Chapter 507: A Life Starting Over
The Reincarnation Hall the following morning looked much as it had the night before.
The vast, seemingly endless chamber was still bathed in that soft ambient light. The portals hung in place, quiet, each waiting for what it was built to receive. In front of the brightest one -- the path to the Human Realm -- the line of souls stretched as long as ever.
Tobirama and Hashirama stood in one corner of the hall and watched.
Sinners were still being wailed through the Asura Realm and the Animal Realm portals. Souls beyond redemption screamed and struggled at the edge of the swirling gates, but there was nothing to be done about it. The Velociraptors carried out their work without expression, sending them through one after another, into what waited on the other side.
On the Human Realm side, children were still queuing.
Their faces held no fear -- only the particular blankness and curiosity that belonged to the edge of something unknown. The Velociraptors moved gently among them, enormous claws curled softly around small hands, low voices offering reassurance.
"Don't be afraid."
"When you get to the other side, someone very kind will be waiting for you."
"You'll have a warm home. Plenty to eat. You'll never go hungry again."
The children nodded and kept their place in line, moving step by step toward the door that led to a new life.
Hashirama watched them, and his eyes had gone slightly red.
He understood where these children had come from. A thousand years of shinobi world -- a thousand years of war, famine, and disaster. Every conflict, every period of chaos, had taken lives that had no business being taken. And the ones that always hurt the most were the children who had not had time to grow up.
And now, at last, they were being given a chance to go back.
Back to a world that had been changed. A world without the hunger and the wars. A world where they could grow up safely, pursue something, have a life that actually belonged to them.
Hashirama drew a slow breath and blinked hard.
Guilt moved through him. If he had worked harder while he was alive -- if he had done even a little more -- maybe there would be fewer of them standing here. Maybe some of these children would never have died at all. Maybe they would have had their lives.
But there were no maybes.
He could only stand here and watch those small figures walk through that door, one after another.
"Brother." Tobirama's voice came from beside him, drawing him back.
"Mm." Hashirama responded, gathered up the weight of those feelings, and turned his gaze in a different direction.
They had not come here this morning to watch the children pass through.
They had come to find Naruto. For the sake of their two younger brothers.
The previous night, the two of them had talked for a very long time.
After Itama and Kawarama had fallen asleep, the brothers sat in the courtyard of Hashirama's villa under the moonlight and talked through most of the night. They talked about the era of warring clans. About the family members they had lost. About Konoha as it became. About all the years that had passed.
Eventually the conversation turned, as it had to, to those two younger brothers -- those small, unchanging children who had stopped at seven or eight years old and never moved past it.
Hashirama wanted to keep them here. Wanted to give back all the companionship those years had taken from them. Tobirama felt the same. He wanted to stay close to them. Wanted to be gentler than he had ever managed while they were alive. Wanted them to know that their serious, exacting second brother had always loved them.
But they could not afford to be that selfish.
The era of wars was over.
The world now was peaceful. It was fed. Children were not being thrown onto battlefields at five years old anymore. They could go to school. They could play. They could make friends and follow their dreams and have complete lives.
That was something Itama and Kawarama had never once experienced.
Hashirama and Tobirama could not keep them here out of their own reluctance -- couldn't leave them in this world of the dead, frozen in this place, forever small, forever children.
They needed to go out and feel what was good about the world. They needed to grow up. They needed to finish the things that had never had a chance to begin -- and with any luck, fall in love, build families, and live happily.
So the brothers had talked through the night, and eventually reached a decision: let Itama and Kawarama reincarnate and start new lives.
But even Hashirama, even facing the reality of what that meant, had not entirely let go of wanting something more. And Tobirama even less so.
Which was why, early this morning, they had come to the Reincarnation Hall and were waiting for Naruto.
To ask -- could they negotiate, just a little?
Could Itama and Kawarama be reborn into something a little better than random chance? Into prosperous families, so they would have comfortable lives? Into shinobi clans, so they would have the talent to protect themselves?
Could this one life -- the life they had been cheated out of -- could it be just a little happier, a little safer, a little more fortunate than the one they had been given before?
-- -- --
"...Kakashi. Thank you for being able to forgive me."
Sakumo Hatake's voice carried the release of something that had needed many years to finally be said.
They had been talking through the entire night.
Starting from where Kakashi's life had gone after Sakumo's death -- all those years of growing up, the grief and the small victories, everything that had shaped him into the person standing here.
Sakumo had listened. Listened to his son describe how he had grown from the child left behind into the person he had become.
How he had met Obito and Rin at the academy. How a chronically late, loudmouthed fool had taught him something that would stay with him for the rest of his life: that someone who breaks the rules is trash, but someone who abandons their comrades is worse than trash.
How the battle at Kannabi Bridge had ended, and how he had carried forward a trusted friend's final request -- walking the rest of the road with a borrowed eye.
How mission after mission had sharpened him, until he became a jonin fit to guide others.
How he had eventually ended up with three students who each gave him something different to worry about in completely different ways -- Naruto, who had understood too much too early; Satsuki, cold and proud and holding everything at arm's length; and Sakura, quietly persistent through everything.
Sakumo listened carefully. Attentively.
All the years he had missed. All the growing up he had not been there for. It came to him now through his son's steady voice, word by word, settling somewhere it would stay.
And at the end of it, Kakashi told him: he no longer resented his father's death.
There had been a time, when he was small, when he had hated it. Hated his father for leaving him. Hated the method he had chosen. Hated being left alone to face everything that came after.
But he understood now.
In that era, in that rigid and unforgiving world of shinobi rules, choosing your comrades over your mission came with a price. His father had made his choice and had borne the consequence of it.
He may have been afraid. He may have suffered. He may have regretted it in the last moment. But he had never betrayed what was in his heart.
And so the Kakashi who existed now felt proud of the father who had abandoned his mission for the sake of the people beside him.
Sakumo sat with that for a long time after Kakashi finished speaking. He looked at the son in front of him -- a man who was actually slightly younger in appearance than the age Sakumo had been when he died. No, wait. That wasn't right. Kakashi was actually older now than Sakumo had ever been.
Death had frozen one of them. The living kept moving forward.
After a while, when the heavy things had been said and the weight had lifted somewhat, the conversation found its way toward lighter ground.
The things that only mattered to people who were still alive.
"Kakashi..." Sakumo began, his voice careful. "Everything you told me -- all of it -- making friends, taking on students, carrying out missions..."
He paused.
"Have you still not gotten married?"
Kakashi's body went completely still. He had not anticipated Sakumo going there.
"..."
Silence.
Sakumo watched his son's face freeze, and felt something complicated move through him. "Is it because of your mother -- that she left so early?"
"But Kakashi, I've already been reunited with her. She's doing well. In this world after death, she's been waiting for me."
"Are you afraid... of losing someone important again?"
"..." Kakashi did not answer. He sat in silence, that one visible eye drifting to somewhere else, unreachable.
Sakumo's chest went soft.
He thought about what he had done. When Kakashi was still a child. When he had needed his father most. Sakumo, unable to bear the weight of other people's words, had picked up a knife and made a choice.
He had left all his pain, all his confusion, all his self-recrimination, for a small boy who had not yet learned how cruel the world could be.
What right did someone like that have to intervene in his son's life? What standing did he have to want Kakashi to settle down and build a family?
"I'm sorry." Sakumo said. "That was the wrong thing to bring up."
"I have no right to involve myself in your life... but Kakashi, living alone is a very lonely thing."
"If it's not something you're thinking about right now -- try to spend time with your friends. At least that."
In that moment, a face surfaced in Kakashi's mind.
Thick eyebrows. Bowl-cut hair. An expression of permanently excessive enthusiasm. The kind of person who smiled at everyone as though they were the best thing he had seen all day, gave a thumbs-up to things that did not remotely deserve one, and shouted at a volume specifically calibrated to rattle teeth: "Kakashi! Today we settle this with the fire of youth -- !!"
Kakashi's entire body gave an involuntary shudder. "...I understand."
Sakumo watched his son's deeply conflicted face and could not hold back a smile.
He knew.
He had felt it throughout the conversation. A particular restlessness underneath Kakashi's composure. A barely-there urgency that surfaced at certain moments -- when a certain topic came up, when a certain person was mentioned -- his son's gaze would drift away without warning, and for just an instant he would be somewhere else.
That was the kind of thing that only happened to someone who had someone else on their mind. Someone they wanted to see.
"All right." Sakumo stood. He walked over to Kakashi and put a hand briefly on his shoulder.
"I've said what I needed to say. It's time to let you go and talk to the friends you've lost."
He looked into Kakashi's eyes. The one that was visible. The one that was, at this moment, faintly red at the edges. "...They're waiting for you too."
"Go."
"When you're done, come find me again."
"We have all the time we need."