Sizheng: this is a little somethingnothing spawned a while back during a conversation with Verna (mostly involving lots of dreamy sighing about how wonderful it is to torture our favourite characters). In the end, this story didn't say what I wanted to say; I fought with the characters for a while, and they still—

I don't know. We'll see. I started off hating this story, and gradually came to like it the more I tweaked with it. So maybe...

Written for Verna Jast, because she's so lovely and loves a good, dead Kakashi. (It's not good, but it is a dead Kakashi). And if any of you dislike this, your complaints can go to Novocain, who saw the draft and persuaded me to post. :D She was writing her very fantasmic fic while I did my best to cut and polish this up and it was great! If you haven't read her stories, you must go and do so! Anyhow, I hope you enjoy.

Déjà Vu

A Naruto Fanstory by Zhang Sizheng

For Verna Jast

(do you remember the future?)

(flip to—)

(the last Page)

(this is the final act)

(Sensei? I did it.)

As they watch their son play in the lingering afternoon, Minato feels Kushina slide her arm about his waist. He reciprocates woodenly, leaning his chin on the top of her red head and inhaling the scent of clean sweat and shampoo and the broth she cooked for lunch.

(Dark eyes. Shy affection. The mop of silver hair is ruffled proudly. Yes, you did! Let's wrap up for the day.)

Minato blinks down at his son's expression of unabashed adoration. Blue eyes blink back. His eyes. Sky blue.

(Uncertainly, You'll tell Father, right? Will… will he be proud too?)

Minato isn't crying. He's kneeling gently; his hand slips from Kushina's shoulders as he tucks Naruto's confused little face into the crook of his neck, feeling a rough, heady surge of protective instinct so powerful that it leaves him breathless, full of love with no room to breathe.

(Confident reassurance. He'd be more impressed if it comes from you. And you know he'll be pleased.)

"Let's go home."

(Sensei…?)

(down the Curtain falls)

(applause, please)

Kakashi arrives home late. He's supposed to be back for the dinner Kushina cooked for his twenty-first birthday, but he's not—he's delivered to Konoha's doorstep by a hunter-nin, looking as if he's been torn apart by wild dogs.

The way the hunter-nin talks, Minato's lucky he gets to see Kakashi at all. Dead ninja are smoke-and-ashes-and-bad-smell ninja. But the hunter-nin probably knows that Minato will never have believed it without seeing it. And even now…

Kakashi did his duty. Only a shinobi of Konoha would recognise the pattern slashed in the leaves, where he'd punched a hole through the foliage and into the trunk of a tree. The action buried the signet ring he'd killed to retrieve elbow-deep in the pine before the first squad caught up with him.

He looks numbly at the broken body, and wonders how it (vicious gashes, defilation and disrespect, Hell, the corpse's near liquidation) had happened. And he wishes he didn't wonder, wishes he didn't care enough to wonder (but how could he not?) and his imagination whispers the story to him.

He'd almost been taken by surprise. They were formidable opponents, and one was a tiny slip of a yellow girl with filed canines and detached earlobes with a wicked looking metal barb through her eyebrow. And her breath was like woodsmoke and the barbell's very important because it glinted (which is why Kakashi didn't die right away); the yellow-green phlegm she spat on the ground sprouted forth a pack of demon-dogs. And the dogs—Kakashi liked dogs—had swarmed him and hurt him and savaged him by turns, but…

The silver hair is browned with mud and dried blood. One eye socket gapes wide and hollow: the Sharingan is missing, except it's not—it's a pulpy, dried mess of membrane and something clear and crusty, clenched in Kakashi's death-swollen left hand.

That wound, in Kakashi's gut. The yellow girl's short, black-haired lover inflicted it after Kakashi stabbed her through her yellow throat. There were still three to kill.

Mind half-bent by agony, Kakashi touched his bloody mouth to the red mirror that was all he'd left of Obito. It felt slick and cool—a little like an inflated fish bladder, and a little like the flesh of the windfallen mangos he liked to pick in his childhood. It tasted like blood, though, and Kakashi kissed it again, licked the little black marks that still spun to the movements of his tongue, and then fisted his hand around it. Crushed it into pulp.

Kakashi's bared, mutilated face is frozen in something that might have been a smile before the muscles relaxed and stiffened, warping his expression into terror and desperation and agony. His student looks as tense in death as he ever had in life, and Minato feels something that's more than a simple spark of fury welling up in his belly, lancing up and down his trembling limbs.

Because after he lost the eye, he was terrified. Kakashi was a good soldier—he showed emotion only when emotion would not cost him, and terror would cost him, so he lied to the four opponents who had opened up his chest from clavicle to belly, laughed "Can't die today, sorry—Sensei's wife makes the best chicken, and I think she'll treat me. It's my birthday tomorrow, did you know?" and they killed him with their jagged knives and the senbon in his shoulder and the poisonous saliva in the demon bites (because no ordinary dog produced spittle that melted through the skin; they were demons, poor Kakashi, where were your hounds? There's Pakkun, there's Pakkun, poor Pakkun).

Someone will die for this. Someone will die horribly for the half-laugh still frozen across Kakashi's dead, bird-pecked and rot-swollen features, because Minato knows Kakashi as well as anyone ever has (and ever will, now) and believes (as much as he believes-believed-believes in Kakashi) that Kakashi plucked Obito's eye from his own socket to keep it from falling into enemy hands. (And Minato is so glad, so glad the hunter-nin all but tripped over the snow-frozen body before it had time to thaw and the ravens plucked out Kakashi's staring, remaining eye. He's not sure he could have handled that.)

Because it hurt more than almost anything else he'd ever had to do, tearing Obito from him, crippling himself and bowing because he knew he'd been outmatched and it was a horrible, horrible idea (that he'd known but never quite acknowledged), that he could lose, oh, Obito…

Kakashi smells of piss and offal. Not all of it is his—someone had desecrated his student's body, and Minato will… he will…

"Shit, that guy was a nasty piece of work," a pale-haired woman observed, toeing their opponent's now-still body. "Lots of close shaves and only half our group left. More money for us, anyway…"

"He killed Loki, the bastard killed Loki, I'll break his stupid, grinning head, you can't be dead enough for killing Loki. You hear me, bastard? HEAR ME?"

"Shit, shit, shit, man, just take a shit, and get over it; you'll find another girl—"

And his neck had been hacked almost halfway through.

"We need the head, we can't get the bounty without the head!"

"Who the fuck's going to believe us? There's no goddamn eye, and no one's ever seen Sharingan Kakashi's fucking pretty ass face. Eat shit, pretty-boy, you're dead now, pretty-boy, Loki'll make your afterlife Hell, haha—"

Kushina's beautiful face, pale and determined, mouths instructions he can't hear to the surrounding ninja. Minato is too busy straining his ears for the laugh frozen on Kakashi's dead features. Why had he laughed? Is dying so…

Pakkun had been chuckling at a joke Kakashi made. He died before Kakashi did, tough little bones crunching under giants' feet and giants' blows, and Kakashi couldn't quite banish the irony, though where it was and how it affected him he didn't know, so he laughed—

The gash in his thigh hurt. The gut wound that joined it hurt harder. That needle went through his cheek and into his jaw.

Kakashi was overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Eight A-ranking opponents wasn't something you'd want to sneeze at. (Nothing like a senbon up the nose and into the brain to clear your sinuses.)

He isn't crying. There's a great, terrible knot sitting squarely, deeply in Minato's chest, but it won't come out. It can't. Not with all the people looking on. He is Yondaime Hokage, he is… there's dust in his eye. A lot of dust. He's blinking it all back fiercely, but he just knows—

One of the few people Kakashi remembered before he died was Sensei. Another was Sensei's wife; a good woman with a spirit that blazed just as hot as Sensei's, if a foreigner. Made terrible pies, but had a way with steamed chicken that no one in Fire Country could hope to achieve or imitate. He'd been looking forward to the birthday dinner, too …

And he would have been early.

(Too bad the ten missing-nin he fought were just fucking harder to kill than he was, alone. Too bad.)

Minato tears the coat of office from his back. Now he's not Yondaime Hokage; he's Namikaze Minato-sensei mourning his dead student, no, those aren't tears fallen, that's the rain, the rain, how had it possibly taken them so long to find Kakashi's body, frozen in the mountains and rotting double-time now it's thawed—

Fighting in the snow always annoyed him. It was easy enough to channel chakra without sinking into it, but he'd need every bit, every bit to beat them—there were a dozen of them…

He can fucking well sob his heart out if he wants to, because Kakashi is his friend, and now he's lying here with his body slit open like a carton of pulpy, dried up juice and if Minato could, he'd… cover that face. After covering his face for twenty-one years, Kakashi couldn't want to look like this… not… like this… oh.

Sensei? Smile.

As everything dims to grey, he knows the blow is Kushina's doing. Only she ever gets so close that she can hit him and wow, it's getting so cold…

Kakashi's death-swollen lips are stretched into a smile. Minato can't bring himself to touch him (they'd both fall apart).

I told you I'd come back.

(act one)

(here be Denial)

But Kakashi isn't dead.

Minato taught him better than that. He knows he taught Kakashi better than that—knows he taught Kakashi how to run and when to fail a mission and Kakashi can outrun a pack of wolves and knows when to fail a mission. This is not Kakashi. This is what Kakashi's mistakes could have been.

Organs and bones cradled within death-hardened muscles and wrapped messily in a dissolving membrane—this isn't Kakashi.

Kakashi is beautiful and strong. Minato's student. Minato's.

He moves closer. Almost close enough to touch this not-Kakashi.

Then he wakes.

Where's his coat? Draped over him. He's in a chair at home; can hear Naruto sobbing in the next room.

He doesn't go to comfort his son. He hears Kushina—she'll comfort him. Right now… right now he has to know (confirm) that it's not Kakashi he just saw.

Because Kakashi isn't dead. And Minato'll find his last student (his pride, his joy, the man who could have become his legacy as much as Naruto will be).

There are tests that can be run. DNA. Hair. Fingerprints. Poison analysis. Some won't be very accurate or dependable—the body has degenerated too far. But all he needs is one clue just one clue just one…

He shoulders the coat. It feels heavier than usual.

But that's because it's raining outside.

(act two)

(here be Wrath)

The poison tests positive.

It's in their database (from fifty years ago). And they know its origins. A paralysing agent, designed to kill slowly, over the course of hours. Crippling the victim.

And the weapons specialists know the shape of the dull-bladed knuckles that inflicted the jagged, terrible wounds that look so much like dog bites (but aren't. Minato is a little relieved for that. For Kakashi to be so hurt by dogs—he loves dogs…)

But the hair and cell analyses come back positive, too.

The tokujō he speaks to swears by her left hand that she'd done all the testing twice. She reaches that same hand out to brush Minato's arm tentatively. Apologetically. "I know he was your student, Hokage-sama, my condolences are—"

Minato almost doesn't pull the blow enough.

Her hand will heal. But the third finger might never regain full movement. (That's fine. It's the most useless, anyway). He can't stop the flicker of regret gripping his chest, though, as the liar stares at her broken hand and there's a split second before the pain hits and she howls, cradling it.

People sometimes forget that Hokage isn't just a fancy name for fancy ceremonies and fancy signatures. The Yondaime is a deadly figurehead, the first and last line of defence for Konoha and Fire. Yondaime is Minato, a deadly ninja who was a teacher first, who lost all of his students, and Kakashi is the only one left to him.

The Hokage chooses who lives or dies. And if he remains human, he hates himself for it.

As he stares wildly at the sobbing woman, Minato lets the killing aura retreat and change. He sooths her hurt with the wind whose name he carries. It doesn't matter that she's mistaken. Even he has been known to be wrong.

But he didn't choose for Kakashi to die. Kakashi isn't dead.

And Minato can't be wrong. He won't be.

"ANBU," he murmurs. "Hunters."

They are always watching him. Protecting him. At his summons, they materialise around him like the ghosts of beasts, graceful and lithe and cloaked.

Kakashi is one of them.

"Two squads of ANBU and four Hunting-Pairs will rake the mountains," he says. "We have a match on the poison."

And when a Hokage stretches his powerful arm to something impossibly above his reach…

(act three)

(here be Emptiness)

Kushina is livid.

She shouts at him, screams at him, "Why? Why do you still have him in a freezer instead of in an urn, you stupid, stupid—"

Minato sits numbly, silently, and lets her wrath break gently over his calm. She is furious because she has finally realised (remembered) just who possesses the authority in Konoha to refuse a man his proper rites—spiritual release in fire and a return to his ancestors across the bridge of smoke. (The Hokage chooses who lives, and dies).

"Abusing his body to find a ghost! What would he think of you?" Her greyish eyes blaze green with fury, and Minato can't help but think how beautiful she is. Fire and spark and flame. Much more beautiful than the still-decaying cadaver (frozen again) in an underground chamber (where the temperature is below freezing) not two miles away (frozen-frozen-frozen).

There's no comparison.

"He's still rotting for no reason other than that you don't want him dead. Selfish Minato! Missing your student, missing your son's growth—"

He isn't. He sees Naruto all the time—he has Kushina's smile. With a jolt, Minato tries to remember when he'd last witnessed it.

"You're this close to provoking a war with another village! Abandoning Konoha to tramp around in another country killing every second person with dark hair and dogs—"

The calm sways. Reasserts itself.

"What do you want? Why? It's not like you're the only one furious you didn't teach your prodigy enough—"

And snaps. And Minato does, too.

He doesn't snap her. But he disappears from the room, materialises through space and across distance to a seal he'd placed long ago in on a stump in a field where he'd rung two bells the way his Sensei rang his…

Collapsing into the mud, he tears at the ground, tears at his hair, suddenly wracked with guilt over the possibility that he might be wrong (he's broken more hands, the Council is worrying—what will his people think of him he's just so fucked up over one death he doesn't deserve this seat; this godhood over his people).

Bizarrely, he wants a crisis. He wants a crisis where he can help someone who can be helped. He wants something so monumentally tragic to happen that he can't help but shake himself out of his daze, but when he closes his eyes… it hurts.

Because that's what happens when a Hokage has his vision plucked—when he is too human and too giving and judgment is always behind a bend in the road…

(every act, Now and Then and just short of Forever)

(here be Fantasy)

Minato wakes up one day, and thinks that maybe he is ready to let go. He dreamed the night before, you see—dreamed in a bed far from home, because Kushina has taken to Not Looking at him. But the bed he slept in doesn't matter; what matters is that he now has a different story to tell—a better one.

Kakashi is wounded near death. Kakashi carves up his enemies (all vanquished, all hurt even more badly than he is) and there is enough residual chakra to feed a henge for any other pursuers.

Minato knows it to be impossible, but this is fantasy and fact and he knows Kakashi to be a genius, so—

Kakashi crawls away from battle. He's never crawled before, but he does now, just to leave. He doesn't linger by the signet ring. He'll return for it when he's caught his breath—and it's well-hidden right now.

And then the strength bleeds out of him—he left it back there, in that clearing with all the dead ninja—and his body collapses. So does his mind, eventually.

Minato has always wanted Kakashi to find a girl. A good girl—one to settle down with. And to bear little silver-haired ninja whom Naruto will lead terribly astray. (Minato will make him apologise, of course, and Kushina will beam and say "that's m'boy," goodness, it's like being wed to a child himself). They'll sit together one day, the four of them—Minato-Kushina-Kakashi-Girl and… Minato will apologise (and not for Naruto being a mischievous role-model).

The girl finds him that way. Her name is… her name is Ikuko, and she has spiky yellow hair. A bit of a tomboy. She finds Kakashi full of fever and sickness and…

He grows better under her care.

It doesn't matter that the girl wouldn't know how to care for him. She does. She just does. And Kakashi will heal. Slowly, surely.

Kakashi loves her—almost as much as the village whose insignia he'd lost with his memories—and settles down. Izumi lives on a farm where her grim-faced father disapproves of his wild, unwedded daughter bringing home a mysterious young man.

But of course!

And Kakashi is weak at first, but he is still a genius. He finds a way to make her old man smile, and he weds her one day in spring, over in the next village. It's a lovely day, too—there are cherry blossoms by the nearest temple (of course). A good omen.

Minato wishes he is there. And maybe he will be, one day. He'll look for Kakashi, everywhere. He can't leave the village, but the arm of a Hokage is long (if not omnipotent). He will reach across the countries and pluck Kakashi and his girl—Ino… Inari… Iruna—from their distant land and reroot them in Konoha's breast, where Kakashi belongs.

And there are children. Lots of them, to rebuild the clan name Kakashi has forgotten. Kakashi makes a bumbling, awkward but loving father. And…

Minato never reconsiders the dream (story) again. He passes the idea to Jiraiya-sensei, and Icha Icha Amnesia is a hit. But Minato never reads it. Plot holes hurt, you see, when you fall through them, even know they're there but… walk into them anyhow.

Minato is happier staying where he is. He knows there are flaws in the story (but there are flaws in every tale). He just wants Kakashi to come back and… well…

Maybe this time, it won't be too much to ask. Just to live happily ever after.

(do you remember the past?)

(this is—)

(back to before)

(listen to the Prelude)

They are relaxing. Kakashi is still bloody from his last mission, staining the wall he lounges against, but Minato is too glad to see his student to care (or to let him out of his sight. Kakashi was two days late, this time). He's crouched by the wall, treating a deep graze on Kakashi's lower back when the sandy-haired genin-clerk totters in and darts out. It's hard to miss the large "A" stamped atop the topmost request in the stack dumped into Minato's inbox.

The afternoon is warm and golden. Kakashi's pale hair catches the sunlight, turning white at the tips as he (ignores Minato's protests to "Take it easy!" and) crosses the room. The scab breaks a little; the gauze spots red. "Kakashi!"

"I'm fine; stop fussing." Kakashi leans his weight lightly against the Hokage's sun-drenched desk to examine the slip of parchment, and Minato feels something heavy sink into the pit of his stomach. He stands, drops the bloody cotton swab and walks to Kakashi's side. The heaviness becomes denser—a ball of lead poisoning his belly.

"I can do this one," Kakashi says after a moment.

He'd half-expected it, but Minato sighs. "You just came back."

"It has good pay."

Minato has been getting complaints about his student getting first pick at all the expensive missions. "You're making enough as it is."

"Saving up a little nest egg," Kakashi is scratching another notch into the scarred inside of the snarling dog-mask. "I'm thinking it's about time I got out… besides, I can traumatise more of the younger generation this way."

The dead feeling in Minato's gut reverses, and bursts into glowing warmth in his chest. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. I'm just hitting my good years, but…" the shoulder bare of the insidious ANBU insignia's swirl-stamp lifts in a shrug. "How about it?"

"I don't know… it doesn't change the fact you just came back. This is reckless of you, Kakashi."

Kakashi shrugs again. "It's not like I haven't taken missions back to back before, and it's only ranked so high because of the priority."

"I can always send someone else—"

"I said I'd do it. Just pick out an extra-nice birthday present, okay?"

Minato feels the corner of his mouth twitch. "It'll be waiting for you when you get back, so try not to be late; Kushina will have your…"

"Head? Balls?" Minato wonders why Kakashi looks so happy at the idea. "I'll be back soon, Sensei."

"You can afford to wait until tomorrow. Get a good night's sleep. Polish up." Minato stamps the slip with his seal as Kakashi clambers gracelessly out the window. "Keep safe."

Hearing a responding chuckle that fades with distance, he feels suddenly drowsy. Sparing a thought for the sun, Minato puts his head down to sleep, pillowing his cheek on a mound of paperwork. Kakashi will be fine.

He always is.

(and now, the Intermission)

(it'll be a long one, boys)

(forever)