - one day - this will be a good story too.

~

Minato claps his hands together. “Alright,” he says cheerfully. “Introductions. You know the drill - name, likes, dislikes, hobbies, and your dream for the future.”

He looks at Obito.

Obito straightens immediately, like a soldier called to attention. “I’m Uchiha Obito! I like dango, running errands for old people, and learning new jutsu - especially katon! I dislike people who... um, I don't know, betray others? Do bad things? My hobbies are… uh… hanging out with my best friend, I guess. And my dream is - ” he swells, eyes gleaming “ - to become Hokage, so that everyone in the village will acknowledge me!”

Tsukiko smiles. It’s a small, soft thing, but genuine. Kakashi lets out a long, pointed breath. Minato gestures toward him.

Kakashi’s voice is clipped and bored. “Hatake Kakashi. I like nothing, dislike everything, my hobbies are none of your business, and I don’t have a dream.”

Obito looks at him, blinking. “That’s... wow. That’s really sad, actually.”

Kakashi does not dignify that with a response.

Minato gives Tsukiko an encouraging nod. “Your turn.”

She lowers her gaze slightly, considering. When she finally speaks, her voice is even, but quiet. As though the words have weight, and she’s choosing each one carefully to avoid cracking something delicate.

“Nara Tsukiko,” she says. “I like warm wind. The smell of green tea. Poems that ache a little. I dislike wastefulness. And cruelty that pretends to be strength.”

She looks up at the sky for a moment, as if the right words might be written there.

“My hobbies are reading. Watching the world. Collecting things that people have left behind.”

There’s a pause.

“And my dream,” she says, softer still, “is to live quietly, in a world that no longer requires me to sharpen.”

The silence that follows is deeper than the ones before.

Minato’s eyes are gentle. Obito looks vaguely like he wants to applaud, or maybe cry. Even Kakashi, beside her, has stilled. But only she feels the quiet thing stirring beneath her ribs - the ache of longing for a future that feels so far away it might as well be myth.

Still. She’s spoken it.

And maybe, somehow, that’s the first step.

~

Obito stares at her.

His eyes are wide, almost comically so, his mouth parted like he’s forgotten how to close it. There’s a beat of silence where Tsukiko simply blinks at him, gently bemused. Then - 

“Oh, wow,” he breathes. “Do you always talk like that?”

Tsukiko tilts her head. “Like what?”

“Like - like that !” he gestures vaguely at the air between them, as if her words are still lingering there like morning mist. “All soft and... and... not floaty, but - floaty ?? But in a grounded way? Like if a poem had legs. Or if, like, a breeze decided it wanted to be a person, but it still remembered what being wind felt like?”

He pauses, frowning. “No, wait. That’s not quite it. It’s more like - like - if a dream snuck out of someone’s head and tried to learn grammar.”

Tsukiko blinks again. Kakashi makes a strangled sound, halfway between a cough and a scoff.

Obito barrels on, undeterred. “Like if a really nice forest had a voice, and also that forest had maybe read a bunch of philosophy books and had feelings but was really polite about them - that’s what you sound like!”

There is a long, stunned pause.

Tsukiko’s mouth curls - just barely - into a smile. “That’s a very specific compliment,” she says, voice dry and amused.

“I mean it!” Obito insists, looking vaguely flustered. “You sound like the opposite of yelling.”

Kakashi mutters something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like good grief . Minato is definitely trying not to laugh.

Obito scratches the back of his neck sheepishly. “Sorry,” he says. “I just. I’ve never heard anyone say something like that before. It was really... nice. I think I forgot to breathe a little.”

Tsukiko feels warmth bloom quietly in her chest.

“Thank you,” she murmurs. And means it.

Kakashi pointedly turns away.

~

Introductions bleed into movement.

Minato leads them a short distance into the trees, to a clearing shaded in dappled gold. The earth is packed and familiar beneath Tsukiko’s sandals. Today, though, it’s different.

Today, Minato runs them through a gauntlet of assessments: taijutsu drills, obstacle courses, timed reaction tests, chakra control tasks. She and Kakashi had done them before, a year ago, back when they'd first passed the bell test. But now there are three of them, one of whom remains untested. So. A retest is in order.

Kakashi lets out a long-suffering sigh when Minato explains this, but says nothing else. Still, his irritation is obvious. The tightness of his shoulders. The clipped nod. The way he won’t look at Obito except through the corner of his eye.

Obito shrinks just a little at that. Just enough to be noticed. Just enough that Tsukiko sees the way his spine curls inward, the way his fingers fidget at the hem of his sleeve like he’s trying to fold into himself.

She smiles at him.

Not big or obvious - just softly. A smile that steadies. The one that says: I see you. It's alright.

Obito blinks. Breathes in. And straightens again. He takes the garland from his head - still slightly lopsided, still faintly glowing with wild yellow petals - and places it in the grass with surprising reverence, like it might bruise if handled too roughly.

And then the assessments begin.

It… does not go well.

Obito tries - gods , does he try. He throws himself into every drill like effort alone can fill in all the gaps. But it can’t. His chakra control is a disaster. He overshoots targets, underestimates distances, trips over roots she suspects Kakashi could avoid in his sleep. His punches are enthusiastic, but they lack form. His stamina is decent - he’s fast, no question - but his coordination is... variable. And by the time they hit the water-walking portion, he falls in. Twice.

Minato watches all of it with his usual unreadable calm, making notes in his little book with an expression that gives nothing away.

Kakashi, however, isn’t similarly unreadable.

At first, it’s small - an eye-roll, a poorly stifled sigh. But then Obito fumbles a hand seal and sets a training dummy on fire. And that’s the moment Kakashi snaps.

“This is why you graduated a year late,” he mutters, sharp and low and cruel in the way only a child prodigy can be when he feels his time is being wasted.

Obito freezes. The water drips off his hair. His cheeks are flushed, and it’s not from exertion.

Minato doesn’t speak, but he looks like he's about to. But Tsukiko beats him to it.

She turns.

“Kakashi,” she says - just that, but it’s firm in a way she’s never used with him before. Her voice holds no anger, only disappointment. “That was unkind.”

The air between them stills. Kakashi blinks at her, stunned. He looks at her like she’s struck him. Not physically - but the way her words land seems to knock something sideways in his chest. His brows knit, just slightly. His mouth parts. And for a long, aching second, he doesn’t look like the genius. Doesn’t look like the heir to anything at all.

He just looks like a boy.

Confused. A little wounded. Quietly ashamed.

“I…” he starts, but the words dry out somewhere in his throat.

Tsukiko turns away gently, not to punish - but to give him the dignity of silence. She walks toward Obito instead and offers him a towel without comment.

Obito takes it with trembling fingers, not quite looking at either of them. But he nods once. Just once.

And sets his shoulders.

Minato finally closes his notebook. “Let’s take a break,” he says.

No one argues.

~

They rest beneath the trees. The sun has crept higher now, its light speckling through the canopy in fragmented gold. Tsukiko sits cross-legged again, plucking at a stray blade of grass. Obito is wringing out his sleeves with single-minded focus, not quite meeting anyone’s eyes.

Kakashi hasn’t moved far. He’s leaning against a tree with arms crossed and face turned away, masked face as unreadable as ever. But she can feel it - the tension in him. The echo of her words still clinging to the air like static.

He doesn’t apologize. Of course he doesn’t. That would require something soft and exposed, and Kakashi is neither of those things, especially when bruised by shame. But - 

He shifts.

Pushes off the tree with a slow, reluctant kind of movement, like gravity is heavier today.

He walks toward them. Not quite facing them, but close enough to cast a long shadow over where Obito sits catching his breath.

There’s a pause. Tsukiko doesn’t look up. Obito does. Kakashi speaks, voice flat but quieter than before.

“You’re pivoting too fast after each strike,” he says. “Your back foot lifts before your weight is fully shifted. That’s why your control keeps collapsing.”

Obito blinks.

Kakashi glances sideways, just for a heartbeat. “If you adjust your center of gravity - lower it by half a step - you’ll move faster without losing balance.”

It’s not an apology. Not really. But Obito’s eyes widen all the same.

“Oh,” he says, blinking again. Then: “Right! Okay. Yeah - thank you. That - uh. That makes sense.”

Kakashi grunts. Turns away.

Tsukiko watches him retreat back to his spot beneath the tree and wonders if this is what growth looks like for boys who never learned softness: not grand gestures or spoken remorse, but small moments of not-turning-away. Of choosing to stay. Of offering knowledge instead of silence.

She presses her palm briefly to the ground, grounding herself. Then lifts her head and meets Kakashi’s eyes across the clearing.

She doesn’t smile, but she nods once.

And he, after a long pause, looks away.

~

They resume training. The field is damp with dew - every step presses a dark shadow into the grass, each breath a ribbon of quiet effort. Tsukiko moves like she always does: deliberate, measured. There is no rush. Only rhythm.

Minato sets the tone gently. His instructions are clear, his pace steady. There’s no condescension, no impatience. He never corrects too soon, never hurries what isn’t ready to bloom.

They start with footwork drills - simple, but precise. Tsukiko falls into it easily. She always has. Her body moves the way a leaf learns to follow wind: reflexive, responsive. She listens with her skin, adjusts without thinking.

Obito… does not.

He trips. Frequently. Sometimes over his own feet. Once over a training post that was not in his path. He exclaims every time he stumbles, apologizes to inanimate objects, recovers with a sheepish grin, and jumps back in like nothing happened.

She doesn’t mind.

There’s something... honest about his movement. Like he’s not trying to prove anything. Just to be here. Fully, stubbornly, and with his whole heart.

It reminds her of someone. And for a moment, a familiar ache stirs behind her ribs - soft, silver-laced. A boy with trembling hands and a spine made of stubbornness. The second person in Luna’s life who’d always been kind to her, even when it’d been hard.

Especially when it’d been hard.

You’re not worthless, Neville, she thinks suddenly. I never told you enough.

The thought lingers. So does the ache. She lets herself feel it for a beat, then exhales, grounding herself in the present. 

There are so many things she regrets. About her past life. About this one.

But regrets mean nothing unless she does something about them. So she focuses on the feel of the wind on her skin, the scent of the dew in the air, the familiar feel of Kakashi’s chakra and the unfamiliar feel of Obito’s.

Beside her, Kakashi moves like a blade. Clean. Quiet. Each step calculated, each shift intentional. His expression is unreadable, but she can sense the storm beneath it. The way his chakra hums tight in his skin. The way he doesn’t watch Obito, not exactly - but marks his every movement.

He hasn’t spoken to her all morning. Not since she said his name in a way she’s never done before. The silence isn’t new in theory, but today, it has an edge.

She catches his eye just once, between sparring sets. His gaze is sharp - too sharp - and it flickers past her like light off a mirror. Gone before she can read it.

Obito collapses into the grass with a groan. “Can we please take a break? Please. I am begging.”

Minato laughs. “Water break.”

Obito flails dramatically. “I’m dying. This is it. Tell my granny I loved her.”

Kakashi sits by a tree, arms crossed. He doesn’t drink. Just watches the sky through the branches.

Tsukiko walks to the edge of the field where the wildflowers grow tall. She crouches, plucks a single white blossom, turns it in her fingers. It smells like nothing. But it feels like something - soft, small, real.

Behind her, Obito is still rambling about hypothetical funeral arrangements. Kakashi hasn’t moved.

She tucks the flower into the fold of her sleeve. Not for a reason. Just because.

Then she stands, brushes the grass from her knees, and returns to the others.

~

Lunch comes wrapped in warmth and quiet.

They sit beneath the same tree as before, where the shade falls soft and dappled, and the breeze is steady enough to lift the scent of grass and summer from the ground. The field behind them still hums with the echo of movement, but here - beneath the leaves - it’s calm.

Obito immediately sets into his food like a man facing a noble quest. “I’ve never been this hungry in my life , ” he declares through a mouthful of rice. “My arms are shaking . I think I burned through all my chakra just trying not to fall on my face.”

“No,” Kakashi mutters. “You did fall on your face.”

Obito shrugs. “It’s the thought that counts.”

Tsukiko sits cross-legged, unwrapping her lunch slowly. And then - 

Kakashi peels his orange. Effortless. Exact. Like always.

He doesn’t look at her when he holds out the wedges. Outwardly, nothing’s different. And yet, something feels strange.

She takes them with a quiet hum, the same way she always does. But inside, something stirs - quiet and uncertain. Not alarm. Not worry. But... awareness.

She takes a rice ball and offers it without turning, the way she always does.

He takes it. He eats it. But he doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t make that almost-not-there nod he usually does. Doesn’t glance her way, not even for a moment. It’s all too smooth. Too silent. Like he’s following a script from muscle memory alone.

Something’s off.

Not sharply. Not loudly. Just... quietly off. Like the sky before a storm. Like the moment after a bell tolls but before the sound fades.

Obito, oblivious as ever, is waxing poetic about the perfect bento composition. “I mean, there’s a geometry to it, right? Like, triangles of rice, rounds of egg, those perfect little sections - ”

Minato hums, listening attentively.

Tsukiko half-hears them. Most of her attention is turned inward. She glances at Kakashi.

He’s staring ahead. His jaw is set, his shoulders just a little too straight. Like he’s holding something back so tightly it’s threatening to leak through his skin.

She tilts her head slightly. Watches the way his fingers press into the grass.

He’s here, she thinks. But not present.

And that’s what makes it strange.

Because Kakashi is always present. Not loud. Not expressive. But aware . Attuned. Especially to her. She never has to reach far to find him - not really. But today, it feels like he’s behind glass. Like he’s drawn the line somewhere she can’t see.

She turns back to her lunch slowly. Eats in silence. The orange is sweet. The rice, just slightly cool. The pickled plum filling, salty. The flavors sit oddly on her tongue.

Across from her, Kakashi finishes the rice ball.

He doesn’t thank her. He doesn’t offer another wedge. And somehow, that - not the missing fruit, but the space it leaves - is what makes her chest ache. Just a little.

The ritual happened. The moment didn’t.

She doesn’t say anything. But the quiet between them isn’t peaceful, this time.

It’s something else entirely.

~

The sun is lower now, painting the rooftops in amber. The dust of the village paths glows faintly gold beneath their sandals as they walk back from the mission office, the afternoon stretched long and warm behind them.

Two D-ranks done - one paint removal, one elderly escort - and Obito had somehow managed to trip into a cart and charm the vendor into giving him a free dango skewer as an apology for his clumsiness.

Kakashi had scowled beneath his mask the entire time. They hadn’t done D-ranks in months - they’ve been doing exclusively C- and the occasional B-rank for the past half-year. But Obito’s just graduated, and he needs the slow ramp-up.

Tsukiko hadn’t minded. Still doesn’t. There’s something refreshingly simple about the menial tasks, something grounding in the honest work. No blood. No death. Just them.

Minato had dismissed the team with a wave and a smile, promising to meet again at dawn, and vanished.

Obito’s already halfway down the street, dango in hand. “Tomorrow,” he calls back over his shoulder, “I’m definitely gonna arrive on time!”

Kakashi gives a faint grunt that might mean see you or please walk into a wall.

Tsukiko watches Obito disappear around a corner. Then, she turns.

“Kakashi.”

The moment his name leaves her mouth - his full name again, not the softened syllables she’s grown used to - he flinches. It’s subtle, barely a twitch of his shoulders. But Tsukiko sees it.

She always does.

The hush of late sunlight falls between them, thick and golden, warm like honey and heavy like regret. The air smells faintly of crushed grass and the sweetness of Obito’s dango trailing behind him. And Kakashi - Kakashi is quiet in that too-still way that feels like something has come undone.

She stands there for a moment, fingers curled lightly at her side, unsure what to do with them. She thinks she’s made a mistake - not just in using his full name again, which she’d done because she hadn’t been sure he’d welcome the nickname - but in something else. Something… bigger.

“Did…” Her voice barely rises above the wind. “Did I do something wrong?”

Kakashi doesn't answer. His posture doesn't shift. He just stares ahead, toward nothing, like the sun setting behind rooftops might somehow swallow the silence between them whole.

Tsukiko steps forward once. Slowly. Not enough to bridge the distance, but enough to let him know she would. That she wants to.

“I’ve been thinking about lunch,” she says, softer now, like she's afraid to disturb something fragile. “About how you didn’t look at me. About how quiet it was. Not the usual kind of quiet - a different one.”

Still nothing.

So she tilts her head, lets her gaze trace the line of his jaw, the way the light glances off his hair, the stubborn set of his mouth beneath his mask. She’s always noticed these things. But today, they feel like clues to a language she doesn’t yet know how to read.

“I thought maybe I… I missed something.” Her hands curl a little tighter. “Maybe I said something wrong. Or did. Or didn’t.”

She’s not sure which hurts more - his silence, or the possibility that she unknowingly fractured something precious between them.

“Was it because I said you’d said something unkind?” she ventures hesitantly.

Kakashi finally turns. Slowly. Not enough to face her fully, but enough that she can see his eyes in profile. They’re unreadable. Shadowed by the lowering sun.

“No,” he says at last. The words are low. Rough. Like he had to carve them out. 

A pause. 

“Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”

And then, with more hesitation than she’s ever heard from him: “I just… don’t understand.”

Tsukiko’s breath stirs. The ache in her chest doesn’t ease, but it shifts - becomes something more like yearning, less like blame.

She swallows. “Don’t understand what?”

He doesn't answer. Not directly. But his gaze flickers toward the path Obito had disappeared down. And Tsukiko watches something raw flicker across his expression - gone too fast to name.

Jealousy, she thinks. But not the cruel kind. Not the kind that devours.

This one is quieter. Lonelier. 

She watches the sun catch in his lashes. Watches how he blinks against it, slow and deliberate, like the light stings. He’s not good at this. She knows that. Words, feelings - naming them. Holding them out for someone else to see. It’s not how he was made. 

And so, she doesn’t press. Doesn’t reach. Just stays. One step away. Still and steady. Like the way the ocean waits for the rain to come to it. 

The wind shifts, brushing past them both, curling through the quiet space between their shoulders. The world around them moves on - children laughing somewhere behind a wall, an uguisu calling once from the roofline, the faint clatter of a merchant’s cart turning toward home. 

She doesn't speak. She simply lets him know - without words, without expectation - that she is here. 

And after a long moment, his shoulders shift. A breath, drawn slow. Released slower. 

“It’s stupid,” Kakashi mutters. 

Tsukiko tilts her head. The gentlest invitation. 

He exhales again, but this time it trembles faintly at the end. 

“He never mattered before,” he says quietly. Still not looking at her. Still turned slightly away. But the words come now, as though some small part of him has stopped resisting. “No one else did. It was just us, and - it was… it was enough. But now…” 

His eyes flick to hers, just once, and then away again. But in that look she sees fear. So, so much fear - fear that he’s not enough anymore, that he’s never been enough and she’s only now realizing it; fear that he’ll lose her; fear that she’ll decide Obito’s a preferable friend to him. Fear so strong it borders on terror.

Her breath catches.

She’s always suspected, on some level, that he’d have trouble when it came time to add someone new to their team. He doesn’t open easily. Doesn’t share the way she does, quietly and without fanfare. He guards what matters. He hoards it like a secret, like if he speaks it aloud, someone will take it from him.

But she’d never imagined this .

Not this cracked-glass voice. Not this bone-deep panic. Not this boy who won’t look at her because he’s terrified she might already be halfway gone.

His name tears from her throat before she can think better of it.

“Kashi.”

The familiar two syllables, the ones she’d been afraid he no longer wanted, the ones she’d held back since that strange, brittle lunch.

He flinches again. Just barely. But not like before. It’s more like the flinch of a boy who’s trying not to cry, and doesn’t know why someone calling his name hurts more than anything else.

She steps closer, slow and careful, like approaching a deer too tightly wound. She doesn’t touch him. She says, softly, “You think I’ll stop being your friend.”

He doesn’t answer. But that’s all the answer she needs.

She studies his profile, how stiff his jaw is, how tense his hands are at his sides. There’s something breaking beneath the surface, something he doesn’t know how to name.

“You don’t have to compete with him,” she says.

“It’s not that,” he says, but it is . At least a little.

He finally turns to her. His eyes are unreadable, but they’re wet at the corners. Not enough to fall. Just enough that she sees it.

“You said I was unkind,” he says, voice brittle.

“Because you were ,” she replies, but her tone isn’t angry. It’s sad. Aching. “But I didn’t say it to hurt you. I said it because I thought you’d listen.”

He blinks. Slow.

“And because I thought you wanted to be kind,” she adds, gentler still.

Kakashi looks at her then - really looks. There’s something cracking in his expression, something worn through.

“I don’t know,” he admits quietly. “If I want to be kind to him. Not if -” he hesitates. The words seem to die in his throat. He swallows, looks away, shame curling in his eyes, then forces out - "not if he ruins this."

The words hit like a soft stone to the chest. Not violent. Not sharp.

Just heavy.

Tsukiko’s breath hitches - not from hurt, but from how raw it is, how bare. How much fear lives in that sentence, small and shaking, hidden beneath boyish scorn and late-day light.

This isn’t about Obito. Not really.

It’s about the way Kakashi is gripping too tightly to something he doesn’t know how to name. Something that’s never been threatened before, not truly. Until now.

She stands still in the fading sun and looks at him - really looks. The way his arms stay close to his sides, like if he lets them fall open, something precious might spill out. The way he won’t meet her eyes. The way his voice had broken on that last word, like it betrayed him by being honest.

He’s never lost anyone. Not yet. Not the way Luna has. But the fear is already there. It lives in the space between them like a premonition. Like a ghost of something that hasn't happened yet but will . The loneliness of it is staggering.

Because this - this strange, careful friendship between them - it’s the first thing that’s ever felt like his.

And now he’s afraid Obito will take it. Take her. Not out of malice, but simply by being new. By being kind. By being enough where he isn’t.

She swallows the ache in her throat. It sits there anyway.

“Kashi,” she says again, gently.

Still, no reaction.

“I don’t want what we have to change either,” she says, voice soft. “But it already has. Because time moves, and people come, and… we don’t get to stop that.”

He shifts. Just slightly. Enough that she sees his lashes tremble in the golden light.

“But change doesn’t have to be bad.”

The words are hard to say. Because she’s had to learn them the hardest way. And she knows he hasn’t, not yet. But she hopes - gods, she hopes - that if he learns it here, now, maybe it’ll hurt a little less when the world really begins to take things from him.

Because once upon a time, everything changed. She’d lost everyone she’d ever loved - her friends, her father, her home. But in losing them, she’s gained, too. A new life. New loved ones. They won’t ever replace what she’s lost, but they make life worth living. They make the ache ease. 

She hopes he’ll never know that kind of loss. But if he does, maybe this moment will make it more bearable.

“You’re still my friend,” she says quietly. “No matter what.”

He flinches again. Like something in him can’t quite believe it.

So she steps a little closer. Still not touching. Still giving him room to flee, to stay, to breathe.

“You’re my closest friend,” she says softly, honestly. 

His breath catches. Not loud. Not sharp. Just a slight hitch, like something snagged in his chest and refused to let go. His shoulders curl in, almost imperceptibly, like he’s trying to fold the sound back inside himself before it can escape.

You’re my closest friend.

It echoes in the air between them. It echoes in him .

He stares straight ahead, like the rooftops and power lines and faint outline of the Hokage Monument can somehow anchor him to the moment. But nothing does. He looks adrift. Like a leaf floating just above the surface of something deep and unknowable.

He turns to look at her, then - fully, finally - and his eyes are wide in a way she’s only seen once or twice before, like he’s trying to understand something too big to fit inside his body.

“Why?” he asks.

It’s a real question. Not rhetorical. Not sarcastic. Just quietly bewildered.

Tsukiko blinks.

“Why…?” she echoes.

“Why me?” he says quietly. “Why not… someone else. Someone easier. Someone - ” his throat works around the next words. “Someone… better.”

Her heart breaks. Not loudly. Not all at once. Just the quiet way a hairline crack splits through stone - slow, inevitable, permanent.

Because oh .

Oh , that’s what he’s been carrying.

Not just the fear of being replaced. Not just jealousy, or even loneliness. But the bone-deep belief that if she left - if anyone left - it would make sense . That of course she’d choose someone warmer, brighter, softer. Someone who didn’t flinch from kindness or bite it away before it could settle.

Someone better . Gods.

She takes in a slow breath, letting it fill her chest, holding the ache steady so it doesn’t spill. Then - 

“Because it’s you ,” she says simply.

And when he doesn’t answer - doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe - she goes on.

“Because you sit with me in silence, and it never feels empty. Because you pay attention when no one else does. Because I never have to explain the way I see things - you just let me. Even when I’m strange. Even when I don’t make sense to anyone else.”

The breeze lifts a strand of her pale hair and brushes it across her cheek, but she doesn’t move to tuck it away.

Her hands stay folded in front of her.

“You don’t fill space with noise. You hold it. You listen. Even when it’s hard. Even when you’re angry. You stay .”

Her voice wavers, just a little, but she doesn’t stop.

“You’re not easy, Kakashi. You’re complicated, and sharp, and quiet in the kind of way that scares people who’ve never known what loneliness tastes like.”

She meets his eyes.

There’s no softness in her tone now - not the floaty, dreamlike lilt she sometimes has. This isn’t whimsy. This is truth.

“You’re not better or worse than anyone else. You’re just you . And no one can ever replace you.” 

Kakashi is very still.

The breeze moves. The sky shifts faintly toward twilight.

He doesn’t cry. He never does. But the shine in his eyes doesn’t go away. And his hands - still fisted loosely at his sides - tremble just once before going still.

He says nothing.

But his gaze doesn’t leave hers.

And Tsukiko just smiles. As if to say: You don’t have to believe me yet. I’ll say it again if I have to. I’ll keep saying it. Until it fits in your chest without splintering anything inside you to hold it.

He takes a breath. Not steadily. Not fully. Just enough to make her think he might shatter if she says anything more. So she doesn’t.

She watches him instead.

Watches the way his shoulders rise, tight and sharp, then fall again - like the weight of her words hasn’t lifted anything, only shifted it somewhere quieter inside him.

His eyes don’t leave hers. And there’s something in them now that hadn’t been there before. Not relief. Not peace, either - but something rawer. Something like hope.

“I don’t know what to do with that,” he says. The words are soft. Frayed at the edges.

Tsukiko doesn’t let herself flinch.

“You don’t have to do anything,” she says gently. “Just… let it be true.”

He stares at her like she’s offered him something sacred. Like he’s not sure his hands are clean enough - deserving enough - to hold it.

The sun has nearly vanished now. Just a whisper of light clings to the rooftops, caught like gold dust in the edges of the day. The village hums around them, low and distant. Familiar.

She keeps her hands folded in front of her. Doesn’t speak. Because sometimes, silence is the only thing that doesn’t bruise.

She turns her head slightly, eyes still on the path ahead.

“You don’t have to like him yet,” she says. “I just want you to try.”

She lets the words settle.

Then adds, “And if it’s hard - if it hurts, or feels too big - you can tell me. You don’t have to hide it.”

He doesn’t answer. Not with words. But she hears it anyway.

The way his breath stirs the air. The way his fingers uncurl slightly. The way his head tilts forward, just enough.

Okay.

She stays still a moment longer, memorizing the shape of this quiet. The way it feels not fragile, but held. Shared.

And when she takes a step forward, so does he. They turn toward home, their shadows stretching long behind them - two shapes moving in rhythm, unspoken and sure.

Not the same as before. But still together. Still moving forward.

~

Just before they reach the parting in the road - where she turns left, and he goes straight - Tsukiko pauses. 

There’s a shift in the wind, a hush in the village around them, like the moment is holding its breath. And suddenly she remembers the white flower. She’d tucked it into the fold of her sleeve earlier that day - on instinct, on whim. She hadn’t known why, then. 

Now, she does. And with the last light of evening soft on their faces, she pulls it free.

Kakashi blinks at her, puzzled.

She steps in close, careful and calm, and lifts the flower to tuck it gently behind his ear.

The movement is feather-light. Reverent, almost. She steps back smoothly, tilts her head, and looks at him. The flower softens him. It’s soft, pretty, a little bruised and torn around the edges. Just like him.

“It suits you,” she says.

He stares at her. Stares like she’s grown wings or dropped an entire scroll of forbidden jutsu at his feet or started belting out a song in a different language.

And then - 

His face goes scarlet .

Not just his cheeks. All the way to his ears. The color blooms bright and instant and mortified.

“I - I’m a shinobi, ” he stammers, voice climbing several octaves in pure panic, as if the flower might detonate at any moment. “You can’t - you can’t just put - flowers - on - shinobi - !”

Tsukiko smiles. Not teasing. Just warm.

“You are,” she agrees. “But you’re also Kashi.”

He opens his mouth, then closes it again, still bright red. He makes a high-pitched sound, like a tea kettle.

She tilts her head, studying him - not the flushed cheeks or the indignant fidgeting, but the way he still hasn’t taken the flower out.

“You remind me of the moon,” she says quietly. “Not when it’s full and glowing and obvious, but when it’s a sliver - just a whisper of light, beautiful and constant. The kind of loveliness you have to wait for - but when you do, it’s worth it every time.”

His breath catches. He doesn’t speak. His eyes are wide.

And Tsukiko - knowing she’s said enough, knowing she’s meant every word - gives him a small, serene nod.

Then turns, and walks toward home.

~

Kakashi watches her go.

Her footsteps are light - always light - but not hesitant. She walks like she knows the world will hold her, even if it aches. Like she trusts the earth to catch her weight.

He stands in the emptying light of dusk, a white flower tucked absurdly behind his ear, his face still flushed and hot and aching, and thinks: She called me beautiful.

Not strong. Not skilled. Not useful.

Beautiful. And she’d meant it.

She’d looked at him - really looked, with those strange, silver-blue eyes that always seem to see more than they should - and said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

You remind me of the moon.

Beautiful, and constant.

He exhales shakily and scrubs a hand down his face, catching on the edge of the flower. He doesn’t pull it out. He should. He knows he should. He’s a shinobi, and shinobi aren’t supposed to walk through the village with wildflowers tucked behind their ears like it’s normal.

But she put it there.

And maybe… maybe that makes it different. At the very least, it makes the flower impossible to remove.

A month ago, he’d wondered - really wondered - what she might say about him if she ever saw all of him.

Not the mask, not the precision, not the cold-edged genius they all whispered about in the mission office. Him. The boy who was scared to be forgotten. The one who counted her silences and mapped her laughter like it was a secret he might one day lose.

He thought she’d be disappointed. He thought she’d pull away. But she hadn’t. Not even close.

Instead, she’d stepped closer. She’d told him he was her closest friend. She’d told him he didn’t need to change to keep her. She’d told him he was enough, just as he was. 

And then she’d called him beautiful.

Kakashi closes his eyes.

The wind moves gently through the street. Somewhere in the distance, Obito is probably still eating his dango. Somewhere else, Minato is probably writing something in that little notebook of his.

But here - here in this small stretch of fading light, where her presence still lingers in the dust - he feels something shift.

Not loudly. Not all at once.

Just enough to loosen the knot in his chest.

And when he turns toward home, the wind carries the faintest trace of her scent - wild grass and dew and something softer, something sweeter.

He lets it stay with him all the way home.

~

Kakashi tries harder after that.

Not all at once. Not in the way people might notice if they weren’t paying close attention. He doesn’t wake up the next morning all sunshine and courtesy, doesn’t greet Obito like they’re friends now. He’s still Kakashi - shadows and silence, sharp glances and sharper pauses.

But… something shifts.

Because she asked him to try. Because she said he didn’t have to like Obito, but he could be kind. Because she called him Kashi again, and friend, and beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with his face and everything to do with the way she saw him. 

And then she walked away, soft and sure, like she hadn’t just unstitched something inside him that he didn’t even know was bound too tight.

So - he tries.

The next time Obito fumbles through a sequence of hand signs during training, Kakashi doesn’t sigh. Doesn’t make a biting comment. He just watches.

And then - without meeting Obito’s eyes, without even really looking at him - he mutters, “Your Ram sign’s sloppy. Right pinky sticks out too far. Throws off chakra flow.”

Obito blinks. Suspicion flashes across his face. He hesitates, eyes narrowed. Like he’s waiting for the joke, the trap, the other shoe to fall.

“… You sure?” he asks cautiously.

Kakashi doesn’t even turn his head. “You don’t need to listen. Do what you want.”

Obito’s brow furrows. He adjusts his grip. Tries again.

The jutsu holds.

“… Huh.”

It’s not a thank you , exactly. But it’s not don’t ever speak to me again, either. And Kakashi counts it as a win.

The next time, when Obito slips during tree-walking and nearly faceplants, Kakashi doesn’t roll his eyes. Doesn’t walk away.

He drops down beside him instead, gaze on the bark, voice low. “You’re overcompensating. Stop tensing so much.”

Obito stares at him like he’s trying to see the catch. Like maybe this is a test he wasn’t warned about.

“… Why are you helping me?” he asks warily.

Kakashi doesn’t answer.

Doesn’t say it’s for her. Doesn’t say because she asked. Doesn’t say because I’m trying to be someone she won’t be disappointed in again.

Just shrugs, like it’s no big deal, like it didn’t cost anything to say, his eyes still on the tree trunk like it’s the most interesting thing in the world.

Obito studies him for a moment longer. Then, quieter than usual, he says, “Thanks.”

Kakashi nods once. Still doesn’t look at him. But something eases in the space between them.

And later - after a long D-rank, when the sun is low and the streets smell like charcoal smoke and rice - Obito bounds ahead at the sight of a dango stand.

Kakashi doesn’t complain. Just trails behind, hands in his pockets, dust clinging to the hem of his pants. And when Tsukiko falls into step beside him, she doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t whisper I noticed or thank you .

She just bumps her shoulder against his. Light. Intentional.

He doesn’t look at her, but the corner of his mouth lifts, barely.

And later, at home, when the light has gone and the village has gone quiet, he opens one of his books - an old one, the spine soft from rereading. And between two pages, pressed neat and delicate, the white flower she gave him still holds its shape.

He stares at it for a long time.

Then closes the book, careful not to crumple it.

~

Quietly, slowly, time passes. Helping Obito gets easier. Not because Obito stops stumbling - he still does - but because Kakashi stops seeing it as a burden. It becomes habit. Then routine. Then something else.

And then, one afternoon, beneath the overhang of a training post sun-warmed and worn smooth by time, Kakashi watches as Obito adjusts his grip. Steadies. Throws.

The kunai hits the center of the target with a soft, clean thud.

Obito blinks in surprise. Then grins.

Kakashi doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t need to. He just watches. And that’s when it hits him.

It hasn’t just become easier. It’s become… nice .

He… likes helping.

Not just because it makes things quieter. Not just because it pleases Tsukiko, or keeps her from looking at him with that soft kind of sadness he doesn’t know how to bear. No. He likes Obito’s grin. Likes the way it’s brighter now, freer. Likes the way Obito looks at him - not with suspicion, not with something braced behind his eyes - but with warmth. With trust.

There’s no more tension in the pauses between them. No more sharpness, no more waiting for the snap.

Just quiet. And ease.

And when Obito turns, cheeks flushed with victory, and says, “Did you see that?! I couldn’t have done it without you!” with a laugh too loud and too genuine to be anything but real - 

Kakashi feels something in his chest pull. Not unpleasantly. Just... tugging, like something has opened. Like something is letting light in.

He hears her words echo in his head. 

Change doesn’t have to be bad.

He hadn’t understood her then. Not really. He’d believed that she believed it, but he hadn’t seen how Obito’s presence could spell anything but ruin for what he and Tsukiko had built. He’d been terrified, lashing out at Obito because he’d hated what Obito had represented, the threat he’d posed - 

But now, he thinks he’s starting to understand. He and Tsukiko still have their rhythm. She still smiles at him, he still falls into step next to her. Things have changed between them with Obito there, of course, but not fundamentally. Not in a way that he dislikes.

There’s just… a new rhythm, now. Not bad-different. Just… different-different.

And from the way she smiles at him, soft and knowing, he thinks maybe she sees it, too.

~

At lunch, they sit in a loose triangle under the shade of a tree. The breeze is nice. Minato’s disappeared, off running errands. Obito is currently inhaling a bento box like it personally wronged him and he’s seeking revenge. Kakashi very deliberately does not look in his direction. Because sure, Obito’s - tolerable, now. But he’s still loud and messy and fundamentally the opposite of everything Kakashi stands for.

He peels an orange. His fingers are efficient, practiced. He doesn’t even think about it, just separates the wedges neatly and holds them out to the side, toward Tsukiko, without turning his head. She takes them with a soft, wordless hum.

In return, she passes him a rice ball - also without looking. She’s already halfway through unwrapping her own lunch, her gaze somewhere far off, watching a pair of butterflies flicker near the grass.

Kakashi takes the rice ball. He takes a bite.

And then Obito, with all the subtlety of a thrown shuriken, blurts, “Okay, I gotta ask. You two have been doing that forever. Is it, like, a romantic thing?”

Kakashi chokes. Actually chokes. Rice lodges in his throat like betrayal incarnate. He coughs violently, trying to mask the immediate explosion of heat in his face.

Tsukiko looks over at him, mildly concerned. “Are you okay?”

“I’m - fine ,” Kakashi rasps, dignity in tatters.

She blinks, seems to accept that despite all evidence to the contrary, then turns to Obito, looking politely puzzled. “A romantic thing?”

“Yeah!” Obito leans forward eagerly, entirely too invested. “Like, you give him food, he gives you food - you know, like in those old movies where people share their lunches and then fall in love or whatever! It’s gotta be romantic, right?”

Kakashi makes another strangled noise.

Tsukiko frowns slightly, genuinely confused. “We do this all the time. We’re friends.”

Obito squints at them like he’s trying to solve a particularly difficult math problem. “But… but you’re sharing food.”

“We’re always sharing food,” Tsukiko says gently, as if correcting a minor misunderstanding about something obvious, like the colour of the sky that day. She tilts her head toward Kakashi, serene. “I bring him rice balls because he likes the umeboshi I make.”

Kakashi does not meet anyone’s eyes. He stares at the bark of the tree across from him with deep intensity, like if he glares hard enough he might slip into another dimension. He takes back everything even slightly not-rude he’s ever thought about Obito. This is hell. Obito has made it hell.

Obito turns on him, scandalized. “Wait, you like pickled plums?”

Kakashi shrugs, sullen. “They’re good.”

“They’re so salty ! ”

“That’s the point,” Kakashi mutters.

Obito shifts his attention back to Tsukiko, clearly sensing this is where the real mystery lies. “And the oranges?”

Kakashi is already shaking his head. Just slightly. A silent no, a barely restrained please don’t.

“Oh,” Tsukiko says, a little puzzled. “He brings them because they’re my favourite.”

There’s a long pause.

The butterflies dance past her shoulder. She watches them absently, the curve of her mouth gentle, as if she’s still thinking about their wings.

Meanwhile, Kakashi feels himself physically unraveling.

Why is this happening. Why does Obito exist. Why is Obito like this.

Obito’s mouth is hanging open like he’s watching a play where the main characters are somehow oblivious to their own tragic love arc.

“So let me get this straight,” he says, ticking off points on his fingers. “You bring him food specifically because you know he likes it. He brings you your favourite fruit. You don’t even look at each other when you do it - it’s all like - ” he mimes the motion, horribly inaccurate and way too dramatic, “ - like you’ve practiced this a hundred times and it’s some sacred lunchtime ritual.”

Tsukiko raises her eyebrows slightly. “It’s just food.”

“It’s not just food!” Obito wails. “This is what people in books do before they confess under a tree and kiss and then someone writes poetry about it!”

Kakashi audibly whimpers.

Tsukiko tilts her head, expression placid. “We’re friends,” she repeats gently.

“That makes it worse!” Obito cries. “You’ve already got proximity and mutual respect! You’re like… you’re like the prelude to a tragic romance arc, except neither of you realizes you’re in one yet!”

Kakashi feels like he’s about to dissolve into mist and cease to exist. Which, honestly, would be preferable.

He doesn’t say anything - he can’t - because if he opens his mouth, the words I bring her oranges because her eyes light up when she tastes the first wedge and it’s the only time I ever feel like I’ve done something right might fall out, and he’s not emotionally stable enough to survive that kind of exposure.

So, instead, he curses the fact of Obito’s very existence. Again.

Tsukiko chews another bite of her rice ball, clearly still trying to parse Obito’s logic. “Do friends not normally share food in your experience?”

“Well - yeah, but - ” Obito sputters. “Not like this! It’s so specific! There’s intention!”

“It’s just food,” Kakashi croaks.

Tsukiko nods, as if this settles everything. “Exactly.”

Obito looks at them both, exasperated. “You’re both impossible.”

Kakashi decides that if he focuses hard enough on peeling another orange, maybe the earth will open up and swallow him whole. He tears another wedge and hands it to Tsukiko without looking. She takes it with a hum of thanks, completely undisturbed.

He chews his own slice in silence. 

Obito throws himself dramatically into the grass, arms spread wide like the emotional martyr he’s clearly decided to be. “This is the worst kind of love story,” he mutters. “The one where they don’t even know it’s a love story.”

Kakashi very seriously contemplates murder. He’ll take the consequences. Anything to get this godsforsaken conversation to stop.

There’s a pause. Kakashi wonders, tentatively, hopefully, if maybe his wishes have been granted, and Obito’s finally learned the virtues of silence. Then Obito sighs. 

“You know,” he says, “everyone at the Academy used to talk about you two.”

Kakashi tenses. 

Tsukiko blinks. “Talk about us?”

“Oh yeah.” Obito rolls over onto his back, staring up at the leaves with the air of someone delivering a deeply important monologue. “You were, like, a phenomenon. People whispered about you. You graduated faster than anyone in living memory - together. Half the kids thought you were secretly thirty. The other half thought you were dating. I just thought you two were weird, but now I think they were both right.”

Kakashi makes a noise like a dying tea kettle.

“You didn’t act like kids,” Obito continues, entirely too invested. “You were always weirdly quiet, and coordinated in that creepy ‘we don’t need words to communicate’ kind of way. You always stood next to each other, always sparred against everyone together, and nobody could beat you, ever. And whenever someone tried to talk to either of you, the other one would appear. Like some kind of haunted mirror situation!”

Tsukiko chews slowly, brow furrowed. “That... doesn’t sound right.”

“It was. ” Obito waves a hand in the air for emphasis. “It was eerie. Like watching synchronized koi fish. Or twin ghosts. But, like, if the ghosts were also top of the class and probably plotting something nefarious.”

Kakashi puts his head in his hands. Why is this happening. What has he done to deserve this. How does Obito even know the word ‘nefarious.’

Obito sits up suddenly, pointing an accusatory finger. “There was this one time - this one time - where Tsukiko was late to class, and you, Kakashi, glared at the door the whole time until she got there. Like the door had personally betrayed you by not spitting her out fast enough.”

“I did not,” Kakashi mutters into his fingers. Lies. Because he very much does remember that, and he hadn’t known he’d been so obvious.

“You did, ” Obito insists. “Ask literally anyone. It was terrifying.”

Tsukiko tilts her head, brow gently furrowed. “I don’t remember that.” 

Kakashi refuses to move his hands. He is now pretending he is a rock. A very still, very silent, possibly extinct rock. Rocks are nice. They don’t feel things. They don’t do anything except exist. And be a rock. 

“You glared at the door,” Obito continues, relentless. “You radiated menace. I thought you were going to declare a blood feud with a slab of wood. And then when she walked in - ” he flings his arms out dramatically, “ - your posture immediately relaxed. It was incredible. Like watching a wolf spot the moon again.” 

Tsukiko stares at him. “That’s… very poetic.”

“Thank you,” Obito says brightly, visibly flattered - then remembers he’s mad. His eyebrows drop. His voice rises. “But I’m serious! Remember that time it was raining - like, seriously raining - and you two just... went outside and stood in it?!”

Kakashi freezes, face still buried in his hands. His fingers twitch, just slightly. The illusion of rockhood vanishes.

Tsukiko blinks, a slow, thoughtful motion. “Yes,” she says softly. “That, I remember.”

“I saw you!” Obito flails his arms for emphasis, scandalized by memory alone. “You weren’t even talking! You just got up - together - and walked out into the courtyard like it was some kind of dramatic stage play!”

Kakashi is silent.

Tsukiko tilts her head toward the sky, like she can still hear it. “It was a nice rain,” she says quietly. “Steady. Gentle.”

Obito points at her like she is the unreasonable one. “You were soaked.”

“I didn’t mind.”

Obito whirls on Kakashi. “And you - why did you go?! You looked miserable!”

Kakashi doesn’t answer.

He doesn’t know how to explain that Tsukiko’s voice, soft as falling petals, had said yes, I would like to and the world had realigned itself around those words. He doesn’t know how to explain the way her smile had lingered in the rain longer than any sound, how standing three paces behind her in silence had felt like something sacred. How her presence in that storm had made the world seem less cruel.

So instead he says, defensively, voice muffled by his hands, “It was five minutes.”

Obito throws his hands skyward. “It was not five minutes! You were out there until the bell rang!”

“We came back before taijutsu,” Kakashi mutters, sullen.

“You were dripping,” Obito accuses. “Dripping. Everyone thought you’d gone insane.”

Tsukiko smiles faintly. “I think the rain softened the day.”

Obito groans and falls back onto the grass again like he’s been struck. “You see?! This is exactly what I mean! That’s not normal! Normal people don’t go outside in a downpour just to feel their emotions!”

Tsukiko, serene, says, “It wasn’t for emotions. It was for the sound.”

Obito flails violently. “The sound.” He rolls over and shouts into the dirt, muffled and despairing, “You are both so much.”

Tsukiko passes Kakashi another rice ball. He pulls his hands away from his face to take it. Hands her another wedge of orange. They don’t look at each other. The rhythm is familiar. Trusted. Thoughtless.

“I’m gonna have to be the normal one on this team,” Obito moans dramatically, as though afflicted by fate.

“You tripped over a log and set a leaf on fire,” Kakashi says, deadpan. “That’s not normal.”

“That was forever ago!”

“That was twenty minutes ago.”

Tsukiko hums in quiet amusement.

Obito sits up again, brushing leaves from his hair. “I’m gonna have to keep a journal,” he mutters. “Like, just to cope. Day One: my new teammates are possibly forest spirits. Or ghosts. Something terrifying, anyway. I have eaten two bento boxes and cried. ”

Kakashi gives him a withering look. “You’re not that deep.”

“I am,” Obito says, wounded. “I’m a very layered person.”

Tsukiko breaks off a piece of her rice ball and hands it to Obito. “You can be the narrator,” she offers gently.

Obito beams. “Yes. I will be the narrator. And I’ll start with this moment - they shared lunch under a tree, exchanging oranges and umeboshi onigiri like quiet vows.”

Kakashi throws a leaf at him. Obito shrieks. Tsukiko smiles and says nothing.

And beneath the shade of the tree, with rice between their fingers and laughter tangled with the breeze, it almost feels like they’ve been a team forever.

~

Lunch, mercifully, draws to a close.

The air is warm. The breeze has dulled to a lazy hush. Somewhere nearby, a cicada drones half-heartedly, like even it has given up.

Kakashi is chewing the last bite of his rice ball in deliberate, agonizing silence, willing the moment to end. If he stares hard enough at the tree trunk in front of him, maybe the bark will split open and swallow him whole. A blessed return to nature. Soil. Darkness. Quiet.

Beside him, Obito is still muttering. Tsukiko hums occasionally in response, entirely unbothered. Of course she is. She floats through reality like gravity is a polite suggestion. Meanwhile Kakashi is being emotionally waterboarded by feelings he has spent the better part of two years pretending not to have.

And then - because the universe is cruel - Minato reappears.

“Everything alright here?” he asks lightly, eyes sweeping over the scene.

Obito lights up like a bonfire. “Sensei! Sensei, quick question - does sharing food count as a romantic gesture?”

Kakashi freezes.

Tsukiko tilts her head. “We’re still on this?”

“Yes, we’re still on this,” Obito says passionately. “It’s important. Vital, even.”

Minato pauses. His gaze drifts to Kakashi - who has gone rigid and is staring in despair at the bark, praying for it to take him - and then to Tsukiko, who is finishing the last bite of her rice ball with serene detachment.

There’s a glint in Minato’s eyes that Kakashi does not trust. At all.

“Well,” Minato says delicately, “it can be, I suppose.”

Obito gasps like he’s been vindicated by the gods themselves.

“But,” Minato adds, “it can also be a sign of deep trust. Of familiarity. Of care between comrades.”

Obito blinks. “So... like, pre-romance?”

Kakashi very seriously considers the mechanics of suffocating himself with his own mask.

Minato only shrugs, unbothered. “Maybe. Maybe not. It depends.”

“On what?” Obito cries, flailing his arms. “There’s regular, synchronized food exchange! They move like clockwork!”

Minato glances at Kakashi again, eyes quietly amused. Kakashi meets his gaze and radiates pure, unfiltered betrayal. Minato just smiles, the kind of maddening, knowing smile that says I see everything and I am letting it happen anyway because it’s fun to watch.

“I think,” Minato says at last, “some things aren’t meant to be overanalyzed.”

Obito deflates. “That’s not an answer.”

“It’s my answer,” Minato says mildly.

Tsukiko finishes folding the cloth from her lunch and looks up at the sky. “Lunch is over,” she says quietly.

Thank every god in existence.

Kakashi stands in one swift motion, back straight, mask firmly in place. He does not look at anyone. Especially not Minato, who is still far too amused. Especially not Tsukiko, whose fingers had brushed his when she took the last orange wedge and didn’t notice that he felt it.

No.

He marches ahead toward the clearing like a man walking into battle. Or his own grave. Honestly, either would be a mercy.

Behind him, Obito chatters. Minato follows at a leisurely pace. Tsukiko walks in silence, her footsteps light against the grass.

Kakashi does not look back.

He will survive this day.

Probably.

Maybe.

Chapter Text

When he learns of his newest potential team, Minato’s not quite sure what to make of them. On paper, they seem like perfect shinobi - Hatake Kakashi and Nara Tsukiko are both top of their class, the top shinobi and top kunoichi respectively, virtually tied for first place. Impressive, considering they’re both six. 

He still can’t quite get his mind around that. He himself had graduated at eight and set records on the graduation exam, and he’d been considered a prodigy. But this - this is almost ridiculous. They’re six. Most of their agemates are still in year one, if they’ve started at the Academy at all. 

But he tells himself he’ll reserve judgement. He’ll give them the same bell test he’s given all his previous teams, and if they fail, then that’s that. 

~

The night before the bell test, he reads over their files in more detail. He’s only had them for a few days, but he’s already memorized most of the instructor comments. Not because he was particularly studious about it, but because - well. Because he didn’t know what to make of them. 

The comments made on a student’s file aren’t just focused on the student themselves. Instead, they analyze the student’s key relationships, as observed by each of their sensei. Normally, the average student has two to four significant relationships with their peers, whether positive or negative. 

Both Nara Tsukiko and Hatake Kakashi have only one - each other. 

~

Hatake is blunt, efficient, and detached. Nara is quiet, methodical, and observant. On paper, they shouldn’t work together as well as they do - but they move in sync, almost reflexively. It’s unsettling. - 3-month evaluation, sensei of class 2A

Tsukiko doesn’t compete with Kakashi, and Kakashi doesn’t dismiss her. That alone sets them apart from the rest of their cohort. He listens to her, even when he doesn’t agree. She’s one of the few who can tell him to stop, and he will. - 5-month evaluation, sensei of class 3A

I caught Kakashi checking her flank during today’s group sparring match. She didn’t notice. Or maybe she did and just trusted him to catch whatever she missed. - 6-month taijutsu assessment, sensei of class 4A

And then, in their last sensei’s final note, perhaps the most chilling - 

They don’t connect with their classmates. Not in any meaningful way. Kakashi dismisses most of them outright. Tsukiko is polite but distant. They don’t bully, they don’t boast, but they don’t engage either. The others have stopped trying to include them - most see them as already part of a unit they’re not welcome in.

They may rely on each other too much. Their teamwork is impressive, but I worry what happens if one is injured, or worse. The other might not adapt.

~

Minato exhales. His eyes linger on the closing comments of their year 4 sensei, the one who’d had them the longest. It’s… worrying. He’s seen what happens when shinobi get too dependent on each other, and then something goes wrong. The kind of bond that runs too deep, too fast. The kind that makes you sharper, faster, better - but only so long as the other person’s still standing. The kind that hollows you out when they’re not, in a way you never recover from.

He sets the folder aside and leans back in his chair, eyes tracing the shadows that stretch across the ceiling.

He’s not afraid of students forming bonds. He wants them to. Needs them to. But dependence? That’s something else. Something dangerous.

Minato exhales again, slower this time. Tomorrow, he’ll meet them. And then he’ll see for himself.

~

They’re small.

That’s his first impression. Two tiny figures walking towards him, hitai-ates gleaming against their foreheads like oversized crowns.

But small doesn’t mean uncertain.

The girl - Tsukiko - moves with the kind of poise that doesn’t belong on someone her age. She walks like she’s already weighed the world in her hands and found it bearable. Her silvery-blue eyes lift to meet his without flinching, and when she bows, it’s fluid, deliberate. Her shoulder-length braid, pale blonde, slips forward like moonlight spilling past her shoulder, but she doesn’t adjust it. 

Beside her, the boy - Kakashi - shifts almost imperceptibly. Not to mirror her calm, but to angle himself half a step closer, slightly in front. Protective. Unobtrusive. Instinctive. His dark eyes assess Minato coolly from over his mask, his wild silver hair defying gravity and consequence. It looks absurdly soft. Minato finds himself resisting the urge to ruffle it. 

(not now. Later, maybe. If they pass.)

He shelves the thought and introduces himself, voice light but measured. He explains the bell test, then waits, watching for tension, disunity, cracks in the friendship their files had outlined. He’s seen it before - bonds between Academy students that crumble the moment a test sets them against each other. This bond does seem stronger than most, but they’ve never had to face a choice like this before.

But then - 

Tsukiko tilts her head. Just slightly. There’s a serenity to her expression that belongs more to priestesses than soldiers. And then, with a quiet certainty that still manages to cut through the air like a drawn blade, she refuses.

Refuses to turn on Kakashi. More than that - she offers to help him win, at no benefit to herself.

Minato has trained for years to master his composure. But something shifts in his chest, soft and unnameable. Surprise. Hope. He doesn’t show any of it. He only continues to watch.

Kakashi looks at her like she’s uttered nonsense in a language only he should understand. There’s a flicker of hesitation. And then his shoulders straighten.

“I won’t leave her behind,” he says simply.

And Minato, for the first time in a very long while, lets himself smile.

~

He dismisses them for the day, tells them to report back at dawn the next morning. He fades from view, but he doesn’t go far, staying out of sight but within his sensing range. 

Because Minato’s the best sensor Konoha has. He’s so sensitive he picks up on the faintest undercurrents of the Kyuubi sealed within Kushina when she’s upset, something that really shouldn’t even be possible. And what he senses within Tsukiko is so faint he’d wondered if he’d imagined it, but - 

But. Now that his eyes are closed, now that external stimuli have been ignored for the moment, now that his chakra-sense is focused on Tsukiko and Tsukiko alone, he knows - 

He isn’t. 

There’s something strange about her chakra. On the surface, it’s earth- and water-natured, just like her file had indicated. Sizeable reserves for her age, with impeccable control. More yin than yang, which makes sense, considering she’s a Nara. 

But underneath all that, there’s a slight hint, the faintest shadow, of… something else. Not anything he’s ever felt before. It’s odd, other, something that instinctively makes him wary - not of Tsukiko, but for her, because there’s something distinctly unnatural about it. 

He can’t describe it. Not at all. But if he were forced to, if someone held a kunai to his throat and demanded he put it into words - 

He’d say it doesn’t feel like chakra at all.

~

He runs them through the standard assessments.

Not because he doubts the files - no one fabricates chakra metrics or misrepresents shuriken accuracy without getting caught - but because he needs to see it for himself. The bell test was one thing, and they’d passed it with a kind of quiet unity that had taken his breath away. But that could’ve been instinct. Reflex. Loyalty.

He wants to see what’s beneath it.

The kunai drills are first. He sets the targets. Gives the rules. Then steps back and watches.