Rating: M-ish overall

Warnings: Language, dimension fuckery, Kakashi's myriad and varied issues, mild panic attacks, good!Orochimaru, goopy parental relationships, etc.

Word Count: ~2900

Pairings: Kakashi/Obito, Sakumo/Orochimaru, various other blink-and-you'll-miss-it side pairings, some crackier than others.

Summary: Experimenting with a dimension-bending dojutsu is probably not the brightest idea ever. (Or, canon!Kakashi swaps universes with A Snake In the Grass, a Wolf At the Door!Kakashi, and absolutely no one is happy about it.)

Disclaimer: I don't hold the copyrights, I didn't create them, and I make no profit from this.

Notes: This was blatantly influenced by ramabear's fic Aiding and Abetting, and she kindly flailed with me on Tumblr about AU characters dimension hopping into the canon universe and making everything happy. Which will happen. Eventually. Everyone just needs to angst a lot first.

Technically, this follows A Snake In the Grass, a Wolf At the Door, and things will likely be confusing without having read it. But if you are opposed to reading roughly 60k words of my favorite crack pairing and/or want to be baffled along with canon!Kakashi, that should be doable too. Chapters are going to alternate between the two Kakashis, and will be short. This is pretty much written solely for my amusement, because I'm a dork.

Home is behind

Chapter 1: Alternate Konoha

The pain is the first thing that registers. Not a stab wound or a concussion or any kind of laceration, he rules out in the first second of awareness, more than familiar enough with such things to know. No, this is an all-over ache, a full-body throbbing that starts deep in his muscles and radiates out. Chakra exhaustion, is his next thought, but his chakra levels feel normal, and there's none of the muscle tremors that would accompany it.

Gentle hands at the next thing he notices, long and cool and callused as they stroke his hair back from his face and rest against his forehead for a moment. He turns into the touch automatically, a soft sound escaping him when the simple act of turning his head makes his entire upper body ache.

"Shh, cub," a strangely familiar voice offers soothingly. Fingers touch his cheek, brush across his brow, and disappear. A moment later there's the edge of a glass against his lips, and a murmured, "Slowly."

Kakashi drinks. He hadn't even been aware that he was thirsty, but the cool water is a relief against the parched dryness of his throat. It's taken away after a moment, just a little too soon even though Kakashi knows that more won't do his stomach any favors, and then those long fingers curl around his own, lifting them carefully. A pause, and silken strands of hair brush the bare skin of his arm, sliding like warm silk to pool on the bed beside him.

"You gave us quite the scare, cub," that voice tells him. "All of us. Haven't we had the talk about not attempting dangerous jutsus without some kind of medic nearby?"

Unfortunately, Kakashi has had that conversation with so many people it hardly helps narrow down the identity of his visitor—though he can't remember sleeping with a nurse who'd be bold enough to call him cub. He steels himself for a moment, then cracks open an eye. The light stings, even though it's low, and he winces. There's a shift from beside him, a click, and the voice says, "There, try it now. The moon is full, but I can draw the blinds if it's too much."

Kakashi's eyes aren't his best feature, even with Obito's last gift to him—uncovered right now, he notes with shock, because all the nurses should know to let him keep his hitai-ate, especially when he's already suffering from chakra exhaustion or something like it. He blinks the normal eye open, bracing himself, and is relieved when the wash of silvery moonlight is just enough to see by, but not enough to hurt. Cautiously, he tries to turn his head again, to get a glimpse of his companion, but his muscles spasm sharply. A sound of pain escapes him before he can swallow it, and he freezes, not quite ready to tempt fate and try that again.

Another shift, the hair sliding over his skin again as a shape beside him resolves itself into a human, rising from a chair pulled close to the bed. Moonlight sends darts of silver-white brilliance over the otherwise unrelieved darkness of long hair, impossibly black in the shadows, and illuminates moon-pale skin. Hands touch Kakashi's fingers, his elbow, and the visitor leans over him, all of that hair sliding forward like a curtain until it's tossed back with an annoyed flick of one hand, and suddenly the face is clear.

Given past experiences, Kakashi thinks he is entirely justified throwing a wild, desperate punch right at the Snake Sannin's startled face.

To the shock of both of them, it connects. There's a loud crack of flesh meeting flesh, a surprised cry, and Orochimaru is nearly lifted right off his feet as he's thrown back, crashing over his chair and falling into the wall before he can catch himself. Ready for retaliation, Kakashi rolls off the far edge of the mattress despite how every muscle screams at him for it, and is a little confused that he can. He would have expected to be strapped down, ready for Orochimaru to experiment on, not—

It's a hospital room, though, not a lab, with one wide window half-open to let in the night breeze. Kakashi doesn't wait around to work out the particulars—he hurls himself out the gap, twisting in the air as he descends and calling up enough chakra to cushion his fall. Well-trained reflexes mean he lands on his feet, and he instantly darts into the shadows, but—

"Hey!" A loud, indignant squawk, hands catching his elbows half a second before he bowls the other person over. It's too little too late, and they both go tumbling, Kakashi landing right on the other man. Their heads bump, their legs tangle, and the man wheezes when Kakashi's full weight comes down on top of him.

It's a confusing jumble of impressions: dark hair worn long but messy, pale skin, black eyes wide. Firm muscles beneath him, lean but toned, hitai-ate on his brow and—

A laugh, warm and bright like sunshine, and the other man stops wriggling. "Kakashi," he says, equal parts exasperation and fondness. "Did you sneak out of the hospital again? Tsunade-sama is going to break your face, I don't care if she's your honorary aunt."

"Tsunade-sama?" Kakashi asks, bewildered, and then gets his first clear look at the man he ran in to, and—

"I—Obito?"

Obito—alive, alive, this has to be a dream or a genjutsu, how the fuck is Obito here and whole and alive—rolls his eyes and lets his head thump back into the dirt of the street. "Oh, like it's a surprise I'd come visit my boyfriend in the hospital after he freaked me and his entire family the hell out by collapsing on the training grounds while we were experimenting with my Sharingan. And, ow, you're on my hair, Bakashi."

He understands all of those words, he does, but—stringing them together like that leaves them completely incomprehensible. Kakashi stares down at the boy who died for him, grown up and filled out and smiling at him like he's the best thing Obito has ever seen, and just—can't. Nothing in him can process this, because if it's a genjutsu (has to be, has to be) it's the cruelest he's ever encountered.

That's probably to be expected, given that he woke up with the Snake Sannin leaning over him.

Wrenching back, Kakashi staggers to his feet and brings his hands up in the ram seal, snapping out, "Kai," with more force than is entirely necessary. Nothing happens, and he swears under his breath, giving in to instinct and opening his left eye.

From below him there's a startled sound, a curse, and suddenly Obito is on his feet, shifting into a fighting stance. "You—who the hell are you, bastard? Where's Kakashi?!"

It isn't a genjutsu.

It isn't a genjutsu, and that fact alone steals Kakashi's voice and breath and every last scrap of his reasoning.

"I'm Kakashi," is all he can manage.

Fury snaps across Obito's mobile features, and it's impossibly familiar, even framed by the oddly long hair. "Shut up! You're not! You can't be! Kakashi shouldn't have a Sharingan eye!"

That hurts, burns at him like acid running through his veins, because he knows that. He's never known anything more intimately. "It's yours," Kakashi gets out, although the words almost break him. "You—you died for me. It was—you told me to take it so we'd see the future together. And—Rin, she—it activated the Mangekyo—"

The anger is sliding away from Obito, replaced by a bewilderment that mirrors what Kakashi feels. "Rin?" he repeats, clearly baffled. "Our teammate Rin? Married to Gai Rin? Rin who will kick your ass with a smile if you're not back in your hospital bed by the time her shift starts? That Rin?"

There's just—so much. So much wrong with that. Kakashi's brain stalls out, throwing up a white flag of surrender and promptly attempting to leak out his ears. He staggers back, thumping against the rough stone wall and sliding down to plant his ass in the dirt. It seems like the best option for him right now.

"Gai," he repeats faintly.

Obito grimaces in agreement. "I know, right? But she's happy, so who cares? They even adopted that one kid—the mini clone. Lee." He studies Kakashi for a moment, eyes slipping into red-and-black pinwheels for a moment before fading back to solid black, and his shoulders slump a little. "You're…Kakashi. But you're not my Kakashi, are you?"

Mutely, Kakashi shakes his head, feeling utterly numb to shocks after the last five minutes.

Except maybe he's not, because from the main street a voice he'd never thought to hear again calls, "Kakashi? Kakashi, where are you?"

"Over here," Obito calls, half-turning to look back towards the hospital, though he keeps one eye on Kakashi. "I found him. Er. Kind of."

A tall, broad-shouldered figure rounds the corner, framed and backlit by the streetlamp. "Kind of?" that voice repeats, all but stopping Kakashi's heart. It's full of amusement, good humor clear even over the undertone of worry, and—how long has it been since he heard it? Twenty years, almost to the day. One month short, he thinks, dazed, of when he found a body sprawled out and still in the unforgiving moonlight.

The same moonlight, almost, that illuminates Sakumo's face as he comes to a sudden stop, dark grey eyes widening as he takes in Kakashi's scar, his Sharingan eye, the expression on his face. His breath catches audibly in his throat, and he takes a sharp step back.

"Well," he says after an endless moment. "I suppose this explains why you punched Orochimaru hard enough to break his nose."

"What?" Obito hisses, spinning to stare at Sakumo. "Is he all right?"

"I'm fine, Obito, thank you."

It's the same voice that still features in some of Kakashi's nightmares, dark and low with an incongruent edge of deadly sweetness. The same careful diction, every word a knife meant to cut and wound. The same eerie looks which, taken piece by piece, are entirely human, but which overall amount to something just different enough to make it unnerving. The chakra that surrounds him is just as abrasive as ever, strong and poised to kill, and Kakashi stiffens warily, reaching for a kunai he isn't carrying.

But Orochimaru doesn't do more than glance at him, because Sakumo has turned away, turned towards the Snake Sannin with one hand raised and worry in his eyes, and Orochimaru offers him a small smile as that big hand cups his cheek. There's a bruise across one sharp cheekbone, a smear of blood from a hastily cleaned nosebleed on his skin, and Sakumo smooths it away with a frown. "Lovely," he starts, tone concerned, but Orochimaru waves him off.

"Tsunade healed it," he says dismissively. "She ordered us to bring Kakashi back so she could strap him to the bed." Golden eyes slide sideways, linger on Kakashi for a long moment, and then are veiled by the sweep of lashes. "Though I see now that there's rather more going on than chakra exhaustion. At least this clarifies the spontaneous appearance of a new scar."

He's wearing a Konoha hitai-ate, Kakashi realizes, and somehow that feels like the biggest shock out of all he's experienced tonight. A Konoha hitai-ate on his brow and moonstones in his ears. Moonstones hung with wolf teeth, and Kakashi knows his Clan's rituals well enough to be certain that they're from his father's summons.

As far as the Hatake Clan is concerned, Orochimaru and his father might as well be married.

"I think," he says carefully, pressing a hand over his eyes and ignoring the fact that his ass is already firmly planted on the street, "that I need to sit down."

Obito laughs, and if it's touched with a hint of hysteria Kakashi thinks that's entirely understandable. "I think I need a drink," he counters. "Or several. This is—weird. So weird."

"You're both dead," Kakashi tells them, because if this is weird, what he's going through is a thousand times worse. "You're dead, you died because of me, and Orochimaru deserted the village when the Sandaime caught him killing children."

Orochimaru flinches, a full-body jerk, and turns wide, startled eyes on him. Kakashi meets his gaze helplessly, unable to fight the faint tremor of fear that the memory of their last encounter brings. He's not a man to show fear easily, to so much as feel it, but Orochimaru is a monster. "You're—evil," he says, though he doesn't quite mean to. It's just such a truth—the sky is blue, everyone Kakashi has ever loved is dead, and Orochimaru is the closest thing to irredeemable evil he has ever encountered.

"Kakashi," his father says sharply, just enough bite in his tone that the plea to stop is a reprimand as well. He reaches out, aiming for Orochimaru's elbow, but the Sannin's spine is drawn up into a perfect line, his shoulders tense. He turns his head, long hair shifting forward to veil his features, and steps neatly away from the attempted touch.

"Excuse me," he says, the words cool. "Minato should still be in his office, and Jiraiya with him. I'll see if they have any idea how to resolve this situation."

There's a whirl of leaves, a flicker of chakra, and then the three of them are alone in the alley, the oppressive, abrasive edge of power that wraps Orochimaru like a cloak faded into nothingness.

"Fuck," Obito breathes, reaching up to rake his hands through his long hair. "I—okay, this probably definitely has something to do with my Mangekyo. I'll just—go. After him. Make sure he doesn't do something stupid."

"Thank you, Obito," Sakumo says tiredly. "This isn't going to be pleasant, I think."

Obito snorts. "Oh really?" he asks dryly. "You think? I'm going to send a hawk to Nagato, let him know he might have a visitor if we can't talk Orochimaru down." He takes one last look at Kakashi, offering him a crooked smile, and then the air warps in a tight spiral and he's gone as well.

With a soft sigh, Sakumo crouches down in front of Kakashi, giving him a smile and holding out his hand. "Come on, cub," he says gently. "Let's get you back to the house. I think you'll be more comfortable there."

The house. There's only one place he can mean, and Kakashi hasn't set foot inside it since the night he found his father's body, cut open by his own tantō with blood staining the floor around him. But—

He looks at the callused hand in front of it, then up into the familiar care-worn face. There are more laugh-lines than he remembers, none of the beaten-down weariness he became used to in the wake of his father's disastrous mission, and he has to swallow hard against all the many, many words that want to spill out. He doesn't speak any of them, because he's useless, stupid, can never manage to say what he should before it's too late.

Instead, he takes his father's hand and lets Sakumo pull him to his feet.

And—

Oh.

Oh.

Oh no.

"My team," he says, throat suddenly tight with horror. "They're—"

Alone. Alone in Wave Country, with no way to make it off the bridge alive.

The shock coupled with the pain, egged on by the surge of terror that burns through him like lightning—it's all too much. Darkness rises up and swallows him, and even though Kakashi fights it, once it closes in he knows no more.