Dreams of the Past

Thinking Things Through

A/N I need to extend a HUGE thank you to aryx and Tsumeinuzka for going over this, helping me with my grammar, reassuring me that my plot points hit and helping with things I was stuck on. I'm pretty sure I would have spiraled and not posted without them and their helpful comments! I meant to do this yesterday, but I had a baby in my lap and a loud toddler running about. As I am currently writing chapter 24, I am probably going to be updating 2x a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays, this week will be thrice, a special extra for Kakashi's birthday. 

His eyes opened with the first rays of early dawn light. Nostrils flaring beneath his mask, his first thoughts were confused. Where was he? Sakura was near but nothing else was right.

No, not Sakura, Ayame.

Oh.

The scene from the day before of his father on the street played through his memory.

Looking around the room, he saw that they were still in the dream... or the past. Great. Beside him on their shared futon, Ayame—Karasu's wife, and wasn't that strange—was still asleep, her short pink hair fanned out around her. Dried tear tracks lined her face. In one fell swoop she'd lost everything and everyone she had ever known. So had he; but then, that sort of pain wasn't anything new for Kakashi.

It had started so young for him. The small version of himself he'd seen yesterday was testament to that. Any day now he would come home from the Academy to find Sakumo dead. What was the date, anyway?

Groaning softly, he sat up, his body stiff from all the fighting he'd done in the last two days. His hair tickled his nose, hanging down well past his eyes. Pushing it out of his face, he wondered if he should cut it. He had relied on his hitai-ate to keep it out of the way, putting off bothering with it as long as possible. That wasn't going to be an option now. Maybe Sakura could cut it for him.

Not Sakura, he reminded himself. Ayame. It would be a pain to remember, like it had apparently been difficult to remember not to call him sensei. Propping his cheek on his palm, his elbow resting on his knee, he looked down at her. Ayame. Apparently her father's real cousin. Ayame, Ume, Shobu, Sakura... Flower names must be some kind of family tradition.

Hm. It went well with his family's proclivity for agricultural names, he supposed. Not that it really mattered.

She'd given him a new name as well. Karasu. It meant crow. It might be funny, Kakashi meant Scarecrow after all, but really it was the more fitting name. Crows were portents of death. If anything, they had flocked around him his entire life despite his name.

What did that mean for her?

He pulled down his mask and scrubbed his face with his hands. He didn't want to imagine losing her too. It didn't bear thinking about. So instead, he pictured his younger self again.

He didn't remember being so small. His father had died and then, almost at once he had been an adult. That's how everyone had treated him. He'd lived on his own, made his own meals... He had been an active, working shinobi at six. It wasn't right, he'd had a vague understanding of that for years. But looking at himself now from an adult's perspective, he could see the wrongness of it more clearly than he ever had before.

If his father had lived, would it have been allowed? Should he try and save his father? Could he, even? If this was a dream, nothing they did mattered. If it was real, it would completely change the shape of his life. Would it affect him? Would he change something only to blink and find himself in yet another alternative reality? Time travel was not something he'd ever studied.