Notes: Well, this is it. It's hard to believe that this is the end. Thank you to everyone for reading, reviewing, favoriting, following, it's awesome that people are reading and liking this series.

Neji stays the whole week, so he tries to be home as often as possible, because he enjoys spending time with Neji and also to give whoever's watching him and Gaara a break.

Gaara, for all Kakashi's initial fears of violence, has slotted easily into their lives. Of course, he and Gai are both elite ninja, and accustomed to a certain amount of violence, but Gaara is (perhaps unsurprisingly) very self-contained. He'll play quietly for hours with the dogs so long as whoever is minding him occasionally looks up and smiles or otherwise shows him some tiny bit of positive attention.

It's actually rather depressing, and both Kakashi and Gai make a point of including Gaara as much as possible, drafting him to help with household chores or consulting him on tough research questions or just all playing together. They've started some very basic training, but Gaara is used to being treated as a weapon and nothing else, and they're keeping it simple in hopes of giving him a positive association with training.

That was sensei's idea.

But overall, Gaara is a surprisingly easy child to care for.

Neji is not.

In his own way, he is as demanding as Naruto. He wants to train. He wants to talk. He wants to help cook, clean, write reports, whatever the adult is doing. He wants to tell everyone about his homework, his classes, his classmates, his thoughts.

He can't be left alone for five minutes, even if he allowed it, because he will get into absolutely everything. Kakashi hadn't known a refrigerator could blow up.

After his initial uncertainty, Neji quickly found a new favorite activity: bossing Gaara around. Kakashi had been sure this would end in sand and tears, but Gaara revels in the attention, and it's more of a challenge keeping Gaara from being in danger just because Neji told him to do something ridiculous than to keep Gaara from being a danger.

So, supervised activities. Kakashi teaches them both some of the basics of throwing weapons, which Neji had previously disdained. He takes them out to one of the training fields with a basic ropes course where they have great fun rolling in the mud. He ruins a saucepan trying to cook, and Gaara puts out the fire. He even attempts to play Candyland with them, out of some fit of temporary insanity.

At least the boys seem to get along. Kakashi was a little worried by how intensely Neji and Naruto disliked each other, even though Kushina said it was perfectly normal behavior for kids their age. Gaara is generally willing to go along with whatever Neji wants to do, and if he isn't Neji can be convinced that he actually wanted to do something different.

But eventually Hizashi and his wife come for dinner and take Neji back with them, and Gaara is deemed stable enough to have supervised playdates with Naruto, and Kakashi is out of distractions.

He still waits for the third playdate, just in case there's some crisis that sensei and Kushina couldn't handle together.

"So," Kakashi says, desperately uncomfortable and trying not to be totally obvious about it. "Gaara seems to be doing well."

"Yes! We will have to have Neji over more often."

"Right. Everything seems to be working out, then."

Gai gives him a look.

Kakashi groans and drops into a chair, reaching for the closest book—there's always on in arm's reach, he can't keep himself from bringing research home—and opens it to a random page, holding it in front of his face. "Old habits die hard," he says, even though he knows that won't make any sense to Gai.

Gai sits down as well, not all the way across the table, but not right next to him, either.

Kakashi has no idea what he's ever done to deserve this man.

"Something is troubling you?" Gai asks.

Kakashi tugs on his hair and tries to hide his whole self behind the book. "I know this is horrible timing." He stops. Laughs, a little painfully. "What I mean is, I'm late. I guess I got lost on the road of life."

Gai kind of blinks at him in an encouraging way.

It's probably not too late to drag Gai to therapy with him. Kakashi doesn't need anyone to tell him that he's too inept to have a personal conversation without third-party intervention, it's painfully obvious. "I'm concerned that I didn't talk to you about Gaara in advance."

"You couldn't have known Suna would just hand over their Jinchuuriki to a foreign power."

"…right."

Gai narrows his eyes suspiciously.

Kakashi wants to smack himself. He lies for a living, that is his actual profession, supposedly an elite ninja, and then there's this conversation. "Well," he says. "Of course I didn't know. And the adoption thing was definitely a surprise."

Gai takes a moment to process this. "Well. That." He shakes his head. "Kakashi, I've seen you with Naruto and little Mito. Neji has his own room in our house. We've been parenting for years. Would it have been a good idea to talk about Gaara in advance? Yes. But I know my own mind, and as I said, I've been expecting us to adopt at some point, and I was surprised but accepting of Gaara's appearance in our lives."

There's this thing about Gai where he always knows exactly what he feels and always says exactly what he means to. Kakashi is deeply envious of this skill.

"But…" Gai prompts.

"So…" Kakashi waits for someone to attack or some crisis to occur. The universe, perversely, refuses to deliver. "Do you want to… get married, then?"

Gai looks completely shocked.

And now Kakashi really, really wants to just sink into the floor and disappear. So, obviously they weren't even close to the same page, if Gai is that surprised. He has a sudden intense desire to be having this conversation with Orochimaru, who of all the people in Konoha seems to understand him best, and then is totally horrified when he realizes that he just considered asking Orochimaru to marry him.

"Do you?" Gai asks, after a few excruciating minutes.

"Do you?" Kakashi echoes. This isn't going to get them anywhere. "I mean, if you do."

Gai bites his lip, obviously thinking hard.

Kakashi taps his feet and shreds his shirt cuffs and tries not to bolt.

"This isn't about Gaara," Gai eventually concludes.

Kakashi thought that part was obvious but doesn't want to open his mouth because who knows what he might say.

But Gai seems to have finished his thought, and is waiting patiently for Kakashi to elaborate.

Damn. "Now that Gaara is here, it reminds me that you don't date," Kakashi says, slowly, so he can hopefully catch anything stupid before he actually says it. Except that sounds like Gai is lacking in some way. "That we don't date." Wait. "Other people. Or each other, I guess."

"You've met someone you want to date?" Gai asks.

"No!" Kakashi half-shouts, way too loud for a private conversation between two people sitting right next to each other. "I mean, no, that's not what I meant." He takes a few deep breaths, grits his teeth, then finally just asks the question he actually wants to ask. "I meant… is that a problem for you? It's been a few years, and you can bring people by, if you want. I told you that before, didn't I?"

"You did," Gai says. "But I don't want to share our home with anyone but you."

Kakashi freezes up.

"Well, and Gaara," Gai amends. "And Neji, of course. And your sensei and his family. Oh, and the dogs. I guess that's quite a lot of people, actually."

"But," Kakashi says, and kind of flails a bit. "What?"

"Is that not what you want?" Gai asks, and starts to look really, incredibly sad, which is the complete opposite of everything that Kakashi wants. "Are you unhappy?"

"No! Yes!" Kakashi gets up so fast he knocks his chair over, but he's standing anyway so it's fine. "Whichever one means that I'm happy. Because I am. I just thought you were unhappy. I know that I'm… strange, and difficult to be around, and live with, and—"

"Ah," Gai interrupts, face clearing right up. "Don't worry; I am very happy. I had hoped… I do hope to spend the rest of our lives together."

Kakashi's whole body is paralyzed with shock. He doesn't even think he's breathing.

"Too much?" Gai asks, sounding uncharacteristically uncertain.

"No!" Kakashi shouts, way too loud for the small room. Again. But that's just… as if there were any possibility in any universe where he wouldn't want Gai in his life. "Everything is perfect. I was… possibly overthinking things."

Gai gives him that look that seems to look straight into his soul. "You know, dating is basically just going out and doing things together. It's not that different from anything we already do."

Kakashi frowns. Even he couldn't have misinterpreted Jiraiya's stories all this time. "But… there's no sex at the end?"

"Not a requirement," Gai says easily, like this doesn't fundamentally shatter Kakashi's entire perception of the world. Or at least his and Gai's small corner of it.

"…oh," Kakashi says lamely, trying to process.

"And whether or not we choose to call what we're doing 'dating' doesn't matter," Gai says. "This is the life we've chosen for ourselves."

"Huh."

Gai reaches out and takes his hand, and when Kakashi does nothing but stare he pulls him easily to his feet and into a hug. "You worry too much," Gai says, not unkindly. "I'm happy, you're happy, Gaara's happy. We have a strong, happy family here."

Kakashi returns the embrace, for once without worrying about whether he's stepping over some kind of line. Gai is warm and solid and always there, always a certainty. "Yeah, okay," he says. "You're right."

The door bangs open.

"Sorry to interrupt," sensei says, looking genuinely apologetic.

"It's dinnertime," Naruto says, sighing dramatically. "I've been waiting forever."

Kakashi smiles into Gai's shoulder.

"I can keep bring him up after dinner," sensei says, fighting a losing battle to discreetly herd Naruto back out of the room.

Then Kakashi feels himself sliding backwards, sees the same thing happening to Gai, and once the sand has pulled them apart Gaara plants himself in between them. He's got a strange combination of irritation and uncertainty on his face.

"Hello, Gaara," Gai says, picking him up and hugging him.

How does Gai always know what to do? Kakashi wonders, then hugs them both.

"And me!" Naruto shouts, catapulting into the back of Kakashi's legs.

"Dinner sounds good," Kakashi says, scooping Naruto up in his free arm. He should hug them more often.

"You're just tired of eating your own cooking," sensei teases, ruffling Kakashi's hair as he goes by.

"He always burns things," Gaara says. "We have to go out for food."

"Yes, thank you," Kakashi says, while Gai laughs at him.

Kushina is just finishing setting out the food when they arrive, and even though there are plenty of chairs Kakashi somehow ends up with Gaara on one leg and Naruto on the other.

Naruto's on the same side as Mito's high chair, and he enthusiastically "helps" feed her in between bites of his own meal.

Kakashi tries not to sigh as Mito drops something goopy on his leg.

Sensei is giving him a ridiculously soppy smile from the other side of the table, which Kakashi doesn't feel is really warranted.

Gaara still eats with a single-minded determination that says all that really needs to be said about his early childhood, but every once in a while he'll peer out from behind his hair, like he thinks Kakashi might creep away even when he's sitting on top of him.

Yeah, Kakashi definitely needs to hug him more. He really should have thought of that sooner.

From his non-baby side, Gai leans in to nudge his shoulder and give him a thumbs up.

Kakashi relaxes a little. Maybe he's floundering a bit, but Gai is here, and he's not going anywhere. They can do this. Together.

Kakashi hasn't even sat down yet when his therapist asks, "So, have you talked to Gai?"

Kakashi rolls his eyes. He feels so light now, like he's barely touching the ground. He hopes it lasts, even if it's probably written all over his face. "What do you think?"

Because he's a good therapist, he doesn't look too unbearably pleased with himself.

A few weeks later, Mito gets a cold, nothing serious, but she is up and crying at all hours, and a grouchy, sleep-deprived Naruto is not making life easier on his parents.

"We could have a sleepover?" Kakashi asks. "That's a thing people do, right?"

Sensei seizes on this like a desperate man.

Naruto tells the whole world about it, and Neji wants to know why he doesn't get to have a sleepover, and so does Sasuke, and Kakashi definitely doesn't say yes but somehow he still ends up responsible for four children.

"This is on you," he tells Gai.

Gaara gets really excited about showing everyone around 'his' house, and between Kakashi, Gai, and seven ninken they keep the destruction relatively contained.

Naruto loudly insists that they have to get takeout, because Kakashi is the worst cook ever.

"That is not true," Kakashi says, indignant. "You should have seen sensei when he was young. I did all the cooking for us."

Naruto scrunches up his face. "No, I don't think so."

"You aren't going to win this one," Gai says, not even pretending to be sympathetic.

Kakashi sighs and orders takeout.

Gaara is inspired to be less terrible than usual at bathtime, and Kakashi is tentatively counting his blessings when he finds Sasuke hiding in the hallway sniffling.

"What's the matter?" Kakashi asks, sitting on the floor next to Sasuke.

"'m not crying," Sasuke says.

"Okay. But if you were crying, why would you want to?"

Sasuke gives him a suspicious, watery look. "It's my first sleepover."

"Okay?"

"I- I miss…"

His mom? His dad?

"…Itachi!"

Of course. "I'm sure he can come say goodnight to you," Kakashi says.

"R-really?"

"Sure. I'll just send him a note." Kakashi races through the familiar signs of the Kuchiyose no Jutsu.

"No more kids," Pakkun says, looking at the tears and snot in mild horror. "Never again."

"You are a fierce ninja hound," Kakashi says.

Pakkun looks like he's about to dismiss himself.

"Just a message," Kakashi says hurriedly. "And I suppose Itachi is still a kid, but he won't chase you."

Sasuke giggles at the idea.

Kakashi hunts around for something to write with.

"I can take a verbal message," Pakkun says patiently.

"Right. Just tell him we need him for goodnights."

Pakkun looks like he very much wants to say something cutting, but he won't in front of Sasuke. He does manage to hop out with the window with a lot of attitude, though.

"There we go," Kakashi says. "Now let's go wash your face and you can join the fight over the blankets."

The choosing of the blankets occupies almost twenty minutes, so four hyper five and six year olds are only just starting to settle when Itachi arrives.

The whole lot of them are snuggled up on a pile of couch cushions and folded futons in the middle of the living room, because they couldn't agree on who got to share which rooms.

Kakashi is never doing this again.

Sasuke gives everyone a fierce look, daring them to say something about his brother coming, but no one does.

"Hug," Naruto orders.

Kakashi complies, reminded again how much better the world is now. The Naruto he used to know would never have demanded a hug, even when he needed one. Maybe especially when he needed one. "Goodnight, Naruto."

"'Night," Naruto says. "Love you."

"I love you, too," Kakashi says, the same bedtime routine sensei used on him for years. It got easier with practice.

Across the room, Itachi is doing the same for Sasuke.

"Me too?" Gaara asks, still uncertain after weeks of living with them. Gai is hopeful that he'll grow out of it, but Kakashi isn't too sure. He didn't.

Kakashi reaches out and gathers him in a hug with his free arm. "Goodnight, Gaara. I love you, too."

Neji is fidgeting with his blanket.

Kakashi doesn't have any more arms, so he drops back onto Neij's portion of the cushion, taking Naruto and Gaara with him. He doesn't hug Neji so much as gently fall on him, but the thought is there. "And I love you, too."

Gaara wiggles out from under Kakashi's arm and kisses Neji's forehead. "Night, love you." He turns to do the same to Naruto.

"And me," Sasuke demands, not wanting to be left out. "And Itachi-niisan."

"Um," Itachi says.

Gai swoops in and includes him in the impromptu group hug, and Itachi doesn't really protest too much.

"Love you," Gai says, privately to Kakashi.

"You too," Kakashi says.

Okay. Maybe they could do this again.

"What are you working on?" Kakashi asks, draping himself over the back of the couch and nudging Gai's shoulder with his head. "You've been very busy lately."

"It's hard to see with your hair in my face," Gai says.

Kakashi responds by pretending to fall and knocking them both off the couch in a tangle of limbs.

"You are like a cat."

"I am nothing like a cat!" Kakashi says, stretching and congratulating himself on a task well-disrupted.

"You only think that because you've never seen a cat."

"Nor am I likely to," Kakashi says. "I think this household has been claimed for the dogs."

"Then you haven't been talking to Naruto," Gai says.

Kakashi pictures it. "The poor cat."

"I wouldn't worry about it, your sensei's said no."

Kakashi arches his back so he can look at Gai upside-down.

"And Kushina's put her foot down."

So there probably won't be a cat, then. "He has Gaara," Kakashi says. "And Gaara has the Shukaku. It's sort of like a cat."

Gai blinks at him.

"Well they're both mammals, anyway."

"I really don't understand your thought process sometimes," Gai says, with an affectionate shoulder bump.

"It's a mystery to us all," Kakashi says. He rights himself, then puts his feet up on the table. "But seriously. What gives? You're not applying for ANBU, are you?"

Gai gives him a look of total disbelief. "What?"

"Okay, maybe not."

Gai actually looks sort of uncomfortable, which might be a first.

"What's wrong?" Kakashi asks, serious. "It may not seem like it, but I do know that I don't have a monopoly on personal issues in this relationship."

Gai chuckles. "I know. And it's not a personal issue, well, not really. Maybe."

"Okay."

"You remember I wanted to be a jounin-sensei?"

Kakashi's feet thunk against the floor. "Wanted? Past tense?"

Gai looks shifty. "When I went in for my interview, they said that they usually prefer jounin with more experience. You know I only got promoted last year."

Kakashi jumps to his feet. "That's such bullshit. You are an exemplary jounin, brilliant with kids, you would be a perfect sensei."

Gai flushes. "You really think so?"

"Obviously! I'll go tell them right now!"

"Ah, please don't," Gai says. "I've been shuffled to the bottom of the pile, but they haven't set my application on fire or anything. Yet."

"Are you sure?" Kakashi asks, still poised to run. "Because I will track down the whole committee."

"Yes. I know."

Kakashi, very reluctantly, sits down on the couch. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

Gai shuffles through his papers. "They talk about experience, but lots of jounin get students in the first year or two after their promotion."

"Like sensei," Kakashi says.

"No one is like your sensei. But other people, yes. I think they're looking on my length of service as a chuunin unfavorably."

Not helped by Kakashi's insistence that he not learn a unique skill like the Eight Gates.

"So I thought, if I could show that I was working on something important, they would be more understanding." Gai sighs. "But I'm not getting anywhere."

Taking this as permission, Kakashi peers at the papers. At first, they look a bit like their early attempts at teaching Gaara to write, but if he squints a little he can see how they might be jutsu diagrams. "That's a good idea," he says.

"Except that I have no idea how you do it," Gai says ruefully. "It's gotten to the point where R&D stops me in the street to make sure you're feeling well if you've gone a whole month without creating something."

"No," Kakashi says. "That's not… really?"

Gai climbs up on the couch so he can drop a kiss on Kakashi's forehead. "Really. All part of the life of the more easily accessible half of the smartest man in Konoha."

Kakashi ducks, face flaming.

Gai gathers all the papers together and turns them decisively facedown. "I will find another way."

"Can I… help?" Kakashi asks. He's never had any success explaining his ideas to anyone but sensei and, oddly, Neji, but he's certainly willing to try.

"I will make my own way," Gai says, not unkindly. "And I've already been asked, twice, whether you're thinking about applying, so better not to confuse the issue."

Kakashi snorts. "If they think I'd make a better jounin-sensei than you, then they need to seriously reconsider their standards. Do you remember when Neji broke his nose?"

Gai shakes his head. "He didn't start panicking until you did, because he knows you're a medic. And it wasn't even broken, just bloody."

"Which just proves my point. I fixate on ridiculous things, like whether sensei had a fatal accident on the way to the breakfast table. I am the first to fall apart in a crisis. I have to be led by the hand through the most basic social interaction."

"You did kill Uchiha Madara that one time."

"Yes, because it's so impressive to detach an old man too frail to even stand from his life support. Definitely one of my more impressive moments."

Gai snickers. "That's not how that story got recorded in the history books."

"I'm in the book again!?"

"I think you're selling yourself short," Gai says. "You're doing great things for this village."

"In a role where I never leave the village, and primarily conduct research. No, I do fine in this role, but back out in the field I'll—"

"Steal a Jinchuuriki from under the Kazekage's nose?"

"…that was an isolated incident."

Gai laughs and messes up Kakashi's hair. "I understand your point. You don't want to be a jounin-sensei, and you don't think it suits your skillset."

"But it does suit yours," Kakashi says. "That was my actual point."

"I may still be chosen," Gai says. "And if not, I will try again next year. I fought to graduate from the Academy, and I fought for my promotion to jounin, and I will fight for this, as well."

"Good," Kakashi says. "And I'll support you. Oh, here's a thought. You can't be the only Academy student who wanted to specialize in taijutsu. Maybe you should put together some kind of protocol for that. Or just a bunch of advice for future kids who are in your position."

"I like that idea," Gai says. "I can call it The Flames of Youth."

Lee will probably love that.

Konoha summer is nothing compared to Suna, but then, Kakashi isn't from Suna.

"It's hot," he says, firmly. "We're going to the river."

"No," Gaara says, just as firmly.

"You don't have to go in the water," Kakashi says. "You don't even have to look at the water. You just have to be somewhat closer to it than you are now."

Gai laughs, and continues packing food in the basket and not helping.

"Neji will be there," Kakashi says. "And Naruto and Sasuke and Sakura. All your friends."

"I will go," Gaara says, after several long minutes of thinking.

Kakashi decides to take what he can get, and not insist on the swim trunks. He also takes the basket, and tries to stare Gai into silence. It doesn't work, and he gets laughed at the whole way to the river.

Everyone else is already there, probably because they didn't have to force their kid out the door.

Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura are in the river, playing a ball game that seems to primarily involve splashing and giggling. Kushina is also in the water, ostensibly helping Mito paddle around but mostly using chakra to periodically drench the gigglers.

Kakashi is happy to see it. Sakura was so quiet and shy when he first tracked her down, he'd worried that he'd inadvertently created some kind of childhood trauma for her, or just failed to notice the one she'd always had.

But now she's more like the Sakura he remembers, except that she's dunking Sasuke and Naruto with equal abandon. Which is only for the better, in his mind.

Sensei is sitting in the grown-up section under a tree, chatting with Hizashi and his wife and trying to stuff them with food. Neji is also there, industriously picking grass.

Kakashi and Gai look at each other.

Gai makes it to the water first, belly-flopping spectacularly and splashing everyone. Kakashi blames it on having to drop the picnic basket. He dunks Gai twice in retaliation, then swims back to shore to where Gaara is waiting, as far from the water as he can get without leaving the clearing.

"Let's go see Neji," Kakashi says, resisting the urge to shake water on Gaara.

Neji looks adorable in his bright blue swim trunks. "Hey, Gaara," he says. "Are you still afraid of the water?"

"I'm not afraid," Gaara says. "I just don't like it."

"Okay," Neji says tolerantly. "Well I brought another ball, so we can just play out here."

Kakashi is hoping that with enough exposure to games at the river, Gaara will start associating water with fun. But he also doesn't want to push him, or make him feel excluded. "Can I play, too?"

"We can play fetch," Gaara decides.

Hizashi chuckles.

None of Kakashi's efforts to explain that fetch isn't a human game have stuck. "That's not really—"

Gaara throws the ball as far as he can. "Well?"

Kakashi sighs. He's probably going to regret this.

He doesn't, but he does get quite a workout. There's a waterfall just upstream that makes this an ideal swimming spot, and the boys quickly hit on the idea of throwing the ball over the waterfall and making Kakashi run up to get it. It would be much easier to climb the rocks, but of course not as interesting.

Neither of them is quite strong enough to throw it so far on their own, but Gaara is good at using his sand to enhance his power, even if he can't use it as easily so close to the spray.

Then sensei decides to stop pretending to be an adult and gets involved.

"Really?" Kakashi asks, when the man teleports it into a tree.

Neji wants to fetch now, and Kakashi takes his hands and 'helps' him walk up the tree. Then Gaara wants to try it.

With a wink, sensei tosses the ball right between two rocks at the top of the waterfall.

"Now me!" Neji says.

This is actually a bit of a challenge, but Kakashi helps him up the waterfall, and they jump back down into the deep part of the river.

When they surface again, there's the ball in the same spot.

Kakashi raises an eyebrow at Gaara.

He scowls, but shrugs out of his shirt and shoes and holds his arms out imperiously.

Kakashi helps him up, too, and refrains from laughing every time Gaara gets hit with the spray and sputters like an angry cat. And because he did such a good job, Kakashi lands on the water instead of in it when they go down.

"Nice work you two," sensei says.

"And me!" Neji says.

"And you. Now, who's hungry?"

Kakashi doesn't get many official summons to the Hokage's office. Well, not anymore. The Sandaime seemed to think he couldn't be left alone for a moment, in both his lives, and Tsunade just enjoyed embarrassing him with old stories.

But Orochimaru, he claims to have seen more than enough of Kakashi as a student, and that disaster always follows in his wake.

Which just isn't true.

Not always.

So it isn't without a certain degree of trepidation that Kakashi makes his way to the Hokage Tower.

"Go right in," the chuunin secretary says.

Orochimaru's desk is messier than Kakashi has ever seen it, though it's not quite reaching Tsunade levels of clutter.

"I'm not helping with that," Kakashi says.

"You would be the last person I asked."

Kakashi thinks about that. "Really? The absolute last?"

"Jiraiya isn't here."

Kakashi laughs. "Has there been a decision about Gaara?"

The Elder Council can't make up their minds whether the benefits of indoctrinating a former Suna shinobi in the Konoha way through its educational system outweigh the danger to the other students from the "unstable, rogue" Jinchuuriki. Well, they still have a few more years before Gaara is too old to start at the Academy.

Hopefully that will be enough.

"No," Orochimaru says.

Kakashi shrugs. He wasn't really expecting they had, but that's his only idea for why he's here.

"I'll get straight to the point," Orochimaru says.

That's a good summary of his philosophy as Hokage, so Kakashi isn't surprised.

"I've decided to retire."

Kakashi blinks. "I… didn't realize you'd decided to take the job in the first place."

"Don't remind me," Orochimaru says, darkly. "But that woman has been rampaging around my office for years now, and if she actually wants the job, more fool her."

"You haven't told her yet," Kakashi says. It wasn't a question; the whole village, possibly the whole of Fire Country, would have heard if Kushina knew that Orochimaru was finally ceding the title to her.

"I have not."

Kakashi has a moment of sheer panic. "You're not naming me Hokage, are you?"

"I don't think that would necessarily be a bad choice, but no."

Kakashi starts breathing again. "So why tell me first?"

Orochimaru folds his hands and looks at Kakashi. "Do you know where the name 'the Legendary Sannin' originated?"

Kakashi doesn't see how this is relevant, but, "No. I don't think it ever came up."

"It was during the Second Shinobi World War. The fighting had spilled into Amegakure, and the Great Nations, we didn't think of it as any more than a fighting ground. But their leader, Hanzou… he didn't accept that. He fought back fiercely, slaughtered ninja on both sides, until only Jiraiya, Tsunade and I remained. Our determination to survive impressed him, and he spared out lives in exchange for accepting the title of the Legendary Sannin."

Kakashi can't help his involuntary twitch at hearing of Amegakure, but he doesn't think Orochimaru notices, too caught up in his story.

"He was an extraordinary ninja, and a dreadful tyrant," Orochimaru says. "He once aspired to conquer the whole world, and bring about peace under his banner."

What is it about Amegakure that inspires dreams of world domination?

"There is a man I always thought would die with a sword in his hand, covered in the blood of his enemies."

"And… he's been killed?" Kakashi asks, when the silence stretches.

"He has not. He has… stepped down. There's an organization of war orphans in Ame, and they've been suing for peace. With words, not force of arms. They're calling themselves 'the Akatsuki.'"

This time, Kakashi knows he doesn't hide his shock.

"It is hard to believe," Orochimaru says. "But they seem sincere. The leaders are former students of Jiraiya's, and Hanzou sent me a personal note. He calls them 'repayment for the favor of sparing Jiraiya' that day. He wants me to consider receiving their ambassadors."

Is… is this Pein? The premature end of the Third Shinobi World War, the death of Danzou and Madara… has that somehow defeated the militant version of Akatsuki before it could even begin?

"The world is changing," Orochimaru says. "There is no place in it for leaders like me. Kushina has been nattering nonstop about reaching out to the other Jinchuuriki, and I have no doubt that she'll be thrilled about this Akatsuki."

Keeping the Kyuubi from Akatsuki is such a reflex, Kakashi knows he'll have to meditate on this. And investigate this new Akatsuki. Thoroughly.

"This new era of peace, looming on the horizon… that is a job for the next generation."

Kakashi… has no idea what to say. Or think. "What will you do?"

"Jiraiya wants to find Tsunade. He thinks she's more likely to listen to him if I'm there." Orochimaru scoffs. "Isn't that the job of the old? To reach backward, into the past?"

"Well," Kakashi says. "You weren't nearly as bad a Hokage as most people thought you would be."

"You are such an odd child. I think I shall take that as high praise."

Kakashi shrugs.

"It's a strange new world that you and your children will live in," Orochimaru says. "But it looks like a brighter one."

"Yeah," Kakashi says. "So it does."