CHAPTER I.
( masks. )
Kakashi is four years old when, at the market, an old lady pinches her cheeks and says to her father:
"Oh, he looks so much like you, Sakumo," she pauses, stops pinching her cheeks, and continues. "He'll be such a handsome man once he grows up!"
It's not like Kakashi's world shatters at the words. It doesn't, and she goes on with her life by her father's side, trying to make him proud because he's one of the best, and she wants to do good by him.
(Because sometimes her father looks so sad, so broken, and she makes him smile, makes him forget.)
(Kakashi will keep her father smiling because her mom isn't here to do it anymore.)
But it stirs something in her she didn't know existed, and it leaves her uncomfortable. She's unsettled, and her bones beg for something she doesn't understand yet.
Her mind races and tries to pinpoint the problem, but she can't pick her bones and muscles apart like she does math, like she does taijutsu, and her teeth bit the insides of her mouth until she bleeds, restless.
(For the first time, Kakashi knows what blood tastes like.)
It continues for days, for weeks, for months, until one day she's sharpening her claws—her fingernails—against a rusty kunai and she cuts herself, and she stares and stares and stares; the gnawing subsides, the memories of girls playing in the park, one of them with a similar wound. The restlessness that's plagued her dwindles, appeased, satisfied, the image of the girl holding her tears back, bleeding, bleeding like Kakashi, and so, so—
Oh, Kakashi thinks. Oh.
The first time Kakashi says out loud that she's a girl, she's four. She knows what her blood tastes like, her nails are sharp, and one of them has dried blood on it. Her father's just come back, she's finished her training for the day, and by the routine, they're about to sit on the couch and talk about nonsensical things.
It's one of her favorite parts of the day.
"Dad?" She asks, a bit confused, but not unsure. He's drinking tea, and hums, low and calm and father, more like a rumble than an inquiry. "Can you buy me a mask? Like the ones you say Mom used to have?"
(So that people can't say she'll grow up a handsome man, so that people can't pinch her cheeks anymore.)
"Oh?" He's surprised. "Why would you want to wear a mask, Kakashi?" He asks.
She stays silent for a while, munching on a cookie—though not a sweet one because Kakashi hates sweets—and swallows, kind of nervous, but not, not really, because this is her father.
"Because I'm a girl." Kakashi looks at him, at the man who's only ever been kind and loving towards her, and smiles, softer than what Sakumo's used to.
For a moment, Sakumo panics. Because, because Kakashi is a girl—a girl—and that means he doesn't have a son, no, never has, that instead, he has a daughter. That Kakashi—little genius his baby is—has thought about this again and again until she was sure, until she could say to him the words he knows she's been trying to find for months, and it's confusing because since when?, but he doesn't say anything out loud, trying to process, trying not to react because his son—his daughter—needs him calm and rational right now.
Compartmentalize.
Calm down.
Breathe.
Kakashi is a girl. Not a boy, not a son; but a girl, a daughter.
It doesn't change anything. She's still Kakashi, which is what matters, still his for all that her pronouns switched.
Still the baby Katsumi died for, still the toddler he lives for, still the person he comes back for.
Still Kakashi.
"Okay," he says, exhaling, allowing all his love for Kakashi to slip through his eyes. "Do you want to change your name?"
Kakashi marvels at her father, can practically feel his love for her. She shakes her head. "No, Kakashi's fine. It's mine."
Her father nods and puts the tea down on the table. He stands up, grabs her by the sides, and hugs her. Holding her by his torso, she reaches up to his neck. His smell—blood and wolves and paper and earth, wrapped in warmth and contentment—reaches her nose and she nuzzles him, unable not to. He does the same, smiling all the while.
"Come on, pup," she hears him say after a few minutes. "Time for a bath."
Sakumo wishes Katsumi were here. He wishes for her smiles and her warmth, for her acceptance, for her love, like he always does, but this time it's a bit different, because he wishes her for Kakashi. And although he's wished countless times for the three of them, this time, he thinks, I wish you could be here, because I don't know what words to say and I never will, and you were always the one who understood and put them out in the open. He thinks, I wish you could do that now, could reassure our child, could make her laugh as you did me, because I remember your love but she doesn't; so please, please, please, come back, come back to me, come back to us.
That night, Sakumo kisses his daughter on the forehead and sends her to bed with a smile.
He has a daughter.
They have a daughter—even if they didn't know at first. Not a son, but a daughter.
Are you seeing this, Katsumi?
The morning after, Kakashi sighs and stares in complete deadpan as her father asks many, many pointless questions; like do you want to paint your room pink and would you like to wear a dress, which is embarrassing because why would she want her room pink? And why would she want to wear a dress? They're terribly impractical for training, and every single one she's seen on the other girls makes her skin crawl at the thought of wearing them herself.
But he also starts calling her his daughter, starts using the correct pronouns, starts calling her Kashi-chan.
(Which, okay, not the best thing to happen in the household, but she can bear the nickname if it means her father accepts her as she is.)
Every time he does, she smiles a bit more.
Later, he buys her a mask.
Kakashi hugs him, for that.
YOU ARE READING
𝐁𝐋𝐄𝐄𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐎𝐔𝐓, kakaobi.
Fanfiction❝ THE GIRL IN HER RIBCAGE WEARS A BLOODY CROWN. ❞ 傷 ━━ The world will either make you or break you, and maybe Kakashi was born with a dick between her legs, but her fangs were sharpened by wolves, and her kindness bred by death. Maybe in another lif...
