Chapter Text
1.
Kakashi is six years old when the words Hatake and Hokage are linked for the first time.
“It’s Jiraiya’s fault,” Sakumo explains to his young son once the Sandaime has taken his leave of their modest home. “The office of Hokage does not pass from father to son like the daimyos. The Will of Fire is not something that can be inherited. It must be kindled, fed, nurtured, then passed like a torch from one generation to the next.”
“From sensei to student?”
His father ignores the question to gaze out the window with unblinking eyes. Kakashi itches to dart to that window and watch the Third Hokage wind down the dirt path, to catch a final glimpse of those billowing white robes emblazoned with his title in blood-red kanji.
But his youthful impulse is no match for the hand resting lightly on his shoulder. Instead, he abandons his curiosity to follow his father into their kitchen.
“From sensei to student,” Sakumo says with a sigh. “By all rights, Jiraiya should be the next in line. But at the moment the old pervert has abandoned the village for his own pursuits, and who knows when he’ll return.”
“Then he lacks the true Will of Fire,” Kakashi says.
“Oh?”
“Not like the Hatakes.”
Sakumo chuckles. Kakashi may bear his namesake and signature silver hair, but he is more like his mother than he will ever know. He throws an apron over his son’s head, another over his own, shrugs one shoulder, and flashes Kakashi the crinkled smile that won him the hand of the most uncompromising kunoichi in Konoha.
“Maa, there’s not much that can be done about it now, is there, and who knows what the future will hold? But let’s not discuss it anymore. It’s time for your training.” Sakumo retrieves a cold mackerel from the icebox and places it on the butcher’s block. “Tonight it will be simmered fish. I caught it just this morning.”
There is nothing so much like the ninja arts as cooking, Sakumo was wont to say. “Preparing a dish requires expert timing, total awareness, and above all – perfect control. Master these three elements, and you will master the whole of the shinobi arts.”
Kakashi, who by now can prepare a simple nistuke with his eyes closed (last weeks training), would have considered the exercise beneath him – if not for the minor condition that he is prohibited from using utensils.
Clay pots and pans must be formed with doton. “If they are too big, you will waste chakra heating them. Too small, and your fish won’t cook evenly.” A raiton blade the width of a needle is required to slice the ingredients. “Use only enough chakra necessary to cleanly cut through the fish. More than that will ruin the delicate flesh.” To cook the food, several katons, though small and simple, must be maintained and managed at the precise heat for each component. “The pan for the fish should be blazing, but don’t let the rice pot get too hot – just enough for a soft boil.”
Sakumo guides his son through the formation of the hand seals, the precise amount and flow of chakra, with an air of timeless patience not unlike the farmland from which they borrow their name. For generations, the Hatakes were known as a hardworking, unobtrusive clan, preferring the tilling of soil to the killing of enemies. Their dotons ploughed the earth, their suitons watered the seedlings, and though as famous for their defensive justus as their giant radishes, even isolationists such as they could not withstand the waves of clan wars that swept like ceaseless tsunamis over the country. Overtime, they were forced to adapt their jutsus from the agrarian to the aggressive, to convert their farm tools into tools of war. To transfer their unremitting loyalty from the hatake to the Hokage, and the incipient leaf village which had provided them with safety from the storms of war.
Decades later, their legacy has become one of steadfast devotion, a Will of Fire that burns so brightly and sacrificially it has left their clan with only two remaining survivors.
One of those two bows as he presents his father with the completed dish, and the pair sit down at the table. The fish is expertly filleted and delicately cooked, the vegetables tender yet retaining a slight crunch, the sauce aromatic and subtle in flavor.
Sakumo tousles his son’s hair. “Not bad for your first try.”
Kakashi, whose practiced self-control had forbade him to speak about the Sandaime’s visit, can no longer hold his peace. “Father, if you are made Hokage, you will be stuck in an office instead of going on missions,” he blurts out before his first bite.
Sakumo chuckles. “Likely.”
“Your skills will be wasted.”
“Unlikely.” He taps the tip of his son’s little nose. “There is more to being the Hokage than being a great ninja.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, like paperwork and administration and diplomacy.”
“Why would anyone want to do that?”
“That’s a very good question, one Hokage hopefuls should ask themselves more often. Hokages must be strong in body, yes. But they must also be strong in mind. We have those that guard our village walls, but the Hokage is the keeper of that wall, and like that wall he or she must be.…” Sakumo chews as he considers. “…inflexible. Hokages must be willing to make the hard decisions, the hard sacrifices, not only to ensure the survival of our village, but our whole way of life.”
“And you’re someone who can do that?”
“I like to think I can,” he says, though a doubt lingers in the back of his mind. What decision would he have made, what would he have chosen to do were he on that fateful mission where she lay gutted and bleeding on enemy lands, and insisted to her comrades:
“Leave me behind. Get the scroll to Konoha. The mission is all that matters.”
The mission is all that matters. The last words she ever spoke in this world, with no mention of the husband waiting for her back home, the baby who barely knew her. No hint of her promises to start a garden in the spring, and one day give Kakashi a brother or sister.
And by his trembling mouth and blanching face, Kakashi knows he’s thinking about her again. He lifts up his mask, afraid that his uncovered face – just like your mother’s, your beautiful mother – has once again been his father’s undoing.
Neither say another word until Sakumo sets down his chopsticks, for the rice, after all, is slightly scorched. “A lapse, to be sure.” He hands Kakashi his half-eaten bowl. “And next time, I’m sure, you will not forget to lower heat.”
Kakashi, rises, bows, and heads back to the kitchen. He does not need to be told that when his father says next time what he means is right now. Neither does he need to be told that what the Sandaime confided to his father is not to be shared with anyone else. At training the next morning, as the other chuunin laugh and bark and loudly boast of their newest achievement, Kakashi boasts of nothing, only settles into a hidden corner where he quietly reads with one hand – and with the other surreptitiously sends lightning clones burrowing into the earth.
When half a dozen of his fellow shinobi feel a hand on their ankles and a second later are shocked into a stunned, collapsed silence, Kakashi proffers his own crinkled smile up to the Hokage mountain. There, the etched faces of the first, second, and third Hokage tower over the village with an immovable strength. They are inflexible, immutable, fixed forever in position as they stare over the unchanging landscape of the village they founded, nurtured, and protected with their lives.
They were willing to make the impossible decisions that no one else could, and he imagines his own father’s face carved beside them – the Yondaime Hokage – and despite his lingering misgivings, he is proud.
One week, his father is nearly made Hokage.
The next, he is hounded and ridiculed and mocked and castigated by the village he has sworn to protect, sacrificed to protect.
Any talk of Hokages and Hatakes fades with the glory of his father’s hard-won legacy, withers into the pale husk of his father’s unkempt hair, his unwashed skin, his mumbling tears and emaciated form.
One evening, Kakashi comes home with a freshly caught mackerel, hoping that if he prepares it perfectly, he can convince his father to eat.
Kakashi walks under the lattice of shadows that paint his father’s room. His little fists shake. The once great-shinobi lies prone on the floor. Sakumo’s famous tanto is buried deep in his belly.
His father’s white shirt bears not a proud, crimson title, but the shame of his weeping, red blood.