The Pieces of Gold
Author: Jusrecht

Pairing: Minato/Kakashi

Warnings: Alternate storyline. SPOILERS basically for everything about Yondaime.

Summary: Seven things that did not happen to Hatake Kakashi (and did).

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1.

When you opened your eyes, a dark-haired medic-nin was shouting. She walked past, face folded in a scowl, and her long, disarrayed hair trailed after her like a waving flag. She was in and out of your inert range of sight in a second, but your eyes caught a glimpse of her hands. Both palms emitted a blue, sickly glow which could only result from one thing: extreme application of healing chakra. You remembered it as the colour of Rin's desperation when she had refused to remove her hands from Obito's crushed body.

It was their names which opened the sluice gate of your memories—theirs and the lack of one more.

You were out of your cot in a flash—and down to your knees with equal speed. You screwed your eyes shut to master the sudden surge of pain as your throat screamed for your body to move. It was an excruciating battle and the hands which had suddenly tried to restrain your shoulders proved to be another foe entirely. You emerged victorious in both wars by sheer determination, and fled past columns of recumbent bodies, your bleeding Sharingan scanning across faces both dead and corrugated with pain.

You did not realise that you were calling for him, until your eyes found his face amidst the drifting masses and your feet stopped running.

His name died on your lips in one trembling breath. He lay unmoving on a makeshift bed, surrounded by grey sheets and grey tiles, his stark paleness almost white in comparison. You approached slowly, and for the first time since you had opened your eyes, you noticed the stench of death defiling the air.

As if in a dream, you knelt down and touched his loose fist; it was cold, unyielding. Somewhere among the cacophony of sounds, you heard a baby crying.

"He's alive."

Very, very slowly, you lifted your gaze and found the dark-haired medic-nin, her eyes brimming with things you would rather not name. The sharper details of her features were smudged, blurred by your tears, and still you could not help a sudden, consuming urge to believe her, this stranger who saw you alone and helpless beside the Hokage's motionless body. Strangers were supposed to be dangerous; they were unknown, a face with no name, an intent with no purpose, a factor with no determinant. They were not, under any circumstance, to be trusted.

"Really?" the word quivered between your teeth, like a dying prayer.

"He's alive," she repeated calmly, kneeling at your side. Gently but firmly, she took your left hand, guiding two of your fingers to meet a weak pulse under the angle of his jaw. "Feel that? He's going to live, so don't worry."

Death was not unknown to you. You had seen the magnificently grotesque pieces it could carve out of your family and friends in these fourteen years of your existence, but nothing could beat the magnificence of this, this slow, silent beat that sang softly to you and burned your despair into a flood of hot tears. Its name, later you would learn, was 'relief', but right now you simply marvelled at its presence, so close under your small fingers.

The last thing you saw before you passed out—for the second time—was the glow of her healing hands, soft and pale blue like the colour of his eyes.

(When you opened your eyes, he was still gone.)

–

2.

"Listen to me, Kakashi."

You would have scowled, but the edge of concern in his exasperated voice turned it into a pout—inadvertently and effortlessly. The fact that you had never left his side, let alone his hospital room, since you had regained the ability to move (coordinate enough chakra to manipulate your motor cortex and therefore limbs) had generated much alarm and just as many objections. Still, a streak of obstinacy ran in your family like its own bloodline limit and no amount of protest or harassment could remove your presence from his bedside. You were not the youngest ANBU in history for nothing.

There was also the fact that you were in love—with the best, brightest, most powerful, most gorgeous shinobi in Konoha—but it was not the point.

"No," you told him point-blank, with a matching glare.

The Hokage frowned. "Look, I'm not going to drop dead the second you take your eyes off me–"

"It's not that."

Perhaps it was your sudden brusqueness, such unmistakable testament of vulnerability, which smoothed his brow and softened his eyes. You saw the clear bloom of understanding in his face, and squashed an impulse to run.

"I'm not going to leave you," he told you, simply, gently, with such easy sincerity that instantly turned your indecision into a flash of resentment.

"That was not what you said back there."

You met his shocked gaze squarely, daring his challenge. You thought your anger righteous. Back there, he had been all too ready to leave you with nothing but a paltry apology. With his wife's cooling body in his arms and the infant wailing at their side, he had smiled and freely accepted Death's embrace.

You could not forgive him then; you still did not forgive him now.

"It was not," he agreed mechanically, his voice a defeated murmur. Guilt screeched inside your chest at the sight of his expressionless face. You did not think it was fair for anyone to promise things so easily only to break them later, but to hurt your teacher by reminding him to the most painful moment in his life only made you feel worse.

Your faint, mumbled 'sorry' fell dead in the distance between bed and chair, too weak to bridge any rift. Eager for an escape, you abruptly rose to your feet before he could put together a reply. "I will go home and get some rest if that's what you want ," you told him quickly, staring at an undetermined spot on the floor, "but I'll be back later."

It took him a long time to respond. When he did, it was in the shape of a faint smile, genuine and so utterly heartbreaking that you suddenly wished you could beat yourself with the multitudes of guilt swelling in your chest.

"I will be here," he replied quietly, the words caressing your ears.

You did not scoff at this new promise, somehow.

(Ghosts shouldn't be so ubiquitous, but you were really forgetting your lesson about ghosts. He had made you forget—and now you were starting to remember.)

–

3.

The forest was riddled by shadows. In the misty darkness, you struck the last enemy standing purely by instinct, the rest of your senses much too worn out to perform their correct function. Obito's eye throbbed, your limbs ached, your mouth thirsted for water, and your head swam from the number of hours you had put into hunting them, even after the rest of your team had been incapacitated; but you smiled when your kunai stabbed deep, tearing into a jugular and spilling warmness all over your bandaged hand.

That was the last of them; you ran the count once more in your mind just to be sure. The dead weight fell from twelve metres high, rustling moistened leaves and brittle twigs until it kissed solid ground, hard. You tried to hold your balance atop a swaying branch, but it snapped under your weight.

How fitting, you mused in the strange absence of panic, finding yourself following the same course as your last victim. The idea of fractured bones was unappealing, but you only had enough strength and care left to fold your body to one side, suffice at least to avoid a shattered spine or a broken neck.

The impact never came.

You thought this felt familiar, how this pair of arms accommodated your weight and sharp-angled limbs. Minato had saved you a thousand times and more since you had been five, but at that moment, you only wanted to shake him and demand an explanation—what are you doing here, don't you know these people are targeting you, we don't know how many more of them are still out there…

None of these passed your lips. You stared at him, vaguely aware of the fence of ANBUs which had suddenly appeared at your close surround as he lowered you to the forest floor. There was a swift rush of relief in your chest at the blur of white-red masks; you were in no condition to protect him at the moment.

"It's done, Hokage-sama," you reported solemnly despite your graceless sprawl, your upper body still half-supported by him. "All targets eliminated."

"Kakashi," he murmured, the despair in his voice matching the distress on his face. "How can you be so stupid?"

You tried to frown, and only managed a faint facsimile of it. "What do you mean?"

"There were at least six groups of them." His voice dropped even lower; you recognised it for what it was: an attempt to suppress a dangerously powerful emotion lest it broke free and mastered his outward calm. "To go after all of them alone was not only reckless, but also staggeringly stupid. I taught you better than this."

Through the viscous haze, you smiled. "I would die for you," you said plainly, honestly. You dimly saw his eyes widen even as yours drifted shut, felt more than heard his sharp intake of breath, a shudder full of pain. His arms tightened around you, and you fell oh-so-slowly into the black, blissful unconsciousness, warm and content.

It was time your sensei accepted that no, you were not changing your mind.

(Normal fourteen-year-olds fell in love and then moved on. You did not; your fourteen-year-old love died before your eyes and that was a pedestal no amount of time could collapse.)

–

4.

You kissed him for the first time on Naruto's third birthday.

That, in itself, was not as straightforward as it sounded. You came to their house cloaked in trepidation, behind your back a book of folding pictures and hidden scripts you had bought in a faraway town during your last mission, wrapped in green and orange. Naruto always greeted your visits with grins and smiles and today was no different. He wrestled the present from your grasp and busied himself for a few moments with tearing the wrapping paper into strips.

You dared not breathe until you heard his delighted squeal. Only then would you meet his father's grinning eyes, and allow an awkward smile of your own to bloom.

It could have ended the way these occasions always did, in a warm farewell and a lonely trudge home; but somewhere between three gleaming candles, Naruto's cream-smeared fingers, and the crude graffiti painted on your cheeks, you heard Minato's laugh. You saw how his eyes shone when he looked at his son, so drunk with love and affection that made your longing burn even brighter, still untamed, still unspoken.

Suddenly it was a logical conclusion to lean in and touch his lips in a soft, fleeting kiss.

It took only one look at his expression to send you running out of the door with a mumbled apology. You did not return to your apartment that night; instead, you slipped into the ANBU headquarters and stole the particulars of two S-rank missions. Between them, you successfully stayed away from the village for close to seven weeks, enough to reconcile yourself to the enormity of your idiocy and sort your emotions into a semblance of order, contrived as it was.

When you came back, he seized the front of your uniform, pinned you down on his desk, and kissed you senseless.

Your full reaction consisted of one word—oh. And then you ceased any further attempt at analyses and returned the courtesy.

(You never celebrated Naruto's birthday. It was the day your sensei died, and you were a pitiful, disgusting, self-centred brat and you just wanted him back.)

–

5.

"So this could happen in one of two ways. First, you tell me the name of the person who hired you and your friends to assassinate the Hokage. I'll verify your answer, and after that, I'll let you go. Simple as that. The second option is slightly more complicated and considerably more excruciating, but I can promise you one thing: you will live through it. I will do everything in my power to make sure that you feel every second of it. Unconsciousness is not an option. You know my reputation. You know what I can do."

Despite being unable to move and entirely under your mercy, your captive remained a proud shinobi of Iwagakure. Fear multiplied in his eyes with each enunciated word from your lips, and still he stubbornly clung to silence. Like a rock.

Under the mask, a grim smile twisted your lips. The second option it is.

It took you eleven hours and forty-seven minutes, but you obtained the name in the end. Delirious with pain, he nevertheless knew how much more of this performance you could still force him to experience should he dare lie to your face. You left him after the barest minimum of medical treatment, only enough to stem his bleeding and keep soul married to body; then you went in search of the person bearing that marked name.

Only after lightning had ceased crackling, after blood had wetted your gloves and dripped from each finger, did you breathe freely.

Threat eliminated.

(By the age of twenty-one, you had become the most terrifying shinobi in Konoha. Sandaime gave you every single mission you wanted because what else could he give a man who had lost everything?)

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6.

They came with the rain; this ceaseless drumming was their herald.

You felt rather than heard the first explosion, the echo fractured by distance and downpour both. Somewhere to your left, draped in shadow, Raidou murmured, "They're here."

A second explosion struck, louder, closer. Your thoughts flew to Naruto for a moment, and you read the same haunting disquiet in the rigid set of Minato's shoulders. Naruto was out of your—out of his—hands right now, deep in the frog realm. To tame the demon, some roads he must walk by himself.

"He'll be fine."

"Of course." Minato's voice mirrored your single-minded conviction. His shoulders straightened, squared, rippling the words splashed across his back. "He's my son."

"Through and through."

There was a flicker of a smile as his eyes caught yours. "Don't die, Kakashi."

"Who are you talking to, old man?"

He laughed and disappeared in a flash. You moved to the opposite direction. Konoha would never fall as long as you stood at his aft, guarding his back.

(When you finally died, you died for the village. Your last thought as the world blurred and dimmed was now you knew why they—Obito and your sensei—had done what they had done.

The only difference was that by some sick twist of fate you came back, and they did not.)

–

7.

"I'm back."

"Welcome home."

A smile. A kiss. You could not contemplate a life without this man.

(You still returned every night to an empty apartment and blissful smiles frozen in framed photographs; this was far from enough, but somehow, somehow you survived.)

End

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