Team Minato made camp outside the town of Mizuba after the sun had set on their second day of travel. They were toeing the border of Fire Country, meaning the risk of encountering enemy shinobi was higher than it had ever been. They went without a fire.

They set up camp carefully and quietly. Even Obito was more hushed than usual, which didn't say much, but it did say something. Rin looked nervous; she'd been getting more and more restless the closer they got to their destination. Their team had gone on missions to aid in the war before, but never had they been so close to the enemy line. Kannabi had been their first true interaction with the Iwa nin, and Kakashi loathed to reflect on how well that had gone.

With their sleeping bags rolled out underneath the perceived safety of a tall oak, the three students allowed themselves a little bit of relaxation after pushing themselves to get here quickly. Kakashi unwrapped a protein bar to munch on; Rin was double-checking her med kit; Obito was stretching lazily. Minato, meanwhile, was up in the treetops, scouting.

Silently, their sensei dropped in the center of them—startling all but Kakashi. "We're in the clear," Minato announced cheerily. "So, now is the best time to go over our plan one last time, make sure no one has any questions. Yeah?"

The students all gave varying forms of a yes and gathered around their sensei, ready to listen. Minato delved into the explanation as if he hadn't already given it twice.

"The orphanage is where we're suspecting the information is being passed through," he said. "We're not sure how, or by who, but you all are the perfect ages to blend in. So you're going to disguise yourselves as orphans—" Minato pointedly did not look at either Kakashi or Obito when he said this, even though the two boys looked at each other as if to say, disguise? "—and infiltrate the orphanage. I can't stress this enough, but take your time. We have just under two weeks to get what we need, and rushing this process can ruin our chances. I want you all to stick together. We've practiced our teamwork and here it's going to be imperative. I can't be with you, but I'm going to be nearby."

Kakashi did his best not to think about what happened the last time Minato had left them to their own devices on a mission.

"Obito, Rin, I want you both to follow Kakashi's orders," Minato continued. "He is the unofficial team leader. Kakashi, I need you to listen to what Rin and Obito have to say. Even if you are in charge, that does not mean that you need to make every decision on your own."

All three nodded, and Kakashi ignored Obito's annoyed look. He was good at ignoring things.

"I'm going to be around town trying to dig up information. I don't know how it works in the orphanage, but I'm assuming you're going to have just about free reign concerning what you do in the day. Don't arouse suspicion. We'll meet at the end of the week to exchange information and figure out what the next step is. But if anything goes wrong, you get out of there. Your safety is more important."

This time, Minato looked directly at Kakashi when he said that. The mission does not come first. Your and your teammates' safety does.

This time, Kakashi got the message loud and clear, and he responded with a curt nod that went unnoticed by Rin and Obito.

"Tonight we'll stay here, but tomorrow morning, the three of you are going to head into town. I'm going to come in from a different direction later in the day. We'll be without communication until we can meet in person again, so I'm trusting that you all know what you're supposed to do. Any questions?"

"Sensei," Rin began, "would it be too suspicious if all three of us went in at once? Especially because we're coming from the direction of the Leaf Village?"

Minato shook his head. "No. If you're all on your own, then it makes sense for you to stick together with your friends. Safety in numbers."

Rin dipped her head in a nod, but Minato's words didn't seem to ease her anxiety.

"Any other questions?"

When he was met with silence, Minato clapped his hands. "Good! I'm going to be going under a henge, but I don't want any of you to. At your levels, it'd be too easy for a Jonin to see through your disguises."

"Sensei," Kakashi piped up, "I think my hair stands out too much. I'd like to at least put that under a henge."

Minato hummed, nodding thoughtfully. "I came prepared!" With a grin too broad to mean anything good, Minato reached into his ninja pouch… and pulled out hair dye. Kakashi blanched.

"Hair dye?" He drawled, thoroughly unimpressed.

"Don't worry! It'll wash out in a few weeks. But keeping up a henge for as long as we're going to be here takes chakra I want you to save. So…" Minato shook the bottle. "Who wants to help?"

へのへのもへじ

Thirty minutes and a bottle of hair dye later, Hatake Kakashi had lost his infamous white hair and instead gained hair the color of the red dirt beneath their feet. Great. When it was finally done, he swatted everyone's hands away—Rin's especially, because she kept going on and on about how soft his hair was, asking what shampoo he used, and it didn't feel like he used gel, so was it just spiked naturally?

"You don't even look like yourself, Kakashi!" Obito bellowed with laughter. If looks could kill, the Uchiha would have keeled over precisely thirty-one minutes ago.

"Shut up," Kakashi grouched. Of course, that did nothing to cease Obito's laughter.

"I think it looks kinda nice," Rin commented shyly. "I like the white hair better—"

"It's gray—"

"But the red looks good too!"

Kakashi sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Gods, from his students to his teammates, he could never catch a break, could he?

"Now that that's done," Minato started again, trying (and failing) to hide his own snickers, "I trust you've all packed civilian clothes?"

He received a chorus of "Hai, Sensei," in response and nodded. "Good. With that settled, I want you all to get some rest. I'll—"

"What about the mask?"

Everyone collectively stared at Obito. The boy looked a mix of terrified and overjoyed, either because Kakashi would kill him or because he'd con his way into getting the Hatake to go without the mask. Perhaps both.

If only looks could kill.

Before Minato could offer his sagely advice on that topic, Kakashi spoke up. "I've already got it covered," he said flatly. "No need to worry about it."

Minato clicked his tongue and wisely decided not to push it. "Alright. If we're settled, then get some rest. I'll take first watch."

Everyone silently agreed, heading to their respective sleeping bags while Minato took to the treetops. Instead of immediately bunkering down to get some rest, Rin looked to her two comrades. "Have you guys decided on your names yet?" She questioned. Obito audibly choked.

"You forgot," Kakashi drawled, unimpressed and unsurprised.

"H-hey! I was… busy! What name have you thought of, Bakakashi?!" Obito challenged. Kakashi met him with the same monotone he always tended towards.

"Sukea."

"Oh! That's a great name, Kakashi. Do you think you could come up with one for me?" Rin asked sweetly.

Before Kakashi could stop himself, he said the first name that came to mind: "Sakura." And he immediately wished it was possible to eat his words. Damn him for opening his big mouth.

"Sakura? That's so pretty!" Rin gushed, completely oblivious.

Obito was eyeing Kakashi suspiciously and carefully not saying anything. Although it was clear that the Uchiha was hopeless with coming up with a name, he was stubbornly refusing to ask for help. The real twelve-year-old Kakashi would have smugly refused to help him, even knowing Obito was having difficulties. Luckily (thankfully), Kakashi was not actually twelve.

"Sasuke would be a good name for you," Kakashi found himself saying.

Surprisingly, Obito didn't immediately reject the same. "Sasuke?" He repeated. "Yeah, okay. So, Sukea, Sakura, and Sasuke? That's a lot of S's."

Kakashi squinted. "You don't have to use the names I thought of—"

"No! No, I'll… thanks."

The Hatake huffed contentedly. He was about to settle down into his sleeping bag and silently curse himself for giving them the names of his students, when he was interrupted. Minato's voice wafted down from the overhead branches.

"What name would you give me, Kakashi?"

And, damn it, he already had the theme going, so what was one more?

"Naruto," he replied.

"Wow! A name that doesn't start with S!" Obito exclaimed.

"I'm going to sleep now."

"Aw, what, Bakakashi can't take a little teasing?"

"Goodnight."

Hidden snuggly in the tree branches above his precious students, Minato turned the name over in his mind. Naruto…

へのへのもへじ

Kakashi was awoken by Rin nudging his sleeping bag. "Your turn," she mumbled, faceplanting onto her own bag and immediately falling asleep.

Sighing, he stood up, stretched, and climbed silently above to keep watch. He had watched the sun rise over the horizon many times before, but he savored it this time. Not often did he take the chance to appreciate his team sleeping soundly below. The first time around, he was pretty shit. He was trying hard to be decidedly less shit, and hoped it was working.

When the sun was high enough above the horizon, Kakashi jumped down from the trees. He woke Rin and Obito, grabbed his pack, and went somewhere more private to change into his civilian clothes. Before he put his shirt on, though, he reluctantly took off his skin-tight undershirt-mask combo, leaving his face bare before the trees. There hadn't been a time he could remember that he'd ever taken his mask off outside his own home—at least until he invented Sukea.

Fitting, that it was the name he was using now.

Feeling the breeze on his collarbone and his jaw was still strange. But he ignored it, tucking his ninja clothes away and making sure his weapons were securely hidden. Because they were in a disguise, they couldn't have as many ninja tools on their person, which Kakashi disliked, but every good ninja knew how to hide dozens of weapons on a seemingly empty person.

For curiosity's sake, Kakashi looked at his reflection in the nearby stream. His baby face stared back at him, sans his left eye, which his hair covered. Softly, he touched his cheek, where he was so used to the scar bisecting that side of his face.

How could someone look so innocent yet so haunted at the same time?

With a sigh, Kakashi turned away, displeased as ever with his face being on display. But if anyone had to see it, at least it was his team.

Kakashi walked through the wooded area to the camp, spotting Rin, Obito, and sleeping Minato through the trees. Rin glanced in his direction and immediately did a double-take, her face morphing into one of clear surprise. To Kakashi's surprise, however, she pulled a kunai from somewhere on her.

Oh. She really didn't recognize him.

"It's just me," Kakashi reassured, holding his hands up in surrender.

"Kakashi?" Rin questioned, still skeptical.

"Yep. The one and only."

She sighed, heavily, and put the kunai away. Kakashi felt a twinge, an instinct to rush at her. She was too trustworthy; she hadn't tested him at all, and he could just as easily have been a stranger, or an enemy, and she would be none the wiser. His gut-instinct—or, perhaps, his sensei-instinct—was telling him to prove why she shouldn't make that mistake again.

He repressed it, this time. He could let it slide. After all, he didn't want Obito up in arms this early in the morning and right before the true beginning of their mission.

"Kakashi?!" Obito gaped.

"I didn't even recognize you!" Rin continued. "Is that a henge? I thought Sensei said—" She glanced at the sleeping Namikaze.

"Yep," Kakashi lied, "a henge."

Obito squinted at him, but before he could give the Uchiha time to question, Kakashi motioned towards the village. "We should get going… Sakura. Sasuke." The names felt familiar on his tongue as they ever did, although the latter left a bitter taste, a reminder of another one of his failures.

Looking at Obito, newly named Sasuke, Kakashi was determined that he was not going to fail again.

Rin, cheery as ever even so early in the morning, happily gathered up her things along with her two teammates. Kakashi was certain that Minato was not actually sleeping, but they moved quietly so as to not disturb the Jonin anyways. Within minutes, the trio—looking dirtied, homeless, and nothing like shinobi—made their way towards Mizuba.

へのへのもへじ

The mission was a success.

It was a hot mess, but it was a success overall. While there had been no traitors from the Hidden Leaf relaying messages to Iwagakure nin, there were some undercover Iwa shinobi in the town taking too much interest in the border of Fire Country and what lay within. They were disposed of fairly quickly. The longest part was finding them in such a crowded town, bustling with life and business as if a war wasn't going on. Kakashi almost found himself envying them.

Luckily, the team wrapped up the mission earlier than anticipated, so they didn't have to rush to get back home. Everyone was tired from the mission and the fighting. Kakashi, while grateful for the practice in his bulking up his chakra reserves, especially felt the drain, if the migraine pulsing behind his left eye was anything to go by. Rin had soothed it to a dull ache, bless her, but he still wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed in a dark room and sleep the day away.

Obito was brandishing the bandages around his arm like a gold medal, as he explained to Minato for the fifth time how he'd received such an honorable wound. He'd "taken the hit for Bakakashi," as he was saying. Kakashi had known fully well the kunai was headed towards him, but he'd first needed to deflect the shuriken in front of him before he could turn around and knock the kunai away.

Like a dunce, Obito had decided to just take the kunai straight to the arm for him.

Kakashi was too tired to explain himself more than once, and he was too tired to be angry—but oh was he angry. It was still there, squashed down in his chest. If he didn't have more control over himself than the decades of suppression allowed him, then he would have yelled at Obito far more than he already had.

Of course, Obito didn't understand why Kakashi was angry. He didn't understand that Kakashi didn't need to be saved. He didn't understand that it was that same foolhardy mindset that would get him killed.

And so Kakashi simmered, walking at the back of the group, his hands stuffed in his pockets and his mask back in its rightful place. At least, with the mask on, no one could see his grimace.

The scene replayed in his mind like a broken record. Had Obito been angled differently, had the kunai been aimed for Kakashi's neck instead of his back, had anything occurred other than the way it had, the chances skyrocketed that Obito had bled out before Rin could so much as get her medkit. And it would have been Kakashi's fault.

When Obito had turned to him, then, with a kunai sticking out of his arm and a stupid grin on his face, their eyes locked. And something must have been written all over Kakashi's face, because Obito's grin immediately fell away. The Uchiha's face had morphed into something different altogether; his eyes had gone wide; his mouth fell open. He'd looked shocked that Kakashi wasn't immediately thankful.

...No. That wasn't true.

Obito had been shocked that Kakashi looked afraid.

They'd been avoiding each other since the battle. Or, at least, Kakashi had been avoiding Obito, and the Uchiha hadn't gone out of his way to remedy that. Realistically, it was probably their normal behavior in Rin's and Minato's eyes. But Kakashi was sulking, so he labeled it as avoiding and called it a day.

Rin occasionally cast a glance back at him from where the center of the group, worry in her eyes. Kakashi ignored her, for now. He wanted the space, and he was fine, so her worrying was needless.

By the time they made camp for the night, Kakashi had sulked enough and quietly reinserted himself into the group. It didn't go unnoticed by the others, and his teammates happily welcomed him back into the latest conversation. If Kakashi didn't know any better, he'd say Obito almost looked relieved.

Truthfully, it was nice. It was something Kakashi hadn't realized he missed until he was back in the thick of it—a team that just knew him. And, sure, maybe they didn't really know him considering all his years on them, but it was a moot point.

The next day would be their last on the road.

Their formation changed occasionally to accommodate various conversations. Sometimes he and Rin would talk the lead, discussing different medical topics or even how frustrated she got sometimes with her sewing. He could offer little advice on that front, considering his specialty was sewing torn pants and shirts back together, but he listened as if it was the most interesting topic in the world.

Occasionally he walked beside Obito, although Rin was usually with them. While Rin and Obito chattered away about many different things, from how awesome it was to fight real enemy shinobi to how they couldn't wait to get home and take a bath, Kakashi would chime in with his thoughts every now and then. Every time he did it was as if he tossed them a gold nugget, the way the both of them looked so happy to hear his thoughts.

The one thing he and Obito didn't talk about was yesterday. Which was fine. They mutually agreed to pretend it never happened, which was what Kakashi preferred to do with most things.

As they neared Konoha, Kakashi found himself at the back of the group, walking beside Minato. Rin and Obito were, once again, deep in conversation. How they had so many things to talk about when they spent just about every waking moment together was beyond Kakashi.

It was quite convenient for Minato, however, because it meant that the odds were slimmer that they would hear his and Kakashi's conversation. The topic was harmless for now—they were discussing Kakashi's upcoming Jonin exam, which would take place fairly soon after their return. At the very least, the Hatake didn't seem worried about it in the slightest. However, Minato wanted to turn the conversation into something a little riskier. But it'd been bugging him, and he wanted it off his chest.

When their talk lapsed for a moment, then came Minato's opportunity to strike.

"So, Kakashi," the blond began, "I've been meaning to ask."

"Hm? What is it, Sensei?"

"Ah, well…" Minato did his best to sound only slightly interested. "Who's Naruto?"

Rin or Obito wouldn't have noticed it, but the Namikaze did. Tension ran up between Kakashi's shoulder blades, and he got this look in his eye. It was times like this when Minato couldn't help but think that Kakashi looked so much older than he was.

"Nobody, Sensei," Kakashi answered. As good as his student was at lying, he wasn't so good at lying to Minato. At best, the answer was a half-truth. (Nobody, yet.) The Hatake continued, "It was just a name I thought up."

Minato hummed. "Is that right?"

"...Yes."

He eyed his student. The subtle discomfort had yet to vanish, and Minato suspected it wouldn't until the topic was dropped. However, that small sign was enough for Minato to keep after it like a ninken with a fresh scent.

"You know," Minato continued, "this isn't the first time you've called me Naruto."

Kakashi's eye widened slightly. "I've never called you Naruto before."

"You have." Minato nodded, reaffirming his point. "It was a while ago. You were in the hospital after you passed out during training. I was by your bedside when you woke up, and you started calling me Naruto."

Kakashi very carefully chose to look at his feet. "Well, I'm sure I was—"

"In a lot of pain?"

The Hatake glanced up at him, clearly confused. "Huh?"

Minato scratched at the back of his neck. "You kept talking about pain," he explained. "You did a number on your eyes, you know, by channeling chakra to them like you did… When I asked you about it, you said it was because of pain."

Oh.

Oh.

Kakashi looked away. His stomach churned thinking about Pein, the fight that had yet to be. He vividly remembered the destroyed village, the bodies of his comrades and civilians alike among the rubble. His Sharingan had recorded almost all of it, but above all he remembered Choji, a missile sucked into oblivion, a blue sky… a campfire.

His sensei, seemingly oblivious, barreled on. "...Which I don't really get, but that's beside the point. You called me Naruto a few times. And then, earlier, you said it again. So I was just curious who this Naruto fella was."

"Just… someone I used to know."

"Ah."

The duo lapsed into silence once more. Kakashi thought the conversation was finally over, but as the gates to the Hidden Leaf rose into sight, Minato spoke up once more.

"So, will I ever get to meet this Naruto?"

That brought a small smile to Kakashi's lips. "Yeah," he answered, "you'll meet him eventually."

"Hey!" Obito's loud voice interrupted their conversation. "Bakakashi! I know why that mission got you so tired!"

Kakashi and Minato exchanged curious glances before the Hatake turned his attention to the Uchiha. "Oh?" He prompted, genuinely curious.

"It was because of that henge you had up the whole time!"

Kakashi's jaw shut with an audible click. Minato looked puzzled, his gaze shifting from Obito, to Kakashi, and then back to Obito. "Obito," their sensei began politely, "Kakashi didn't have a henge on our mission."

Silence.

And then, from Obito and Rin both:

"What?!"