Runner

VIII.

The woman paused in her eating to glance at the girl stirring her chopsticks in broth.

In her mind, she tried to recall their first meeting. What she was left with was a vague recollection of a dinner with her boyfriend's team where she spent most of her time wrapped up in Minato, amusing herself with feeding the boys' antics, and eating. Admittedly, she really hadn't paid much attention to the only female member of Minato's team when he had finally decided to introduce them to her. Every other person in the four man team had a more dynamic personality, especially the Uchiha boy. Somehow, that kid even had a way of bringing Kakashi-kun to life, even if it was just to fight over nothing.

She'd tried to make small talk at first; thinking she could coax out an interesting inner nature to the quiet girl. The girl just sat there listening blankly to her and offering clipped but polite answers that revealed little more than the minimum required of her. While she was certainly more verbose than Kakashi-kun (not that that was hard), it was pretty significant when someone was more emotionally stunted than said boy.

Where she wanted to wrap both boys up in her arms and cuddle them like ill behaved and un-house-trained puppies, the girl made her want to put pole lengths between the two of them like she was the moldy mutated food at the back of her refrigerator.

Weeks later, she now found herself on some kind of bizarre adoption blind date with the very same girl.

Now, she loved her boyfriend. She did. He was a kind man, and a great shinobi.

But to be frank, he could be a bit of an idiot, too.

He had barged into her apartment just the other day and proposed dropping a kid in her lap. While Minato claimed that he just needed her to keep an eye on the girl for some reason, she knew there was more to it. What he was asking of her was basically housing and raising a child for an undefined amount of time. If he thought that because she was woman, she'd be able to tap into some deeply (very deeply) buried maternal instincts, he had another think coming. She was a kunoichi, not a mother or a babysitter (though she had an obscene number of D-ranks under her belt that said she was at least capable of that work). She really didn't know the first thing about actually raising kids in that long term / possibly permanent sense. The only lessons she could possibly impart on a child would be how to swear, brawl, and burn water.

And how to eat a bowl of ramen in less than two seconds.

First thing she had done was take a breath. Next thing was give Minato a flat and unsympathetic no.

She felt for him and for the kid, but she was unshakably certain that she was the wrong human being for the job he was asking of her. And at the time, it had seemed like he accepted her steadfast refusal.

Only, she had been wrong seeing as how just before disappearing on her during lunch, her dumbass had informed her that the girl's apartment had suddenly, mysteriously been flooded and she was now looking for somewhere to live. And of course, the moment he disappeared, the aforementioned girl sat down with her at suddenly vacated stool at Ichiraku's.

Kushina took a moment to really look at her. Thinner than a kunoichi should be, with dark grooves carved under each pale eye. He'd told her that the girl had been an orphan her entire life, and that once she became a genin, she was forced to live on her own without the orphan's stipend. A genin's salary was not enough for a child to pay for rent, let alone food on top of that. Just because Hakka was considered an adult in the eyes of the village, didn't mean she really was one. The certainty she felt earlier was shakier than ever.

Ten year olds shouldn't be forced to choose between having a bed and food to eat.

She didn't know what possessed her, but suddenly her lips were moving and she was babbling out, "Would you like to live with me while you search for a new apartment?"

The girl said nothing, just stared back at her.

"Because, you know-ttebane," Kushina went on, starting to feel a little less confident, "Minato's got a kiddo of his own, and I'm a little jealous. I'm really bad at looking after myself, but I promise that while you live with me I'll do a better job looking after you than I do myself. So what do you say?"

Those dull green eyes of hers locked onto Kushina's own azure. For a moment, she caught a flash of vulnerability, of fear and hope, before it flickered away and the girl simply nodded.

"You're sure?"

A nod.

"Really, positively?"

The nod seemed less sure, but it was still a nod.

Something in her stomach squeezed. Maybe it was nerves, finally deciding to give out on her. Maybe it was indigestion from the fifteen plus bowls of ramen she'd just been eating, building up to this moment. Either way, she was pretty sure she was about as dumb as Minato for going along with this.

But she could do this. She could afford take out for two. And if the girl needed things, she could totally buy things. And whenever the girl started puberty…

Well, that was what Mikoto-chan was for.

IX.

"Uchiha-san."

Obito jolted. How had she seen-?

"Your hair's poking out."

"Wha-!" he exclaimed, jumping out of the bush he'd been watching the girl from.

Hakka treated him to a flat stare. Obito chuckled nervously and scratched the back of his head. Anxiously, he waited for her to start interrogating him about exactly why he had been spying on her. He didn't know if he should've felt a little let down when she simply went back to doing what she had been before she'd called him out. Wasn't she curious at all?

Had he just imagined her shaking her head? His eyes went wide like saucers. Was she reading his mind?

As if to finally take pity on him, she voiced the long awaited question, "Why are you here, Uchiha-san?"

"Ah, haha, yeah, I'm here cause…"

Admitting you were spying on someone because you were lonely was kind of pathetic. Minato-sensei was off on some big, super-secret mission with the teme, leaving him behind in the village with Hakka-chan. He would've tracked down Rin-chan to hang out first, if he didn't already know she was busy on a mission to deliver medical supplies with her own team. And he might've stuck around the Uchiha compound if he could hang out at Mikoto-ba-sama's with his favorite little cousins, but based on the lecture Fugaku-ji-sama had given him, the clan head didn't want Mikoto-ba-sama bothered so soon after she had given birth.

That really left him with only Hakka.

Which as an option was… meh.

Maybe initially, he hadn't much liked his distant, and somewhat creepy, teammate. For a long time, her blunt and critical comments about his performance made him wonder if she was conspiring with the teme to make him feel lower than dirt. His first month on Team Minato had been miserable to say the least. But while Hakka-chan could've said things a million times nicer like Rin-chan always did, she never said anything just to be mean like Kakashi-teme. And it took a little while longer to realize that she was just as critical of their other teammate as well. Even Minato-sensei from time to time.

Recently, she'd even started saying some nice things about how he was improving at stuff. It wasn't enough to convince him that she was any less weird, but he did like it that someone besides Minato-sensei was acknowledging his growth. He didn't really have a lot of people who did that for him.

It was that thought that finally convinced him that maybe hanging out with (read: spying on) Hakka-chan wouldn't be that bad.

Now here he was, out on the outskirts of Konoha, standing in what looked like a weird garden with her. He was pretty sure this was the teme's fault somehow.

Just as he was about to take a step over to her, she quickly threw up her hands in a sign that screamed stop.

"Don't come any closer," she warned.

"Why?" he asked, bewildered.

"Some of these plants are poisonous," she explained. The confusion on his face must've been obvious because she continued by saying, "Poisonous enough to naturally give off deadly gas."

"WHAT?" he exclaimed, zipping backwards and holding his arms out in front of him, "How are you even-? Why would you need-? Where did you-?"

"I have built up an immunity from handling them so much," she answered him even though he hadn't fully asked, "These plants are how I make the compounds that coat my senbon. I..." she paused, "found most of these plants at Training Ground 44 and on Nara property."

Mentally, Obito made a promise to himself to never visit Training Ground 44 or the Nara Compound if he could help it.

When his thoughts cleared, he found her staring at him expectantly.

"What?"

"Why are you here Uchiha-san?"

"Oh, uh right. I'm here 'cause-" before he put his foot in his mouth by admitting that he was a loser who was desperate for companionship and she was his last resort for hanging out, he was cut off by a long, loud growl.

From his stomach.

He didn't know whether to pale or flush. His face was similarly confused.

"Would you like to go eat?" Hakka suddenly asked, surprising him out of his embarrassment.

Just as he opened his mouth to respond, and maybe find a way to regain his dignity, his stomach growled again.

Walking past him, she paused for a moment to catch his eye, before beckoning him with a tilt of the head.

"Come."

So he followed.

X.

He blinked.

It wasn't strange to be greeted at the gate when he and Minato-sensei returned from a mission. If she was in the village and not out on a mission of her own, Kushina-san would try to be out there waiting to greet them. He would wait until the woman was too busy with sensei to make his escape. She always wanted to… hug him, after she was done with the other man. Or ruffle his hair, or poke at him to show her his injuries, or any other number of annoying and demeaning things. He was a chunin of Konoha. He didn't need bothersome people trying to take care of him. Why couldn't she be more like Minato-sensei, who knew when to back off?

As they had approached the gates, both he and sensei had seen her bright red hair from miles away. He'd begun mentally running through his usual escape strategies when, after they'd gotten closer, he realized that the woman wasn't alone. On either side of her stood one of his teammates. He cursed. It would be more difficult to just slip off with more eyes on him and if one of them tried to engage him.

Although, knowing his teammates (which he didn't, but he at least felt like he had a good measure of them), they probably wouldn't want to talk to him anyway. The dobe hated him and his other teammate wasn't one to start conversation, ever. He could get away.

His plans, however, fell away when he and sensei were close enough, and he saw what his teammates and sensei's girl friend were holding. It was a- what the hell was it even?

It looked like some kind of banner. "Welcome Home" was painted on it, in eye-gouging orange and surrounded by red swirls. Getting closer allowed him to pick up on the terrible penmanship of the words. Closer still and he noticed something else strange.

Illustrations. Surprisingly good looking ones at every corner. Obviously not made by whoever had written the words (and he strongly suspected that had been the dobe). One was a toad wreathed in flames, another a dog with a henohenomoheji face, the next an orange and black uchiwa, and the last a plant he didn't recognize with long stretching roots. Altogether, the entire thing was an eyesore.

Sensei seemed to disagree with him, if the wide grin on his face and his shout of joy was any indication.

The man spent a good half a minute admiring it before he darted around and pulled Kushina into an embrace. A moment later, and the adults had grabbed one of his teammates each and pulled them into the hug, the banner getting crushed between them. The moron was as enthusiastic about it as the girl was apathetic. For a second, he felt a grain of sympathy for his female teammate, especially considering the fact that the red-haired banshee his sensei called a girlfriend practically had her in a headlock.

Normally, he would've taken advantage of their preoccupation to flee.

However, for some reason, the scene gave him pause.

He didn't know why, but when he looked at the four of them, the first thing that came to mind was

family.

They looked like a family.

He didn't even know what family was. He had no mother. No siblings. There had been To- that man. And now he lived with Minato-sensei. But the way Minato and Kushina held each other like husband and wife, how they held the boy and the girl like they were their children, it looked so right and wrong.

And he didn't know why.

They were only feet away from him and he felt so far away.

So caught up in his thoughts, Kakashi didn't notice until it was too late to even kawarimi away that sensei and Kushina had reached out together to enfold him into their hug. He struggled, putting an elbow in someone's midsection and smacking someone else in the face. It wasn't long before he realized he was just wasting his energy. He just needed to bide time until he could disappear. Even if that meant putting up with the moron complaining loudly in one ear about being "Too close to the teme!" Or putting up with the girl's chin being hooked over his shoulder, her breaths puffing across the back of his neck.

He suppressed a shiver. Only to jump when he heard her whisper something.

"Are you well Hatake-san?"

The question was so unexpected, he was answering in the affirmative before he could cut it off with a grunt.

"Ah. That's good."

He tensed as he felt a hand rest upon his shoulder blade.

"Welcome back."

In quiet panic, he managed to finally get his hands together and kawarimi a safe distance away. He found himself on the receiving end of pouts and chortles. Kakashi avoided looking at the girl entirely, decidedly not needing to see her reaction. Quickly, he muttered something about turning his and sensei's mission report into the Administration Building hurrying over. Sensei called after him, but he didn't hear it.

As he leapt from rooftop to rooftop, unbidden, his mind wandered back to the banner, and an odd thought occurred to him, How did they know I had dog summons?