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Kakashi sits in the Hokage’s chair, behind the Hokage’s desk. (His chair, his desk, some part of his mind tells him, but that doesn’t feel right, does it? It feels like it should be Sakura sitting here instead, but Sakura isn’t ready for the position, she’s still training, but—but then again, Kakashi isn’t ready. He wasn’t ready when Tsunade passed him the hat, and now, even though he’s been here for a year—a year, and isn’t that something—he still feels like he isn’t ready. He feels like he’s always behind, always running to catch up with this village. He feels old.) He signs his name on some document—it looks like a mission report, but he’s beyond caring at this point. This only serves to cement the thought that he shouldn’t be Hokage. He . . . really needs to stop thinking like this. Sakura will replace him when she's ready, and no sooner. In a rare fit of nostalgia, he wishes that Obito were still alive to take the stupid hat. Or Rin. (Anyone would be better suited to the title than Kakashi. Maybe even Naruto. Wait, no, no—anyone but Naruto, then.) Kakashi hears a chime, coming from the left side of the room, so he looks up. He blinks at the clock once, twice, and a third time just to make sure that he isn’t seeing things. “What the fuck. What the—” In his head, he composes a list of things he hates. He hates paperwork, he hates being on time, he hates sending shinobi off to die, although that hasn’t happened as much since the war ended, he hates people coming in and bothering him at ass o'clock in the morning to— Kakashi groans when the door opens. (Well—it’s more like the door is kicked down rather than opened, but that's not what's important.) He groans again, louder this time, when Naruto shouts and points. “Found you!” What's important is that he's going to kill Naruto for coming in at this time. “Kakashi-sensei!” Naruto holds a sheaf of papers in his hand. “Guess what I found! Guess! Fine, you want to play the silent game? Be that way. It’s a really cool new jutsu thatIfoundwhilelookingaroundin—” Kakashi cuts him off before Naruto can begin to speak even faster than he already is. “No. I refuse. Absolutely not. Get out. I am going to sleep, and nobody is going to bother me.” Naruto leaves, slamming the door so hard behind him that Kakashi is surprised it doesn’t fly off its hinges. Kakashi heaves a long-suffering sigh, and goes to sleep. [ — ] Kakashi opens his eyes. “But pigs can't fly through time,” He hears himself say, mind still messy from his dream. “They can’t even fly.” He remembers, vaguely, a dream where everything had been purple—and what a hideous color that is, Kakashi thinks, shuddering theatrically—and he had flown through time on the back of a particularly rotund pig. He remembers, even more vaguely, having forcefully combined a modified Hiraishin seal and his Kamui to go back in time. He had gone so far back that the villages hadn’t even been established yet. He had been talking to Shodaime-sama (that was strange, wasn’t it? There was no village, and yet Hashirama was already the Hokage) about whether lighter paper would be better or worse, in the long run. He had been arguing for worse, because the lighter it is the easier it rips—but Hashirama had adamantly stated that lighter paper takes less time and less money to make, and if it ripped it could always be copied down onto another sheet. Or two, or ten or twenty or even more. Well. It doesn’t matter now. It was stupid, anyway, even if the arguments might have been valid. For one, he knows that pigs can’t fly, and for another, he knows that Hashirama had never changed the way paper is made. . . . although, Kamui and Hiraishin seals— He shakes that thought from his head, deciding to mull it over later. He takes a breath, and only just notices the warm press of wood against his cheek, and the stiff set of his arms. Looks like he fell asleep at the desk again. He lifts his head, blinking sleepily at the still-blurry room (because he is the goddamn Rokudaime Hokage, and he can let his guard down if he wants, it’s not like he’s surrounded by enemy nin—he would be able to tell), just in time to hear someone say, “Time traveling pigs, Hokage-sama? That's what you dream about?” Kakashi blinks away the sleepiness. “Oink, oink.” That same someone laughs obnoxiously, and he belatedly realizes the voice as belonging to Yamanaka Ino. He rubs his eyes lazily, and when his vision finally clears, he focuses his attention on her. Or, rather, on the stack of paperwork she’s balancing in her arms. “Please don’t tell me that this is the T&I paperwork for this week,” Kakashi pleads. Look at him. Hokage, and yet he is reduced to begging someone more than ten years his junior to spare him from paperwork. “It isn’t the T&I paperwork for this week,” she says, and the humor is clear on her face. “Oh, thank the gods,” Kakashi says, before—wait. “Ino.” She sighs. “Yes, it’s the paperwork for this week. And since I just happen to be on my day off, I think I’ll help you out with it.” Is it wrong to want to propose to someone who is the same age as your cute little genin students? In any case, Kakashi is sure that he can bend the laws, because Ino is doing his paperwork for him and he is so, so grateful. “Help me out with the rest, too?” Kakashi gestures to the three stacks on his desk. “I’ve made it through most of it, but . . . I’ve been, ah, lost. On the road of life, you know.” He hopes that his Icha Icha isn’t out in plain sight. Judging from the way Ino pointedly clears her throat and looks at the top left corner of his desk—he’s going to assume that it is. “It’s four in the morning,” Ino says, cutting into his thoughts. “Go to bed, Kakashi. Or else Naruto will come find me and complain for hours about how you won’t just take a breather, and how Kakashi-sensei works so hard and he never lets anyone help. Because if you don’t—and Naruto pulls that shit again—I will be angry.” Kakashi has seen many an aftermath of Ino’s spectacular fights with Naruto. He does not want to see it again. So he decides to accept her help and pass out again, the thought of time travel at the—well, not the front, maybe, because the front of his mind is occupied with thoughts of Ino destroying a restaurant again, but maybe the middle of his mind. It is with that thought that he finally allows himself to sleep. [ — ] When Kakashi wakes again, it's to the sound of laughter and of papers being shuffled around on his desk. He sits up, and his mind is achingly blank despite the fact that he knows he was just dreaming of something important. Something about seals, about using his Kamui to do—something. But that’s not important now, so he sets it aside and makes a mental note to think about it later. So with that out of the way, he reluctantly turns his attention over onto the bickering jōnin in his office. “No—no, she did! She did, I swear, it was the coolest thing.” Naruto is waving his hands this way and that, and it’s clear to Kakashi that he’s trying to keep Shikamaru’s attention on him. “It just isn't physically possible, Naruto. You’ve gotta be making this up.” Shikamaru’s expression tells Kakashi that he’s suffering. Which is probably true, because anyone would be suffering if they had to listen to Naruto shouting in their face. Kakashi clears his throat. “What exactly isn't physically possible? Is this something I need to hear about?” A sudden, horrific image of Sakura doing—doing something with medical chakra appears unbidden in his head, and he very deliberately does not shudder. “Oh, Kakashi-sensei! Good morning, did you have a good nap?” Naruto asks, almost mockingly. Kakashi narrows his eyes suspiciously, but ultimately finds no reason to doubt Naruto’s sincerity. “Why, yes, Naruto, thank you for asking.” A thought occurs to him, suddenly. “Stop distracting me. What's not physically possible?” Naruto grins, glancing at Shikamaru from the corner of his eye. “Tenten put a sword down her throat. It was so cool, oh my gods, she grabbed it by the handle and just—slid it down her throat and it didn’t even hurt and it can’t have been fake, we were all watching—it was like, four feet long, oh my gods.” Kakashi raises an eyebrow. On the outside, he is calm and collected—a paragon of coolness. On the inside, he is beyond relieved that it isn’t some crazy scheme of Sakura’s that Naruto had been gushing about. “Are you sure it was a real sword?” Naruto groans, and gives Kakashi his I’m telling nothing but the truth look, which is usually bullshit. This time, it’s genuine—apparently. “No! It was totally real! Like—like a whole katana! I think she was coating it with chakra, and maybe she had a seal in there so it didn’t, like, I dunno, fuck up her insides or something. But it looked awesome!” Kakashi nods. “I believe you.” And then, after noticing the absence of a certain terrifying Yamanaka, he asks, “Where did Ino run off to?” Shikamaru answers before Naruto can try, and fail miserably, to give a coherent response. “She left when we got here, said to tell you she got a couple stacks of paperwork mostly done—they still need your official signature, and also, some things were just out of her jurisdiction.” Kakashi nods, thankful that she wasn't lying when she said she’d help, and then—and then—all at once, he remembers what he was trying to figure out. It makes sense, now, in his head, not just a vague concept and a purple-tinged memory.
Time travel.
And all of a sudden, he can’t wait for his lunch break.