The Dinner of Doom
Getting released from the hospital was an ordeal in of itself, with paperwork and promises to stay off of his still very tender leg, and sulking mini-Kakashi’s. Thank Kami he got out of there; a week and he was already going stir-crazy.
Walking through the streets was uncomfortable, as he was mask-less and everyone knew his face. They stared and glared and it was almost like being six again. Well, the six-year-old version of his was walking right beside him, so he supposed that it made sense.
Leaning very heavily on his crutches, Sukea looked over at the apartment door that he hadn’t seen since he blew it up with a sealing mishap. Kakashi had already opened the door and Sukea was clearly expected to go inside as well, even if he didn’t want to. It would force him to truly confront what had happened to him. Time travel.
Acting like he wasn’t having an internal break down, Kakashi stepped through the door and was hit with a wave of nostalgia. The apartment was empty of everything besides a small table and a mat, not all that different than how it was when he burned the building down. Sukea decided that he needed to spruce it up, if only because keeping it like it was would spell disaster for his mental health.
Looking at Kakashi- himself, and oh, wasn’t that a mind-bender- one last time, Sukea walked over to the bedroom where he was almost certain that there was a futon, and lied down because even if he was so energetic that he felt like he could bounce off of the walls he needed to think and laying down was the best place to do that.
Laying his hand on his chest, Sukea hear it beat and beat and beat and remembered how it wasn’t supposed to. Sukea was supposed to have died, and yet he was alive. Kakashiwas inhabiting a dead mans body. There were two Kakashi’s running around when at worst there was only ever supposed to be one. He was seventeen years in the past and he didn’t even know why!
Just as his thoughts were starting to spiral, he remembered that genjutsu were a thing. And then immediately ruled out that possibility because a genjutsu could never take away his sharingan, and why would anybody even genjutsu him to the past? Oh Kami he was in the past-
Obito was alive. Sensei was alive. Rin was alive. He had a second chance. He couldn’t screw up, but he knew he would because he was Kakashi and Kakashi always screwed up. Except for the one in your care, his mind whispered, he’s never broken a single promise in his life. (Coward, another part spat, will you really let a child do your job for you?)
He had the strange feeling that if he had any less control over his body he would be having a panic attack. But as it was, he was perfectly still as he thought of his place in the world. The world that he might have ruined and changed irreversibly just by existing.
He heard the door open and oh, who was it this time? Did Gai come to bother him about getting hospitalized again? Oh. No, that's impossible. Gai… couldn’t come to bother him. Or challenge him. Or anything him. Gai, as he knew him, was gone. Gai might as well have been dead-
Wait, no. He already went through this what, five times during the hospital? He didn’t need to do that again. Nope. He was fine now. Just peachy.
His younger self was staring at him from the doorway, probably silently judging him for existing, if Sukea knew him. Which he honestly might not; it’s been seventeen years and he’s tried to repress every memory of that time that he had. All he really knew about him was that he was a very angsty six-year-old.
“Sensei and Kushina-san want you to come over to dinner,” Kakashi droned, and very suddenly Sukea got snapped back into reality. He mourned his ability to ignore his problems and finally sat up.
Sukea eye-smiled and almost forgot to actually smile along with it, “Maa, now? Shouldn’t I be resting?” He was not ready to face Minato-sensei, or Kushina-nee. He only just accepted his circumstances and seeing his old sensei would rip open barely-healed wounds and that might just break him.
Kakashi saw through his bullshit excuse immediately, having to be have heard the many complaints about the resting that Sukea had to do, and looked at him with a stare that said ‘if you don’t come I’ll drag you there’. Probably. He was a little rusty on translating not-speech.
Sukea sighed and felt a bit like sulking, “Oh, ok, fine. Who’s your sensei?” Sukea already knew who (how could he forget) but knowing who Kakashi’s sensei was before he even told him might come out as very suspicious. He was also scheming; he could be an hour late and see Minato for half-a-second and probably not have a mental break-down when he got home. Probably. Maybe. If he crossed his fingers and prayed to Kami.
“Namikaze Minato. Be there at five.” Kakashi then turned away and walked out of the room quickly, likely disgusted by Sukea’s very existence. Sukea briefly glanced over to the clock on the wall that said four-thirty and smirked slightly.
Time to start earning his reputation.
Looking in the mirror, Sukea almost felt like ignoring how he’s changed. Ignoring how he was half a foot taller and how he looked like he hadn’t eaten for two years. Ignoring how he was no longer him.
Sukea was twenty three going on twenty, nearly ten centimeters taller than he remembered, and his skin paler than it ever should have been. Sukea was thin to the point that it looked nearly unhealthy (nearly, because if he was unhealthy the hospital would have never let him go), just on the edge of starvation and the funny thing was that he wasn’t even hungry. How did he even get as far as he did with his failing health?
Sighing, Sukea ran his hand over his chest and noted several new scars. One right under his protruding ribs, a rough patch of skin that he wasn’t expecting. It seemed that he was burned there, all the way down to his abdomen. He moved his hands down lower, feeling his hip bones jutt out sharply. There was another scar there; probaby from a blade. Looking at it, Sukea wondered how his body had survived the abuse that it seemed to have gone through.
He had a feeling that the reason the hospital seemed to especially hate Sukea was because he refused to take care of himself. That made sense.
Sukea felt so much weaker than he ever was. He had approximately zero muscles, and it seemed that the only thing that got him through ANBU was chakra, soldier pills and adrenaline. Sure, his body back before wasn’t the pinnacle of good health, but at least he ate something besides ration bars every once in a while. At least he didn’t look like a strong gust of wind could blow him over.
He decided that baggy clothes were in his future.
The one thing that seemed to have stayed the same (almost to the point that it unsettled him) was his face. He still had oversized canine teeth that poked up over his lips. Still had tired-looking eyes. The only difference seemed to be the slightly sharper jawline that he now sported. And somehow, somehow, his already unruly hair got even more wild. It stood up in all directions instead of mostly straight up, and had had a feeling that brushing it could be appropriately called ‘hell in a hairbrush’.
All of the slight differences worked to make him look even more feral than he already was, and while he was always up for some good intimidation, having everyone in his own village scared of him wasn’t a thing that he wanted to go through again. He had his work cut out for him.
Sukea itched for his mask, not only to hide his face, but to stop him from getting overstimulated. When he was in the hospital, they kept him drugged for most of his stay. That had the fortunate side-affect of muting the acrid smell of death and sanitation that permeated through the air around it, but now that he was truly and totally sober he was getting hit with unexpected smells left and right.
With one last drag of his hand over his new scars, Sukea walked out of the bathroom to get ready. It had already been an hour.
With a small almost-step backwards, Sukea nearly ran away from the door (red, red like Kushina-nee’s hair-) that he was standing in front of. It was nearly six-thirty, an hour and a half after he was said to come; pretty mild compared to what he was used to normally, but he figured he would start off small.
(He was not ready to face the people who practically raised him after his fathers death.)
It wasn’t that Sukea particularly wanted to be there, but if he was any later he had a feeling that Kushina-ne- no, he should call her Kushina- san- would very possibly kill him. Or Kakashi. Both outcomes were not desirable.
Sukea, sadly, did not get to run away from the door as it slammed open fast enough to nearly rip the poor thing off of it’s hinges. There Kushina was, in all of her angry glory and oh Kami, she had a hole through her chest- he needed to get her to the hospital- wait no they weren’t enough to save her last time-
(Something his brain didn’t note was that there wasn’t the metallic smell of blood at all)
Sukea was staring at Kushina with his eyes clouded over and if his breathing was coming a little bit too fast to be normal, well, no one noticed. Even though she had her heart hanging out of her body with only a few strings to connect it, she was still moving her arms around angrily with her hair, (red, red, stained with her blood ) raising up behind her in that intimidating way that it always did when she got angry. It was then that Sukea started paying attention to what the ghost was saying.
“-you bastard if I knew you were going to be late I wouldn’t have even planned this-”
Oh, her liver was starting to fall out as well. Should he try and push it back in? Nah, if she could survive without her lungs Sukea doubted she needed a liver.
“-and I know that Kakashi-chan said that you were evil incarnate but I thought he was exaggerating-”
Sukea tried to stop his eyes from straying to the gaping hole in her chest, knowing that it would only be mistaken as something entirely different. Her scent already reeked of anger and frustration, he didn’t need to make it worse.
“-we made this nice meal and everything, dattebane! And you just-”
He was starting to wonder if he should stop her; he knew from experience that Kushina would keep on ranting until someone stopped her.
“Maa, I’m sorry I’m late,” Sukea interrupted with a surprisingly normal-sounding voice, ignoring the squawks of ‘late!? It’s been an hour and a fucking half-’, “but I saw a rainbow and I just had to see if there was a pot of gold at the end.” Ignoring the fact that it was the middle of summer and it hadn’t rained in weeks.
“There wasn’t,” he drawled, and then put a hand behind his back, grabbing a hold of some sweaters that he bought when he was waiting, “But I did find these.” Sukea thrusted them out as an offering to the fuming woman in front of him, hoping that the host gifts might help her calm down. (He just wished that she wouldn’t get any blood on them. They were expensive.)
It seemed to make her anger recede slightly, likely because the garments actually seemed to be high-quality. And then he started to see reality as his mind finally realized that she smelled fine, not hurt, and Kushina looked so young. She couldn’t be older than nineteen, and while that wasn’t a huge age-difference compared to his own twenty three going on twenty, Kushina always looked so much older than him in his memories.
This Kushina wasn’t dead. This Kushina wouldn’t die. Not again, not ever. He would make sure of it.
Sighing, Kushina moved out of the way of the door and started walking back inside. Sukea held his hand out to stop the door from closing, but hesitated. Even if she wasn’t dripping blood anymore, he was still recovering and he really didn’t need to experience that with Minato-sensei. But then again, ditching them would definitely put him on their shit list and he needed that even less.
Walking through the threshold of the house, Sukea looked around and was hit with an even greater sense of nostalgia than he was when he walked into his own apartment. It smelled of Minato and Kushina and himself and home and it was all Sukea could do to stop himself from curling up in a ball right then and there.
Kakashi was sitting on the couch (the one that Kushina hated with passion but that Minato loved) , and the moment that Sukea stepped through the door, his head snapped over to him with a glacial glare. Uh oh. He poked the bear.
“You’re late!” The child seethed. Sukea could almost hear the outlines of a growl in his voice, and though he knew that being late would piss off his younger self, he didn’t expect it to that much.
“I told you five. It’s six thirty eight. We waited for you. We have cold food!” As he was saying this, Kakashi started to stand up on the couch, probably in an attempt to be as tall as him, but even then Sukea towered over him. In an attempt to make the six-year-old feel better, Sukea slouched and put his hands in his pockets. There, now they were almost the same height.
Sukea sheepishly rubbed the back of his head, (a habit he picked up from Minato oh no he didn’t just blow his cover-) and smiled, “Sorry, sorry; I got a bit lost on the path of life.”
Kakashi was still fuming, looking like he wanted to do something with his arms, but in the end they just went limp and layed next to his sides as he grumbled and jumped off of the couch. Sukea could still smell food in the kitchen, and for some odd reason it made his stomach churn. Not it hunger, but in disgust. He didn’t want to eat. It seemed that the only things that he was able to eat were apple sauce and coffee. Fun.
He would anyways; Kushina made all this nice food and it would be a travesty to let it go to waste just because his body decided that it didn’t want to cooperate. With only a little coaxing on his part, Sukea’s legs started to move towards the table.
And then Sukea saw Minato (his sensei- father- person- pack- no, not yet, not anymore- he’s dead -) and he stopped his forced steps compleately because Sensei no. Sukea felt the part of himself that immediately made him slap his forehead in defeat rise up again at the sight of him. The man was wearing a frilly pink apron, seemingly making some sort of chocolate desert that made bile rise to the back of his throat when the scent hit him. The sight was so Minato-sensei that the part of him that was still a scared twelve-year-old just wanted to curl up next to him and confirm his existence.
But Sukea was not that scared twelve-year-old anymore. Sukea didn’t even know Minato. So, he walked on towards the food that made his stomach curdle without another stop and convinced himself that the pause was just because he wasn’t used to the sight of domesticity. Which he wasn’t.
And as he was looking at the food that was sitting on the counter, Sukea was hit with how absurd it all was. He was getting invited to dinner by his old sensei because they wanted to know how he would take care of himself. The fact that they even invited him into their home was proof that they trusted Sakumo enough to let him in just because Sukea was his (son) little brother.
While he was there, Sukea heated up the food with a small fire jutsu.
Kakashi sent another glare to his form, and Sukea got the odd experience of being truly hated by himself. It was one that he doubted anyone else experience quite the same way.
Sukea took another bite of rice, the only thing that he seemed to be able to get down without immediately hurling it back up, and quietly watched the family. It was an odd experience to be able to eat without shoving it down his throat post-haste, and he wished he could truly savor it. It was just his luck that his body made even the thought of eating alarming.
“So, Sukea-san,” Kushina started with a sickly-sweet smile, “Tell us about yourself. Your likes, hobbies, hopes and dreams,” Suddenly, she stood up and leaned forward onto the table threateningly, “Why your only file is seven years old.”
Oh, so Sukea was in ANBU for seven years? Wow, only a little less than his own nine. That meant that he beat Sukea in age for getting into ANBU by only a year. Minato groaned and held his head in his hands.
“Kushinaaa,” He whined from his place in his hands, “I though we were going to be subtle.”
“Subtle, shmuttle. That’s not going to get me answers!” The woman snapped. She did that alot.
Minato lifted his head up from his hands just enough to look at Kushina. “You work in T&I. You should know how to get answers by being subtle.”
Kushina scoffed, crossing her arms in front of her.
“You guys only invited me to interrogate me?” Sukea drawled, cutting into the argument.
“Yes!” “No!”
Sukea put a hand on his chest. “Wow, I’m hurt.”
Truly, he was grateful for the intervention. He wasn’t sure that he would be able to eat any more food. It wasn’t that it was bad, but that his stomach just refused to accept it. Kushina walked over to him, meal forgotten. Now that Sukea looked closer, he realized that he was the only one still eating.
“So, why?” She demanded.
“Maa, I can’t exactly tell you that yet,” Sukea said. As he smelled her getting more impatient, he held his hands up placatingly. “But, I can tell you that I haven’t been a normal jounin for a while”
Kushina squinted at him, seemingly thinking, before she yelled out, “Aha! I got it!”
She pointed at him, “You were on a reeeeally long super secret mission!”
Super secret really long mission? Was that what ANBU was to the woman? Kushina was smart, really, but she tended to spout the first thing that came to mind. Sukea chuckled. “Well, I guess you could call it that.”
At that point, Kakashi had already left, probably to train or slander some academy students. Sukea was getting tired of interacting with his ghosts, and looking for him might be a good excuse to leave. Yes.
Just as Sukea was about to shunshin, Minato’s eyes widened for a second. “ANBU,” He whispered.
Sukea winked at them before he flickered away.