6

Chapter 6: VINotes:

I have to admit, when I first started writing this, I thought 'who the hell would even be interested in this?' so I was really overwhelmed when there was so much support! I hope you like where I take this. Currently I'm preoccupied trying to figure out how to best get Kakashi to meet some of the other characters.

Chapter Text

When he blinked his eyes open, the sky was already brightening up again. It wasn't quite sunrise, but the dark of the night was lifting for a lighter grey. He was confused. What had he just seen? He remembered meadows and butterflies and the sun on his skin. He remembered it as if it had been real, not a dream. It felt more real than the memory of the boy asking how he'd done it, how he'd shifted into a dog…

The boy!

Panicked, Sirius jumped upright, looking around. He was gone! Gone to the authorities! He already had a head start. Hours must've passed and he could already be in—

There he was. Leaning with his back and head against the rock, watching Sirius carefully with his single exposed eye. Sirius stared at him, confused. Why was he still there?

"I'm sorry," Kakashi said in his broken English. He had one hand resting above the bandages over his left eye. "You was laughing. I did…" He shook his head, clearly unable to find the words to explain what he wanted to say.

"You're still here?" Sirius asked instead of wrecking his mind about what the kid might be apologizing for. "I thought for sure you'd be gone."

The way the boy's eye rested on him in this scrutinizing calm manner was unnerving.

He had prayed for that, Sirius remembered. Something itched in Sirius' guts. All these years, he'd hoped, he'd begged that there might just be one person, who wouldn't immediately condemn him. Who'd give him a chance to explain? Now this kid… Now that, he had evidently found somebody who didn't turn tail and run immediately, it was unnerving. Because…

Wasn't that what he was supposed to do? The natural thing to do. As much as Sirius wished for somebody to give him a chance, wouldn't the natural thing for any child, for any teenager, for anybody be, to flee? Kakashi should be running, should be alerting the authorities. Yet, he sat there. He didn't even scoot far away from Sirius. If Sirius wanted to, he could be upon the boy in a matter of seconds. What would a teenager do against that? Even one like Kakashi, who had odd skills, like jumping off trees and running around with feather light steps. If Sirius were armed, the way the muggle papers had claimed… Godric, if he had a wand!

"Are you not afraid, I would kill you?" The question just slipped out.

The boy's brows furrowed a little. Obviously trying to translate as accurately as possible. Then his single eyebrow lifted, and his eye closed in an odd mockery of the smile he sometimes gave. The one that was well hidden behind the mask and only evident in the curve of his single eye. "Can't kill me," he said simply.

Sirius blinked surprised at the certainty in his voice. He was sure it was just a matter of his bad handling of the language. Maybe the boy had seen the hesitation and despair in Sirius' eyes as he had tried to strangle him. Maybe he thought that Sirius could not bring himself to do it.

"How can you be certain?" Sirius asked anyway, but Kakashi seemed to have no interest to answer his questions anymore.

"Why did you…?" Kakashi asked. His brow furrowed. "Try kill baby."

Sirius stared at him. The words needed a moment to trickle into his brain and make sense there. "Oh," he made a small sound, as he drew his knees in, hugging them tight to his chest. "I didn't," he said simply, his eyes watching the way the sky slowly brightened up. "I'm innocent."

He prepared himself for the accusations. For the angry tone, demanding a truth Sirius could not give. For disbelief and denial, anger and hatred. But it didn't come. Maybe it was different because Kakashi hadn't known Lily and James, because he didn't even know Voldemort, knew nothing of their war or their world overall. Just a stranger, who barely knew anything at all, who – now that Sirius thought about it, had probably only understood half of the article he had read just yesterday and had nobody to tell him what to believe yet. Maybe… Yes, maybe this was his first and only chance, to tell his story to somebody who was as close to neutral as anybody could possibly be regarding his person. Maybe this was Sirius' chance to explain himself.

"This child," he started, "is my best friend's son." He looked over to Kakashi. There was no condemnation in that single eye, Sirius thought, just quiet curiosity and hard concentration, trying to translate Sirius' words in his head. "You know 'friend'? My best friend. His child."

"You wanted… son of friend dead?"

"NO!" Sirius retorted too loudly, a little angry, that Kakashi had not even understood the first part. Angry at himself.

Simple words! Use simple words!

"I didn't! I'm innocent. That's what innocent means. I was imprisoned for it… locked up, but I didn't do it."

"Innocent."

A bloody language lesson! Was that what this was for Kakashi? Frustration gnawed at Sirius' insides.

"Son of friend is alive, then?"

"Yes," Sirius breathed his anger quickly subsiding. "But my friend died. His wife. 'Wife' is… when a man and woman marry and start a family?" he blushed a little feeling stupid.

"Man and woman," Kakashi repeated, "the woman is 'wife'?"

Thank Merlin, he was a smart kid. "Yes," Sirius said. "James, my friend. His name. And Lily. His wife. We were in a war." War? How would he explain 'war'? The boy looked at him curiously, as if he was waiting for an explanation. "A conflict, when two groups kill each other for reasons… Like an idea or… land?" he said helplessly. Wars for territory, he assumed were easier to understand for a muggle child, than wars for ideas. He thought he'd failed. It would be – and should be – a pointless endeavor to explain the concept of war to a child in a foreign language.

"I know war," Kakashi said.

Sirius looked up at him doubtfully. The boy's voice had been serious and certain, yet that might also be explained by a mistranslation. However, when he looked into that single grey eye, he got nothing. There was a sort of distant boredom, nothing for Sirius to deduce whether he knew what he had just said. Nothing for him to latch on to.

Still, it was easiest to take the boy's words at face value. Even if he didn't understand completely, it was easier to just run with it. "Voldemort," somehow, he expected the boy to flinch at the name, but there was no reaction whatsoever – of course not, "he's a dark wizard… the enemy from the other side." He saw Kakashi mouth a word behind his mask. 'Enemy' he assumed. Still a bloody English class. Sirius shook his head trying not to get distracted. "Voldemort tried to kill James' family. They were hiding. Hiding…" he had no energy to explain what hiding was. "But a friend betrayed them. Not me… a different friend. I wouldn't have…" He glanced at Kakashi pleadingly, looking if he saw doubt in the boy's single eye, but there was only hard concentration.

Kakashi was still translating. Sirius didn't know if it was the word 'hiding' that had thrown him off or 'betrayed', but he had no patience left. The boy was unbelievably smart, he knew. It was not his fault he knew so little of the language. He was doing his best learning and doing magnificently, but Sirius didn't have the energy to explain everything. Telling the story itself left him frazzled, tired, and frustrated. Having to find roundabout ways to describe the most horrific events in his life, using words that ultimately made what he had lived through sound so much more harmless, almost mundane, it was difficult.

Without further explanation, he simply continued. "I hunted the traitor down. When I found him, he killed thirteen mug… people. Thirteen people and he turned…" He shook his head, tired. "He turned into a rat. Like I turn into a dog, he can turn into a rat. He faked his own death. I was thrown into prison for all of it…"

Looking back to Kakashi and his single grey eye, he realized he had lost the boy. Kakashi had only understood half of it and he was still piecing together the words. Helplessly, Sirius hunched in on himself, resting his face on his knees. What was he doing? Telling the story to a boy who could not understand? A boy who wouldn't even be able to understand, even if he spoke perfect English, because he was a muggle, and would have no understanding of the events that had transpired. And maybe that was for the better. Did Sirius really want to unburden his guilt on some teenager, who was nothing but kind to him?

"Believe me," he looked to Kakashi one final time, trying to muster all the conviction he had. "I didn't do it. I would not – I would never betray my friends like that. I would rather die! If I could, I would die to bring them back."

There was something glowing in Kakashi's eye. Something real and powerful and frightening. "I know…" the boy whispered, then he clamped his mouth shut, muffling all further sound.

Know…? Know what?

"I'd have killed myself before I would have harmed them," Sirius enforced, willing Kakashi to believe it.

"I believe you," Kakashi finally said.

And with that, a stone fell off Sirius' chest. He didn't know how, didn't know why this boy would believe him over the newspaper, why he would listen to him at all, but Sirius had done it. He had convinced somebody to believe in him. He actually had…

Kakashi believed that Sirius was innocent.

It was a freeing thought, a burden lessened off his shoulders. This kind and caring boy…

If I die now, there would be somebody to remember me as something other than a murderer and traitor. A dog maybe… or a starved convict with abysmal patience at teaching somebody the English language. Something else.

"Thank you," he said and there were tears in his eyes. Quickly he wiped them away, but they kept coming. Embarrassed to cry in front of this child, he turned away, making himself small. With his back to Kakashi. "Thank you…"

** 

Kakashi watched the dog-turned-man apparently-innocent-but-convicted mass murderer. He was crying. Kakashi saw the first tears before Black turned away to wipe at his eyes. It irked Kakashi, jolted a forgotten memory. Obito had always cried… Like that. Subtle tears in the corner of his eyes, that he tried to hide. Even his eye – the one Kakashi now had – had a curious tendency to tear up. Kakashi didn't have a lot of experience with crying or criers. Just Obito – and, well, Guy cried loud wails whenever he was excited, but that was different. So, like with Obito, he expected Black to square his shoulders and turn back around to come up with some made-up excuse:

Dust in his eye.

Kakashi almost smiled at the memory. Only almost. Kakashi had mocked Obito for his apparent weakness, but ultimately it hadn't been Obito who was weak. Kakashi had it all wrong. Crybaby or not, Obito had been the better shinobi, ultimately, and then he had wasted his life to safe Kakashi and Kakashi couldn't even keep his promise…

Now all he had left of Obito was his easily tearing eyeball.

Absentmindedly, he touched the bandages over his eye.

Kakashi let the man be until the quiet sniffles finally subsided. Black straightened back up, turned around, but no excuse came. No 'dust in his eyes' just a lopsided smile.

"Sorry," Black muttered, "I'm normally not that…" He made a vague gesture with his left hand, the other tightly slung around his own knees.

"How did you turn dog?" Kakashi asked what he'd asked hours ago. Back then, Black had fallen into a hysteric state, laughing uncontrollably. Kakashi somewhat regretted having used the Sharingan to put Black into a genjutsu. He was reasonably sure, that this nation was far away from his home. So far, in fact, they saw kunai as a relic from the history of a far-away foreign country. Still, that didn't mean they had no knowledge whatsoever. If the people of this country knew about the Sharingan and its powers, revealing it thoughtlessly might be to his disadvantage. Kakashi had made quite a name for himself in the last months of the war. It was rare for him now, to not be recognized. Most opponents he faced had a general idea of his skillset, even before he ever met them. It was a rare luxury to be incognito, so he shouldn't throw that away and reveal his techniques easily.

He didn't think Black would use it against him, but even so, he should be more secretive about where he came from and who he was. At least until he knew how he got here in the first place. He had decided that he would hide his identity when he'd first arrived here and finding out that this was not a country he knew, wasn't reason enough to throw all caution into the wind.

He hadn't wanted to use the Sharingan. Black's behavior had moved him to do it. There'd been something rough and raw in the way the barking laughter had ripped out of him. Something beyond desperate. Kakashi already had him under the genjutsu before he himself even realized what he was doing.

"You didn't answer," Kakashi added when Black needed a moment to get his still wobbly voice under control.

"I'm a wizard."

Kakashi had no idea, what that was.

Sheepishly, Black scratched his head. "I wished I had my wand to show you." He stopped barked a short and dry laugh. "A wand would make everything so much easier."

Kakashi had never heard the word 'wand' before, other than that one time before Black's breakdown earlier. Only 'wonder' and 'wandering'. He remembered a guy asking him what he was doing 'wandering around alone'. But that didn't fit in this context.

Finally giving up his head-scratching, Black shifted right in front of Kakashi for Kakashi to see. Subtly, Kakashi lifted his bandages a little, peering past them at the transformation with his Sharingan. The information his Sharingan sent him was a confusing mess. He had already seen this transformation once when Black shifted to a man in his sleep. But even seeing it a second time, didn't answer any of his questions.

There was a sort of energy, Black was using for his technique, but it wasn't chakra, and Kakashi's Sharingan was unable to clearly detect it. It was definitely there, though, flickered around the man like a thin shapeless and colorless haze. It had nothing of the tightly concentrated coils of chakra in a shinobi. Unlike with the Byakugan, with the Sharingan, he couldn't see the exact path of the chakra within the chakra network, but he could normally still see it curling and burning inside and around the body, especially when a shinobi used their chakra for a jutsu. There was nothing of the like here.

Just this hint of a mist that vaguely flickered as Black transformed into a dog and back again within seconds. It was nothing, Kakashi had ever seen, no genjutsu, he was sure, but no ninjutsu either, or his Sharingan would be able to grasp and understand it. Even if it was a Kekkei Genkai his Sharingan should at least be able to detect something.

He pulled the bandage down again, as Black transformed back, not giving the man an opportunity to really see the Sharingan eye. Nature chakra, he guessed in an attempt to find something he could compare this strange technique to. He'd only seen Minato use sage mode twice, and that was similar in that Kakashi couldn't see the chakra as it was gathered, but it would form a sort of cloudy mist around Minato-sensei, as he would absorb it all in. Even with nature chakra though as soon as it was released to form jutsu – although the Sharingan couldn't copy it without him learning to use sage mode first – his Sharingan would be able to at least detect the jutsu.

That was troublesome, he thought somewhat annoyed. If these people knew some form of jutsu he didn't understand that would make things more difficult. For a brief moment, he considered if everybody in this country could use this odd energy, or if at least all the villages were protected by some form of guardian, army, or patron to protect them from invasion. Was that the reason they seemed so relaxed and at peace? Because they trusted these 'wizards' to keep them safe? He'd walked through these villages and towns for several days now and had never seen a hint of wizardry before. But that didn't mean they couldn't all use it. He himself had hidden his jutsu as well.

In any case, this transformation was solid. Even the scent changed, although Black retained a distinctly human note in dog form, and still smelled a bit of dog in human form. In fact, in human form, he smelled exactly like a civilian from the Inuzuka clan who hadn't showered in a while.

"What else can you do?" he asked. "With 'wand'." He tested the word on his tongue.

Black smirked a little at the question. It looked almost mischievous. "Almost anything," he answered without pause. No concern whatsoever to share his skills with a virtual stranger. "I can make things fly or transform objects and people or animals. It helps with cooking, too, and all sorts of menial chores." He gave a shrug. "Some wizards can even fly with just their wands, though not me."

"Why not you?" Kakashi wondered if it was a family trait. When Black said 'almost anything' did he mean that there were no such things as bloodlines? Could every wizard do all this – turn into animals and such things.

"Never learned it," Black admitted. He grimaced. "It's not on the Hogwarts curriculum, and after that… I didn't exactly have time to learn new tricks." His face and mood dropped. "The ministry broke my wand."

Kakashi's ears were ringing, trying to keep up. What was a Hogwarts, or a curriculum? Or 'the ministry'?

Black seemed to understand his confusion. "Hogwarts is a school for magic." And with that, he started explaining. Black said a lot about a lot of things, and Kakashi had trouble keeping up with translating and making sense of things. He was used from years as a shinobi, to be given information only once and be expected to remember it, yet now he found himself struggling. The added challenge of translating, and learning new words as they went along, while listening and remembering what Black had to say about a world that was completely foreign to Kakashi was almost too much for him.

It's hard, he thought. Challenging.

He almost snickered as he had the sudden idea to propose 'learning a foreign language' the next time, Guy asked for a challenge. They both might even take something out of this, and he'd have Guy out of his hair for at least a few weeks. He didn't think Guy would be too happy about it, though. Then again, the other boy just craved a challenge and had never cared much about the kinds of challenge Kakashi set. That was – of course – assuming the boy forgave him about leaving him hanging after propositioning the race.

"The current minister is Cornelius Fudge," Black ended his explanation, his face drawn and tired from the effort of spoon-feeding the condensed knowledge of the magical world into a boy who barely spoke any English at all. He scowled, as he mentioned the name.

Kakashi's eyebrows rose curiously at the way Black angrily spat out the name.

"I don't like him," Black admitted, "don't like any of them. They just…" But he didn't finish the sentence.

If he indeed was innocent, Kakashi assumed it was reasonable to dislike the people who put him into prison and let him rot in his cell for years.

"He even…," Black started again, then his eyes widened, his mouth opened a little in surprise, and he quickly searched through the rags he wore for clothes. The faded out striped pattern made it obvious that those were once his prison garbs, though they didn't deserve that name now. With trembling hands, Black fished a wrinkled and ripped paper from between his haggard hips and a tightly bound waistband. Kakashi got a short glimpse of a tattoo, as the cloth moved up and revealed part of his sunken in belly. He had several more tattoos on his body, Kakashi had already seen. There was a big one where the shirt had ripped wide open around the collar, showing the faded black symbols over pale white skin and starkly prominent ribs.

"Fudge gave me this," Black finally finished his sentence, unfolding what Kakashi now saw was a page from a newspaper. His hands were shaking as he turned it so Kakashi could see the big picture prominent in the top center of the page. It was of nine people. Two middle-aged adults, seven younger adults surrounding them. There were certain shared similarities in their facial features, and the way they smiled, that made Kakashi assume they were one big family. The youngest couldn't be much younger than him, the oldest looked almost Minato-sensei's age. Seven children all making it to adulthood was almost unheard of to Kakashi.

Yet, it wasn't the people directly that drew Kakashi's attention. It was the newspaper itself. The picture was moving. The group was waving and smiling into the camera, some of the boys brotherly pushing and shoving each other. The letters below on the paper were just as strange. Some of the text was written in paragraphs that chaotically crawled all over the page. Some parts of the newspaper even seemed to shift between different articles, alternating between, what Kakashi assumed where ads or maybe letters from readers. He could barely read any of it at all, as it used a horribly squiggly font similar to the one, he had seen at the antiques shop the day before.

Fascinated, Kakashi took the newspaper to inspect it more thoroughly. Yet, when he grabbed it Black wouldn't let go. His hand was still shaking, Kakashi noted.

"Ah…," Black let go of the paper. It looked like it took a lot of effort to do so. Empty-handed, he balled his shaking hand into a fist at his side. "Sorry."

Kakashi glanced at him, then turned back to the newspaper. He inspected the way the family moved on the picture for a while before he finally pulled his bandages up just enough that he could peer through it with the Sharingan. Nothing… He saw nothing, not even the hazy mist of some form of energy that he had seen when Black shifted to a dog. "That's magic?" he asked in wonder, straightening his bandage back out again. He turned the paper around. There was another picture of two people flying on broomsticks around a golden metal pole. He shook his head, utterly stunned by the very concept of these odd moving pictures. – And people flying on broomsticks?

Then he handed the paper back to Black, thinking, it might be important to him, if it was the only thing, he took with him as he broke out of prison – he didn't even wear shoes. Never mind the way he had only let go of the paper with conscious effort.

Black took it, but his eyes were on Kakashi. He frowned worriedly. "Is something wrong with your eye?" He looked right at the bandages. "When you ate, I saw your scar, so I thought, you might have lost it in an accident or something," he guessed. Kakashi remembered that indeed he had eaten and pulled down his mask in front of the dog. "But you keep fumbling with the bandages."

Kakashi blinked in surprise at the worried tone. He was used to seeing a lot of people covering their scars or certain features about them in bandages. Sometimes because they were used to it, sometimes for fashion, most of the times, because the scars would either reveal something about them, they didn't want to share, or because - like him – they hid a special skill from sight. In his case, the Sharingan also drained his chakra when he didn't cover it. In any case, it was very common to see people wear bandages where he came from. It was also very common to see people injured.

Yet, he didn't remember the last time, anybody asked about his eye or even any of his actual injuries. Minato-sensei of course, showed some concern – though it had always annoyed Kakashi, because it just proved that Minato had still seen him as a child. But for the most part, at least in ANBU, it was assumed, that if a wound was bandaged up, and the wounded wasn't already bleeding through the cloth, then he was probably fine, and there were bigger concerns.

"Mah," made Kakashi both surprised that Black would ask about it, and also a little annoyed, as he felt – like with Minato – that Black was only worried because he saw him as a child still. "Don't worry. It's nothing. I lost the eye." It was a convenient half-truth, and as Black had already guessed as much, he likely wouldn't question it. "It sometimes itches."

It had been itching all the time since Rin and then nonstop after Minato-sensei's death. It had stopped now.

Sirius looked at him for a moment, seeming doubtful, but then with a sort-of shrug, he looked back down to the picture. "He's in Hogwarts," he mumbled to himself.

Hogwarts, the school… Kakashi had no idea, who he was talking about. He assumed the people on the picture would be his family – though there was no physical resemblance – or maybe one of them was the friends he'd talked about. In any case, they must be important to Black. Kakashi's own most prized possession was a photo as well. The picture of his team – Team Minato – from when they were first formed. He was the last person on that picture still alive. Kakashi hadn't even dared look at it since sensei's death.

"Who is in Hogwarts?" he asked curiously. Normally, he would not pry like that, but Black seemed willing, if not eager to share information. Kakashi himself would rather die before he would reveal so much information about his home country and his people. Yet, Black seemed to share everything with an odd glee in his eyes.

They were alive now, not hollow anymore. In his eyes Kakashi could read an overwhelming wave of emotion. It was so strong it was hard to read. An odd mix of everything positive and negative under the sun. Kakashi even thought, he saw mischief there.

Now, however, as he had asked the question, Black pressed his lips tight. He seemed reluctant to answer, but then, he let the breath whistle from his lungs. "The rat," he said as if that would explain everything.

Kakashi peered at the picture in Black's hands that was upside down for him now. This time, he ignored the smiling family and the pyramids in the background. Instead he searched the picture until he found the rat perched on the shoulder of one of the boys. The rat… It had to be the friend Black talked bout. The traitor who had put Black into prison.

"You are hunting?" he asked frowning in concentration. The rat looked like any other rat. It was missing a tiny claw, Kakashi saw, but on the picture, it didn't look threatening or fake. Yet, that didn't have to mean anything. After all, Kakashi had fallen for this dog-human-transformation for an entire week.

Black nodded, finally folding the picture back up and hiding it in his clothes. He wasn't even wearing shoes, Kakashi thought not for the first time. "I'll kill him for what he did. Harry, James' son, is in Hogwarts too. He's in danger." He shook his head. Sadness was shining in his eyes. Whatever mischief and glee there had been earlier, it was gone now, but the dullness wasn't back either. Instead Kakashi saw fierce determination. Kakashi felt his lips go dry. He swallowed.

There was something unnerving even for Kakashi at the image of two former friends destroying each other's lives like that, hunting each other to death, hating each other. A friend killing another. But, of course, if one had betrayed their best friend… Was there a word for that?

Friend killer.

If Obito knew what you did. He'd hunt you down too. He should! He should hate you for it, curse and condemn you. You promised! You promised! And then you killed her with your own hand. You're the worst scum. Doesn't matter where you are. On the battlefield, in Konoha, among ANBU or in this strange country. The friend killer, the one who'd abandon their own comrades, the one who'd failed their own friends like that… That's the worst scum. The lowest of the low.

Kakashi's hands were shaking. He was glad that he'd already given the newspaper back to Black or it wouldn't be that easy to hide. That way he quickly shoved his hands into his pockets, trying to calm down, trying not to think about it. At least that way, he couldn't see the blood on his hands.

"He's my godson," Black whispered after a while. "Harry…I should've taken care of him after his parents died."

Kakashi had no idea what a 'godson' was. And the sentence was too long and complicated for him to follow. Yet still, somehow, he understood the meaning regardless. This man, who'd been given no chance to ever see this Harry-child again, through no fault of his own, felt guilty for having abandoned him, felt responsible for protecting him now…

And yet, Kakashi… When the Hokage told him, he couldn't take care of Naruto, Kakashi had almost been relieved. He'd barely fought it. He should have fought harder!

Naruto should've been his brother, instead Kakashi had left him for the village to take care of. He imagined the child. He didn't even know what he looked like. Had he Kushina's fiery red hair, or Minato's bright yellow? Grey eyes or blue? Maybe a mix. Minato's hair, but Kushina's eyes? If he had Kushina's temper the village would have their hands full.

Kakashi shook his head.

Stay away from him. You would ruin that child. Good thing you're apparently at least a continent away from him.

"I help," he heard himself say. "Help find rat."

And when he found him, he didn't know what he would do. Would he kill the rat himself, or would he leave him for Black to do the deed? Or would he ask the rat how he lived with it? How he could live with the blood of his friends on his hands? Because Kakashi needed to know.