Chapter Text
And I see how you look when one looks at you
And I, I smoke and I drink because I don’t need to see
How happy you are and how disappointed you are in me
In me
And how much you yearn for a life spent with someone, a life for two
A life with me is a life spent alone
And I know it is time, it’d be better for you just to go
Don’t let me go
Don’t let me go
Don’t let me go at you
I look at your eyes and it looks like they look sadly back into mine
And when you cry and I scream, I scream at you
Outside there’s storm and there’s snow
Actually I just want you to know that I want you to stay
Don’t let me alone with myself
Actually I just want you to know that I want you to stay
Don’t let me alone with myself
And don’t let me go
Don’t let me go
Don’t let me go at you
- Faber: Lass mich nicht los
- (Translation by me)
Kakashi spotted the chunin over the rim of his pages. “Yo, Iruka-sensei.”
“Good afternoon, Kakashi-san,” the teacher smiled at him and he put his favourite book away. “You are back from mission?”
“Just handed in my mission report.”
“In time, for once?” Of course, the chunin would raise his eyebrows, it was adorable. Kakashi had been lectured by him about his late admissions more times than he had bothered to count. He just shrugged in response.
“We all have these days.”
Iruka nodded and examined him. “You look exhausted.”
“Mah, mah… had worse.” He gave an eye smile. Now, the teacher would try to start and worry about him. As much as it was fun to get a reaction out of the man, Kakashi was not in the mood for social interactions which lasted longer than two minutes. So he turned to walk away but, of course, Iruka wasn’t having it.
“You are not looking after yourself properly! When was the last time you had something to eat?”
“I took a soldier pill five hours ago, it sustains me well enough.”
“Soldier pills are no food!” The glint in the chocolate brown eyes gave a hint at the temper building behind them. “I’m going to treat you to Ramen!” As much as Kakashi did not want to spent time around people… it was an offer for free food.
“So, how is the transition of the Hokage office going?,” Iruka asked after inhaling most of his Ramen. It was funny how much he and Naruto were alike in that way.
“Slowly… Tsunade is the one who’s into whole post war business right now, so there’s not much for me to do except missions but Shizune is training Shikamaru to take her position. I’m not complaining. I’ll just wait until some sort of order is established and then I’ll take over and spin in the Hokage chair and let Shikamaru do all the work.”
“That sounds about right,” Iruka chuckled.
“How is your new job as vice principal?”
“It is more or less the opposite of your situation,” the younger man smiled. He had such a nice, warm smile… he was probably the only person Kakashi could bare right now. “No one wants to be vice principal. He’s the one who does all the work. But I enjoy it. I still get to teach the young ones and I can suggest changes in the curriculum. Now that we are looking forward to a new, peaceful order, we have a chance to change the Academy for the better. Shinobi should be able to use their abilities in peaceful ways.”
“Always inspired and hard-working, sensei.” Kakashi gave him another eye smile, not sure how to feel right now. He enjoyed Iruka’s company but it also…
“Are you alright, Kakashi-san?”
“Huh?” Kakashi stopped in his tracks. He had been scratching his neck again, he realised. Right where…
“You’re on edge, squirming, scratching your neck and you’re not aware of it. Are you sure you didn’t catch something?”
“Mah, sensei. It’s hard to contain oneself in the company of such a charming individual?”
Iruka scoffed, obviously not buying it. “You do you. We all have experienced a lot during the war and it will take time to find a normal life again. But you are acting like a newly presented alpha and I’m just a concerned comrade. Maybe you should see Tsunade about this.”
“I am flattered that you worry about me, sensei, but it really isn’t necessary. You are right. I will need time to process everything that happened in the war. Thank you for the meal.” He stood up, raised his hand in greeting and left the chunin sensei to pay. Without realising it, hand started scratching at his neck again.
Kakashi didn’t go tell Tsunade. But on his next mission, he found himself drifting off way too often. Iruka-sensei was right. It wasn’t like him to not be fully concentrated on the mission. He always gave it his all but this time, he got a few bad cuts from the sort of missing nin he usually defeated with a few quick jutsus. So he took leave, hoping it would help him to get back to his usual mindset. His fitful sleep was plagued by dreams of Obito and more and more often, he saw Rin in them too. Rin… he had never forgotten about her. How could he? After all this time, he could still remember the feeling of her soft fingers, the twinkling in her eyes, the smell… her soft, sweet omega smell like camomile and rosemary and… but he felt parts of her memory slipping away, being replaced by emptiness. There was something missing inside him but he couldn’t remember what. And his neck… it wasn’t exactly itching but he still found himself touching it every so often. Touching the old mark on his skin. The memory he would never lose. Or so he had thought. And then the insomnia started.
He grew even more restless. As much as he tried to exhaust himself in training, it didn’t help. No matter how tired he was in the evening, he still found himself staring at the ceiling until he was pacing again. He was tired; dark circles appeared under his eyes and every passing day, he made sure that Iruka-sensei didn’t see him. The younger man would just be concerned and try to mother him again. Every day, he grew more tired and more restless until he couldn’t even concentrate on reading Icha Icha. That’s when he knew it was serious and he finally went to see Tsunade.
The blond alpha woman looked up from her paper work when the door opened without knocking. There was only one person who didn’t knock and wasn’t stopped by the ANBU. “Brat,” she sighed. It didn’t help with her bad mood at all. She had a headache and the sake drawer in her desk was nearly empty. “What is it?”
“Yo,” Kakashi eyesmiled but it didn’t help to hide the dark circles under his eyes. “I don’t want to bother you but Iruka-sensei is concerned and thinks I might have a condition.”
“We’ve got doctors for that. Go to the hospital and leave me alone.”
“Of course, sorry to bother you, Tsunade-sama.” It was only when he left that she caught a whiff of his scent. Something was… just off.
It had been weeks since their meal. Iruka hadn’t seen Kakashi since, even though he felt as if he had caught the alpha’s scent a few times. He knew Kakashi’s scent way too well for his own taste and it wasn’t something he enjoyed. The smell of the Konoha woods after rain, metal and a dribble of blood. It always reminded him of the night when Mizuki had betrayed the village. Even though he and Kakashi were not really friends, Iruka worried about him. The way he had squirmed on his stool, unable to relax, was unheard of for Kakashi. But it reminded him of the young alphas in his classes in the days before and after they presented and entered their first rut. But Kakashi was an adult, mated alpha. He shouldn’t be showing these symptoms not even before entering his rut. And the way he kept scratching his neck where an omega would have their mating bite… it was all rather strange and he did worry about the man, if he wanted to or not.
Kakashi was being examined when the door opened and Tsunade marched in. “Sakura, out. We have more important patients right now.” The pink haired alpha girl nodded and left the room. “Let me have a look at you, brat. What did you mess up this time?”
“Mah…” Kakashi let the medical kunoichi examined him. “I didn’t do anything. It started after the war. Maybe it’s something psychosomatic. Seeing Obito again shook me.”
“It did bring back the past, didn’t it?” Tsunade looked at Kakashi’s hormone levels and just like she had thought, they were in complete disarray. “Did it remind you of Rin?”
Kakashi just nodded. “She and Obito are together now. Like it was supposed to be.”
Tsunade perked at his words and took a few steps back. “Remove your mask and show me your neck.”
“Iruka-sensei!,” Naruto waved at him grinning when he passed by Ichiraku’s. “Congratulations on becoming vice principal. Let’s celebrate! I’ll buy!” Even though Iruka was deep in thought and worried about… well, mostly Kakashi… he couldn’t say no to his boy. So he sat down and accepted the soup bowl with thanks. “I’m sure you will be doing well, Iruka-sensei. And when I’m Hokage in a few years, I’ll make you principal. Believe it!”
Iruka smiled and the loving, protective feelings, he had for the boy welled up inside of him. “That’s very nice of you, Naruto, but you really shouldn’t. As a Hokage, you have to choose the person best suited for a position, not your friends.”
“I think you are the best one for the job.” Naruto grinned at him. “You taught me the most important thing in the world. You showed me that I mattered and that everyone else matters as well. You taught me that if you try to understand a person, you can be friends. It’s because of you that we won the war.”
“Naruto…” Iruka chuckled and scratched his head, slightly embarrassed. “That’s too much. I’m not that important.” He could see that Naruto was trying to defend his point… he had to do something to change the topic. “So we’ve won. There is peace. Do you know what you want to do now?”
“I’m going to become Hokage!” It was nice to see the young man beam. His grin hadn’t changed since he’d been a pup. “I’ll make sure that Konoha is a good place to live in and that all the different countries like each other and I’m going to be the greatest Hokage ever! Believe it!”
“I’m sure you will.” Iruka nodded. “But I was actually thinking about right now. You won’t be Hokage for quite some time.”
“Yeah… Kakashi-sensei is going to be Hokage before me,” he shrugged. “But Nanadaime sounds better than Rokudaime anyway. And I’ll use the time to go on missions and learn everything I need to know to be the greatest Hokage.”
Iruka nodded. He looked at his boy. From what he’d seen of the boy’s nindo, Naruto had grown into a great ninja and a responsible young man. His heart filled with happiness and pride to see him now but he also wanted to see him living a happy life that had more than just work in it. “Have you ever thought about, you know, looking for a mate?,” he finally asked.
Naruto shrugged again. “I’m still young,” he said, “And I understand that I can’t have Sakura-chan… I don’t think I ever loved her. I just liked her because she liked Sasuke… but there are many girls, even omegas, who would like to mate with me even though I’m a beta.”
“Betas are just as good as alphas or omegas,” Iruka felt the need to say.
“I know. Still, I think that omegas prefer alphas. And beta girls are always kind of… dull.”
Iruka snickered. “I’m sure you will find someone. Just… be sure that they don’t only like you because you are the hero of Konoha. You should look for someone who knows you and likes you for who you are as a person.” Hinata… she was a wonderful, fierce omega girl with a massive crush for Naruto… Iruka hoped that Naruto would return her feelings eventually. They would be happy together. More happy than… he didn’t know what he should think of Sakura and Sasuke. They were both alphas and, even though this dynamic worked in some cases, it was risky and Iruka didn’t have a good feeling about them. And if the remnants of his second gender had retained anything, it was a good intuition.
“Hai hai…” Naruto finished his third bowl of Ramen. “You’re not the one to tell me, Iruka-sensei. You don’t have a mate either.”
“I don’t need one,” Iruka smiled. “I have you.”
“Ew! No, Iruka-sensei! No! Ew!!!” Naruto jumped up and pretended to vomit on the floor. “I thought Kakashi-sensei was bad but you’re just… help me!” He raised his arms in faux panic and ran away screaming “Ew, ew, ew!” Iruka watched him leave and paid for their Ramen with a sigh.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he explained to Teuchi. “He’s my pup.” The mild-mannered beta cook just nodded and took the money.
“I know.”
A look at Kakashi’s neck showed Tsunade everything she needed to see. “You mating bite is fading,” she stated simply.
“Fading?” Kakashi pulled his mask back up and looked at her incredulously. “That’s possible?”
“It’s rare but it happens. Usually, when an omega loses their mate, they stay unmated for the rest of their lives raising the pups on their own. But sometimes, if they manage to mentally let go of their mate in one way or the other, their mating bite fades and they can bond again. In your case though…”
“I’m not an omega.”
“Quite right.” Tsunade sighed. “There are few cases of alphas carrying mating bites because they are much more dependent on their omega as they don’t have the ingrained maternal instincts. They can’t replace the mating bond with the imprint on their pups. I don’t need to tell you, you know it better than I do.”
“And now, after making peace with Obito, I also made peace with losing Rin,” Kakashi concluded her theory. “And now my bond is fading. That explains a lot.”
Tsunade hummed in agreement and checked his hormone levels again. “Your body is reacting like a pre-alpha just before he presents but you can’t present again, you are an alpha already. I don’t know what is going to happen to you. Please, explain your symptoms in detail, maybe that’ll help.”
“I’m restless and on edge,” Kakashi didn’t have to think about it. “But these are pre-presenting symptoms. I dream of Obito and Rin a lot. I used to remember everything about her, especially her smell but the memory is slipping away. I can still feel the mark, it itches for something. Every memory I lose makes it worse. It’s like I’m trying to replace Rin’s memory with something but there’s nothing there, so it stays empty. It gets worse when I close my eyes. I can’t sleep.”
“Just as I suspected.” The medical nin sighed. “Your body needs the bond, it can’t replace it or let go. You can’t ‘unmate’ your biology, so losing the bond would either kill you, which would be the best case scenario, or you go insane.”
“Mah…” Kakashi rubbed his neck again. “I don’t want that.”
“Neither do I.” Rubbing her temples didn’t help Tsunade’s headache. It was getting increasingly stronger. “It would mean that I had to do this until Naruto takes over and I want to be far away when that happens.”
“So we have to fix that.”
“We have to fix that.”
“Any idea?”
Tsunade blew raspberries. She needed sake. Now. “Follow me to my office.”
Kakashi followed her obediently trying to process what he just heard. He was losing his bond to Rin. Rin… his precious omega girl, his mate… until he had killed her with his own hands. It hadn’t been his fault; life just was like that sometimes. She was always supposed to be Obito’s mate anyway. Now, they were finally together in the afterlife. Kakashi didn’t mind losing the bond. She hadn’t been his mate for very long but her memory plagued him every night and every waking minute. He was used to the pointless ache by now; he had endured it for decades. The idea of losing it didn’t look so bad at least until you considered the consequences. Dying would be okay, Kakashi didn’t mind being dead. It would spare him the bothersome task of becoming Hokage. He never wanted to be Hokage and he was not the right one for such a position. But he knew that life wouldn’t be fair, it never was, it never had been. He wouldn’t die; he had survived too many impossible situations. He would be the one to fall into emptiness and insanity. He could feel it gnawing on the edge of his mind already. If he went insane… who would be able to stop him?
Tsunade sat down behind her desk and took out a sake bottle and a well-known file. It contained the names, ranks and skills of every shinobi as well as their second gender. After a few cups of the wine, she opened the file and skimmed through the pages.
“The only way to save you is to replace your bond with a new one,” she explained, “You have to get a new mating bite, preferably from a someone who doesn’t die this time, and it has to be an omega. Otherwise it won’t work.”
Kakashi nodded. He had guessed as much. “But there are no unmated omegas my age,” he voiced his concern, “I would have to mate with someone the age of my students.” He didn’t want that. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the beauty of youth… but it would destroy the poor girl’s life. Omega’s mated quite young mostly out of biological reason. The longer an omega stayed unmated, the more intense their heats became.
“If that’s what it takes, I’ll do it,” the Hokage mumbled turning page after page.
“I don’t want that. I’d kill myself before I ruin someone’s life,” he offered.
His words made her look up and glance at him sharply. “Don’t You. Dare. This isn’t just about you,” she said with a poisonous undertone, “You are a hero of war and the future Hokage. I will not let you dodge responsibility by dying. Naruto lost one sensei already and you know what it did to him. No, I’m ordering you to mate and bond and as long as I’m Hokage and you’re not, you have to do what I say.”
“Hai, Hokage-sama.”
She sighed, rolled her eyes and chugged another sake cup. When she turned the page, she stopped in her tracks. “Speaking of unmated omegas your age…”