Chapter Text
Kakashi was certain now. If there was such a thing as a god, then that god simply refused to let him die.
He should have died when Rin implanted Obito’s Sharingan. His body was never meant to host another clan’s bloodline, and by all logic, the transplant should have killed him. Even if the eye had taken, the infection alone should have done the rest. Later, his years in ANBU should have ended him a hundred different ways, and on the night of the Kyuubi’s attack, he should have been crushed beside his sensei and Kushina.
Yet every time, he lived.
Even when his body finally gave out as he protected Konoha and his students from Pain, something had forced him back to life. He had accepted death then, quietly, as if it were an old friend finally returning for him. But even that small mercy had been denied.
There had been other close calls, so many that they blurred together into one long stretch of survival he had never really asked for. Still, what happened with Kaguya should have been final. Her chakra, mixed with his and Obito’s twin Sharingans, had been something beyond human comprehension. Not even he could imagine surviving the aftermath that followed.
—
The air was the first thing he noticed when he woke. It was thin and cold, sharp against his lungs. The second was sound — the steady rhythm of hammers striking wood, the shouts of workers, the noise of a city that was very much alive.
When he opened his eye, Konoha stretched before him, but the details were wrong. The rooftops were shorter, the streets narrower, and the skyline uneven in a way that unsettled him. The smell hit him next: smoke, ash, the faint sweetness of wet earth, and underneath it all the lingering trace of something foul. The chakra in the air was thick and dark, heavy with the scent of the Kyuubi.
He was standing on a rooftop near what looked like the market district. Below, people moved quickly, hauling timber and shouting orders as if rebuilding something massive. He followed their movements without thinking, taking stock of every direction, every route of escape. When his gaze lifted toward the Hokage Monument, he froze.
There were only three faces.
Hashirama. Tobirama. Hiruzen.
No Minato-sensei.
Kakashi pushed himself upright, and the motion threw him off balance. His body felt too light, his center of gravity too low. He caught himself on the tiles, looked down, and stared. His hands were smaller, the fingers short and rounded, the skin softer than he remembered. He blinked once, then again, but the image didn’t change.
He was wearing his ANBU uniform, though it hung wrong on his frame. The mask rested loosely at his side.
His mind began to work through the possibilities.
Genjutsu was the most obvious answer, but the level of sensory precision argued against it. The temperature of the air, the ache in his muscles, the subtle weight of the armor — too exact. He whispered, “Kai,” and waited. Nothing changed. He tried again, louder, focusing his chakra into the seal, and still the world remained still.
He drew a kunai from his pouch and cut across his palm, watching the blood well and darken in the cold air. The world did not waver. The sharingan hasn't unveiled anything suspicious either.
Not a genjutsu then.
That left two possibilities.
Either Kaguya’s jutsu had thrown him into another dimension, or he had somehow slipped backward in time.
He looked again toward the streets, where Konoha still bore the scars of the Nine-Tails’ rampage. The reconstruction, the missing face on the monument, the weight of grief in the air — all of it fit together too neatly. If his estimation was right, this was only a few months after the attack.
He stood silently for a long moment, his breath slow, his mind already calculating.
If this was an alternate world, he was stranded. The resonance had hit while the battle still raged, and the idea of leaving his students behind made his chest tighten. But if he had somehow been sent back in time, then he had years — seventeen, maybe more — before everything that had broken them would begin again.
The wind caught on the edges of his mask, carrying the faint scent of smoke and snow. Kakashi exhaled and closed his eye for a moment, letting the pieces settle into place.
If god would not allow him to die, then perhaps there was something left he was meant to fix.