Legend has it, Shisui used to say. Legend has it the Dragons live where the Naka springs from the ground in the mountains. He would sit Sasuke down with the rest of them around a low-burning oil lamp and tuck one of their cloaks around his shoulders when they pretended to ninja-camp in the backyard, and he would peer around at the team with a mischievous tilt to his mouth.
Legend, Kakashi would always think wryly to himself, has nothing to do with it.
When he was nine years old and a freshly blooded jounin and reeling after the loss of one Uchiha Obito and the acquisition of one of the most coveted dojutsu in the Land of Fire and the subsequent constant drain on his chakra that nearly and should have killed him, he was brought before a council of elders of the Uchiha Clan. He thinks, bearing all of that in mind, his total silence before them as they argued over what to do with him was justified. Minato had tried to come with him to the trial as a guardian, but he knew what to expect and he knew his sensei wouldn’t be able to handle the proceedings without major upset. Besides; Hatake Kakashi was an adult in the eyes of the law-- it wouldn’t be appropriate for him to bring a chaperone.
They were perfectly happy to discuss him as if he weren’t even there. Many argued for the removal of the eye-- and he thinks that one was the worst. It would be a mercy, in their view, to take away the last thing Obito had ever given him and the promises he’d made in exchange. He would have preferred death, and plenty of the eldest among them argued for that one as well. He expected it: the Hatake brat, a little monster from a family of pariahs? Proof that the sharingan could survive outside of the Uchiha bloodline, even with the only evidence being that it hadn’t killed Kakashi yet? It was unacceptable. He needed to be made an example of, to declare to the rest of the village that their abilities were not to be bought and sold and traded from corpses. This was an argument he understood.
Old clans have old ways, after all; the Hatake had secrets of their own. He did not want to die, but he understood that it was a distinct possibility that he might. Uchiha Fugaku, the future clan head himself argued that Kakashi be allowed to live on with it, though his voice was shouted down by dozens of others in that loud room. They deliberated for hours until Kakashi could barely keep his head up and his eyes-- his eye-- open, until an old crone of a woman that had been as quiet as he had stood, and a hush finally fell over the room. Her hair was thin and grey-white and she’d leaned heavily on her cane when she hobbled over to stand before him. He kept his eye fixed firmly on her feet until she thumped the cane against the ground meaningfully, and when he met her gaze her eyes were milky and sightless, but her voice was the rough burr of a field commander. “We will ask the dragons,” she said.
We will ask the dragons.
You see-- when Shisui would tell the story he always did it respectfully, with an air of bestowing knowledge of great importance on the youngest member of their little rag-tag group, reverent even when he would adapt great and exciting sweeping gestures and laugh joyfully at some parts of the tale. Uchiha Shisui was a true believer in the way most of the Uchiha were true believers: tales of gods were not things to be passed down and eventually forgotten. They were warnings as much as they were a living heritage, colorful and warm and alive and terrifying. Tales of massive scaled beasts that breathed fire into the sky and knew unfathomable things that had given the Uchiha the gift of Sight in exchange for their dedication were not tales at all; they were history. They were beings of wrath and honor and dignity and they were a lesson
And so when the old woman suggested his case be taken to the dragons she was not met with scorn. Instead a thoughtful silence reigned until more than half of the room had agreed, and thus it was decided. Jounin of Konohagakure, Hatake Kakashi, aged nine, was to be taken to the dragons. Jounin of Konohagakure, Hatake Kakashi, aged nine, took this news about as well as one might expect.
Silently and without complaint, he let them set him up in a spare bedroom and spent the night in the compound under guard and he didn’t sleep a wink. He stared at the ceiling all night and he thought about the patrons of the Hatake and how they always seemed so lifeless when he read about them on paper-- the White Ones with their quiet, feral dignity, and Raijin with his penchant for mischief and destruction reduced only to strokes of ink. His father had only taken him into the shrine once when he was very young, and he’d showed him how to light the lanterns and leave offerings and he’d shown him where they’d kept the clan histories and secrets and when he’d went back to lock the place up after Hatake Sakumo’s death he’d sat in there for a very long time and read through histories that felt as cold and dead as the rock and the paper and his father and himself. He thought about the wild joy in the chase and the madness that sparked in him during a storm, and he knew: the Uchiha did not believe their gods are dead. It wasn’t all that difficult to wrap his mind around.
But he’d left his family’s shine untended for so long. He would get no help from his own patrons if he really was about to face his judgement.
They led him out in the pre-dawn light on a long trek along the river, upstream along a well-worn path. Mist clung to the slow-moving waters and swirled around their feet until it was burned away by the sun mid-morning, and by noon they reached the foot of a mountain inlaid with thousands of steps-- so high that the stairway disappeared into the clouds, and his armed guard stopped at the base of them and sent him the rest of the way alone.
One foot in front of the other, he climbed the steps. The constant strain on his chakra from Obito’s eye left him fatigued from what would have otherwise been considered light exercise, and every stair felt like a struggle. He climbed the stairs until the retinue he left behind looked like ants and he kept climbing, the stone path planted neatly next to the river that rushed and crushed on its way down. He followed the stairs all the way to a great plateau, and the air was thin and cold in his lungs and sweat clung to his forehead and left him shivering in the frigid breeze and the exertion left him burning with fever, and on the edge he saw the mouth of a cave and from the cave came the river, the water tumultuous and churning as it spit itself into a long waterfall.
A wash of hot air came from the mouth of the cave, and for a brief moment he considered turning around and walking back down the stairs and not looking back. He closed his eye and he steadied himself and pressed a fist to his rib cage like that might still his wildly beating heart, and then he walked forward. All the way to the mouth of the cave and straight onto the rapidly changing surface of the water, keeping his chakra leashed carefully and his steps light, following the river into the dark. A great cavern opened up before him and he came to a standstill on the water, peering into the dark with his one eye and finding that he could see nothing but knowing that there was something there with him anyway. The cave smelled like serpents, like sulfur, and the air was hot and there was a great heaving sound like a sigh, and he kept himself still even as a great red eye with three swirling tomoe flickered to life before him.
The red glow cast light on a great shifting mass of scales and whiskers and teeth and five-ten-fifteen-onehundred-onethousand eyes cracked open with the same lazy sort of judgement and they stared at him and they shifted in the dim red and he could pick out black and white and red but no other color. Hatake Kakashi stood still on the water with his shoulders straight and his hands steady and he watched a snout bloom from the mass and lower itself to watch him from twenty feet away-- the dragon’s teeth were as long as his own body, and its head was the size of a house.
Its mouth did not move but its voice still echoed loudly in the massive cavern. It said to him: Let us see. He averted his gaze from the end of its nose and lifted his hitai-ate and then lifted his chin once more, Obito’s eye burning in his skull when it showed him in perfect detail just how massive and how powerful the creature before him truly was. The air around him vibrated with the voice when it came again, this time saying: You are no Uchiha.
“No,” he’d agreed, because lying wouldn’t fly here and there was little else to be said. A creature like this would not care for a dead boy’s plea and the survivor’s promise. The head drifted closer to him and he was forced to crane his neck up further to keep his gaze on it.
Bold little thing, it had chuckled. We gave our gift of sight to the Uchiha because they agreed to abide by our laws, child. You, we have made no such bargain with.
Kakashi had grit his teeth but kept his shoulders relaxed, and instead of saying ‘not yet’ or ‘i would strike a bargain with you if that is what you desire’, he said, “I already hold agreements with others.” At the creature’s snort, he swallowed hard.
Agreements you have broken, have you not? To you, there is no pack. Its tone was considering instead of mocking, and he did not allow himself to flinch from the truth of it. You are already an oathbreaker, so what use do we have for a wretch like you?
It’s not a question he truly had an answer for-- after all, they were right. Hatake Kakashi had thrown his bonds to the wind and abandoned those he was supposed to care for: his father, first, and then Rin, to the cost of Obito’s life. Betraying Pack like that is the gravest of sins a Hatake can commit and he’d done it more than once, and the gods do not care for excuses and platitudes. But it had been Uchiha Obito that made him see the error of his ways, albeit a little too late to save his life. And Kakashi had sworn to him that he would live for the both of them and protect Rin, protect their family, so meeting his death in a flash of fire or teeth today was not an acceptable outcome. With this in mind he blinked slowly, his hand fisted tightly over his gut, and finally he replied, “you have no use for me at all.”
The stillness that lingered in the air then had raised the hairs on his arms like the moment before a lightning strike, and the great beast’s eyes had narrowed at him and a great, deafening snarl had ripped out of its throat and he had just enough time to think guess that’s the wrong answer before something struck him between the shoulder blades and lit his whole world up with bright white light and then left him once more in darkness.
He’d woken again out in the middle of the plateau feeling like his joints were locked in stone, limbs trembling, nose and ears bleeding. The air was frigid except for the great, hot gusts of air rolling out of the cave that made the mouth of the Naka river, and some sense told him he would not be welcome were he to go back inside. Kakashi had stood up, fallen back to his knees, and stood up again, and then made his way toward the steps on legs that trembled worse than a fawn’s. He sat heavily on the first stair at the top until his ragged breathing slowed, threw up off to the side until the only thing that came out of his mouth was stinging bile, and then he’d watched the sun set.
By the time he made it back down the stairs, staggering heavily, it was midnight. The only ones waiting for him were the ancient old woman and Uchiha Fugaku, who watched with unreadable faces as he made it all the way down the stairs and stood before them, and then fell straight onto his ass. The woman waited a moment, and then as she turned away she said, “he may keep the eye, then. It’s been decided,” and then limped off down the path into the dark. Fugaku had pulled him to his feet and caught him when he stumbled hard enough to crash face-first into his gut, and carefully steered him all the way back to his apartment without a word.
And if Shisui had a look of respect and wonder on his face whenever he spoke of the dragons to their little circle of murderers and a child, whenever Fugaku stood on the back porch and watched them he always had that same unreadable look he’d had that night, with his arms crossed and his brows furrowed, before he turned his back and headed inside.