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For Momosportif

In the year before Sakumo's death, Minato had been able to see the subtle changes in Kakashi reflected as clearly as his own image in the Nakano River.

Kakashi's cheeks had hollowed out, draining him of the boyish look that Minato had grown to expect from him. His always-white skin bleached itself more than ever before, and the soft gray spikes of hair that whipped away from his head in every direction appeared to be paling in the same way.

When autumn died away and winter crept closer on silent toes, Minato feared that Kakashi's indifference towards the cold was lethal. Surely it was wrong for a child so young to be so alone in the world, and so unhappy inside it, too. He only had his father to lean on, and he never chose to. He stood alone.

One morning, the blonde sat on a stone bench near the Konoha gates, thinking beneath the shelter of the dying trees there. He considered buying ramen for Sakumo's boy but wasn't sure if he'd eat it at all. …Such a bland personality. Would he even like ramen?

He saw a quick shuffle of movement out of the corner of his eye and was startled to find that it was Kakashi himself, the very object of his deep thinking. But then he blinked, and, in a flash of leaves, Kakashi disappeared.

Later that day, Minato went to rest by the river. He wanted to listen to the calming crash of little waves, so he crouched down in a patch of packed mud and stared inside the surface.

…But it was iced over. For a while, he just stayed and examined the blurs of brown and orange that told him the fish had frozen inside the ice. But then something stirred within him and pushed him to move, and he felt he'd be sick if he didn't go.

There was just something about winter that he couldn't take any more of.

Before the end of the night, he found Sakumo inside his study, bleeding from a hole too big to heal. The last memory he has of the man is a picture inside his head of Sakumo's dull gray eyes piercing through him, colored the same as a snowy winter sky.

A year later, two years after Kakashi's first start at maturing, Minato watches the boy by the softly flowing river and wonders why it hasn't frozen again in the winter since Sakumo's demise.

…He'd call it a sign, but that would be too much like hoping. And hope has never gotten him very far before.

Fin.

Author's Note: Okay, so I've never written anything like this before. And I rather hate parts of it, yet at the same time I'm pleased with other parts. All in all, it could have been a lot worse. I've been wanting to do another Yondaime piece for ages and ages, so here you have it. Minato.

The whole thing about signs…well, Minato had a bad feeling about winter while he was at the river before he found Sakumo's body. And then later, it's supposed to be sort of curious that the river doesn't freeze again after his death.

But Min-chan doesn't believe in signs. ;)