Chapter 13: The River and the Fear
The water was colder than Kakashi remembered.
Not by much—a degree, maybe two—but enough that he felt it settle into his bones when he waded past his knees, the current tugging lazy fingers around his calves. Late August in Konoha meant the Naka ran low and warm in most places, but this bend, tucked behind the old mill ruins where the willows grew thick and the sun came late through their leaves, held a stubborn chill. It could have been the spring feeding it from below. Could have been the shade. Could have been nothing at all.
Shin didn't care about any of that.
"I don't like it," he announced from the bank, where he stood with his toes curled so hard into the mud that they'd left little crescent moons behind. He had one hand fisted in the hem of Kakashi's shirt—the clean one, the one Kakashi had foolishly believed would survive the afternoon—and the other clamped around the new penguin, which he'd refused to leave at home.
Pingu, the penguin was called now. Two days old and already dragged to the market, the training field, and now the river.
"Noted," Kakashi said. He waded out another step. The water reached mid-thigh. "You don't like it."
"It's too big."
"Mhm."
"It's too fast."
"Mhm."
Shin's grip on the shirt tightened. "Dada. Dada, it's gonna eat me."
Kakashi turned. Water dripped from his fingertips. Somewhere upstream a heron took flight and the sound of its wings carried over the shallows like a sheet being snapped.
"Eat you," he repeated.
"Yeah."
"The river."
"Yeah."
"The river that is, at this exact spot, shallow enough that I'm standing in it and it doesn't even come up to my waist."
Shin's jaw worked. He was, Kakashi thought, doing the math. It was a very serious math. A four-year-old's math, which meant the numbers were made-up and the conclusion was already decided.
"It's deep somewhere," Shin said finally.
"Sure. Somewhere." Kakashi held out both arms. Water ran off his wrists. "Somewhere is not here. Here is where we are."
"That's not—" Shin's little face scrunched. He was searching for the argument. Kakashi could practically see him flipping through the pages of his four-year-old lexicon, hunting for the word that would settle it. What he found was: "Pingu doesn't like it either."
Pingu, who was fabric and stuffing and a heart stitched in purple thread, stared placidly ahead.
"Pingu looks on board," Kakashi said.
"He's faking."
"Ah. A liar, then."
"Don't call him a liar!"
Kakashi laughed. It startled out of him, that laugh—too loud for the quiet bend, scattering a clutch of sparrows from the reeds. Shin's indignant expression cracked down the middle and for half a second he almost smiled before he remembered he was supposed to be furious.
"Come here," Kakashi said. He crouched in the water, or as close to crouching as a man waist-deep could manage. It brought his eye level with Shin's. "Let me tell you something about rivers."
Shin sulked. "What."
"The river is only as strong as the ground under it." Kakashi pressed one palm flat against the riverbed, feeling the smooth skip of stones and the silt that had settled into the gaps. "I trust the ground. I don't have to see it to trust it. I know it's there. And the water—" He lifted his hand and let the current push against his fingers. "The water's just doing what water does. Moving. It's not trying to eat anyone."
"You don't know that."
"The water has never once eaten me."
"You don't go in the water."
"I'm in it now."
Shin's mouth opened. Shut. Opened again. He had hit the end of the argument, and he knew it, and he was too proud to say so. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The mud made a soft sad sound beneath him.
"If I let go," he said at last, very quietly, "I'm gonna sink."
There it was.
Kakashi's chest tightened. He kept his voice easy, kept his face easy, because this was not the place for a lecture and Shin was four and the whole world was very big and very fast and had not yet proven itself to be on his side. Slowly, Kakashi reached one hand into the fold of his flak jacket—the one he'd left dry in a heap on the bank—and pulled out a small smooth stone. Flat, gray, warm from his body heat.
"See this?" he said.
Shin looked. "Rock."
"Yep. Watch."
He placed the stone flat on the water, on a stretch where the current ran thin and glassy over a shallow shelf of rock. The stone sank. It did not float. It went straight down and settled, a small gray shadow in the sunlight, and stayed there.
Shin stared at it. "It sank."
"Because it was too heavy for the water to hold."
Kakashi fished in the shallows and came up with a willow leaf. Green, slender, curled at the edges. He laid that flat on the water too. It drifted, spun once, and sailed onward with the current like it had been waiting all day for someone to give it permission.
"That floated," Shin said.
"Because it was light enough to let the water carry it."
"That's just—" Shin stamped one foot. The mud squelched. "I'm not a leaf."
Kakashi grinned behind the mask. "No, I know. You're Shin Hatake, who once ate an entire bowl of wasabi because he thought it was green frosting and then screamed the walls down for ten minutes. That's not a leaf. That's a menace."
"It was green!" Shin shouted, and his grip on the shirt loosened to slap his thigh in outrage, and that was the moment Kakashi had been waiting for.
He did not grab his son.
He simply reached out, both arms open, hands empty, and held them there—palms up, still, patient—and said nothing at all.
Shin looked at the hands. He looked at the water. He looked at the hands.
"It's cold," he said.
"It's cold."
"It's really cold."
"I know."
Shin took a breath. He looked at Pingu, clutched tight to his chest. He whispered something to the penguin—something Kakashi couldn't hear, and suspected he wasn't meant to—and then, with the deliberate slowness of a child doing one of the bravest things of his life, he leaned forward.
He let go of the bank.
He gasped when the water touched his ankles—the cold hitting him all at once—but he didn't pull back. He leaned further, and further, until his weight tipped past his toes and fell into Kakashi's waiting hands.
Kakashi caught him by the ribs and eased him down into the shallows. Shin's face contorted through six different emotions in the space of a heartbeat. Fear. Shock. Concentration. Doubt. Wonder.
And then—relief.
"I'm not sinking," he said, breathless.
Kakashi's hands were there, under his ribs, holding him stable. His toes brushed the stones.
"Tell me what you feel," Kakashi said.
"It's cold. It's—it's—" Shin wiggled his toes against the riverbed. "There's rocks."
"The ground's still there."
"Yeah." Shin looked down at his own feet, invisible beneath the water, and his eyes went round. "The ground's still there."
"The ground's always there," Kakashi said. "Even when you can't see it."
Shin's head snapped up, and for a moment he just looked at his father—really looked, no squinting, no arguing, just the flat curious stare of a child processing something new. Then his small hands closed around Kakashi's wrists and he said, in a tone of tremendous authority:
"Throw me."
Kakashi blinked. "What?"
"Throw me. Like a—" Shin mimed a soaring arc with one hand. "Throw me in the water and let me go."
"That is the opposite of what I said."
"No, it's not. You said the ground's there. I want to test it."
"That's a very shinobi thing to say." Kakashi's eye crinkled at the corner. "You're sure?"
Shin nodded so hard his whole body rocked. "I'm sure. Throw me."
So Kakashi, because he was not a man who ever said no to a challenge issued by someone who barely came up to his waist, threw him.
He didn't throw him hard—a gentle forward arc, a small shove of chakra to keep him floating, a push that would land him maybe two feet from his hands. Shin went flying, arms out, mouth open, and for a second his face was pure terror—and then he hit the water and bobbed and came up sputtering and shrieking and laughing all at once, the sound so loud and bright that a whole flock of birds erupted from the reeds and scattered across the sky.
"AGAIN!" Shin shouted. "Again, again, again!"
"Hold on—"
"AGAIN!"
Kakashi laughed so hard his mask got wet. He caught the boy around the waist and threw him again, gentler this time, then again, then spun him in a lazy circle with one arm so that Shin hung in the water and giggled until he ran out of breath.
By late afternoon, Shin was a different creature entirely.
He kicked and splashed. He demanded to be thrown. He demanded to be spun. He discovered that if he angled his body a certain way, he could nearly float on his own—maybe two seconds, maybe three, before he sank with a shriek, and he re-emerged each time spitting water and demanding to try again. His hair was plastered to his forehead. His face was flushed red. Pingu was drenched and slightly muddy, clutched in one hand as Shin paddled clumsily around in circles.
"Pingu likes it!" he announced, holding the penguin up. "Pingu's swimming!"
"Impressive," Kakashi said. "I don't think anyone's ever drowned a stuffed animal before."
"He's not drowning! He's—" Shin held Pingu under the armpits and swished him back and forth through the water. "He's a river penguin now."
"A river penguin."
"Yeah. He used to be just a penguin, but now he's a river penguin."
Kakashi's chest did something complicated. He remembered, absurdly, the ruined old penguin—the box on the windowsill, the stuffing, the scarf—and swallowed around the lump in his throat.
"That's a good promotion," he said. "Very competitive field, river penguins."
Shin squinted. "What's competitive?"
"Ask your mother. She's the smart one."
"Dada—"
"I'm teaching you humility. It's important."
Shin made a face.
They stayed until the light went from green to gold, until the shadows of the willows stretched long over the water and the cicadas had gone quiet and the first cool air of evening came down off the hills. Shin's splashing slowed. His kicks lost their strength. He drifted nearer to Kakashi and settled against his chest, one small fist curled loosely around the old damp shirt.
"Is it time to go?" he asked, muffled against Kakashi's shoulder.
"Nearly. One more minute."
"Okay." Shin yawned enormously. His eyes were already half-closed. "Dada?"
"Hm."
"Thanks for not letting the river eat me."
Kakashi wrapped one arm around him and held on. His own clothing was soaked through. His mask was ruined, sagging against his face, the fabric damp and clinging and hideous. The sun was doing that thing it did just before sunset, where the whole world looked dipped in honey, and the river murmured past them without a word.
"Anytime," Kakashi said.
"Do we have to go home?"
"We've been out nine hours. Your mother's probably organized a search party."
Shin giggled, then yawned again. "Tell her I was fighting the river."
"I will absolutely tell her you were fighting the river."
"Tell her I won."
"You won. Decisively."
"W'unless," Shin murmured, and his head dropped, heavy, against Kakashi's shoulder. He was asleep before Kakashi could answer.
So Kakashi stood there in the water a little while longer, holding his son and the penguin and the last of the day, and he thought about the ground beneath his feet—unseen, but there. Always there. He thought about trust and he thought about all the ways a person could sink and all the ways the water might carry them instead, and his throat felt tight, and after a minute he decided he'd had enough philosophy for one afternoon.
Carefully, step by careful step, he waded toward the bank.
On the bank, in the flat gold light, he found a shadow.
Sakura was sitting on the flat rock she'd apparently claimed as her own, one knee drawn up, chin propped on it, watching him. There was a pair of sandals beside her that were not hers. She'd brought a basket. She'd also, he noticed, brought the small medicinal kit she kept for house calls—probably out of habit, or possibly because she'd spent nine hours imagining all the ways a river could injure a four-year-old.
"Nine hours," she said.
"You said that already."
"I said it from here. It's different."
He trudged up the bank, Shin a warm damp weight on his shoulder, Pingu hanging dangerously by one flipper from his son's fist. Sakura rose and crossed to them. Her green eyes found Shin first—flushed, peaceful, drooling slightly against Kakashi's shoulder—and her whole face went soft.
"Good day?" she murmured.
"He called himself a river penguin."
"Pingu did."
"Mm. Promotion."
Sakura laughed, low and quick, and reached to tuck a strand of damp hair from Shin's forehead. Then she looked at Kakashi. Her eyes flickered, cataloguing—wet clothes, ruined mask, that particular exhaustion that came not from battle but from something better.
"You went in," she said. Her voice held the same quiet surprise it had held in the hallway three days ago, when he'd told her about the box. "Into the water."
"I did."
"You don't swim."
"Didn't need to swim. Needed to stand."
Sakura looked at him for a long moment. Then she reached up and, with the backs of her fingers, touched the corner of his temple where the mask was sagging, and her expression was the kind of expression he had learned across two years to read without words.
"You're an idiot," she said, very tenderly.
"That's not the first time you've said that tonight."
"Because it keeps being true."
She picked up the basket. He followed, wading into the last warm light at the top of the bank, and together—carefully, mouths shut so as not to wake the boy—they started the walk home.
Shin woke only once, on the last turn toward their street. He lifted his head, blinked in the twilight, and announced to the entire road:
"I won the river."
Then he put his head back down and didn't stir again.
Sakura looked at Kakashi over the top of their son's head.
"Nine hours," she said.
"The best mission I've ever accepted," Kakashi said. "By a very wide margin."
At home, an hour later, they put Shin to bed. He woke just long enough to demand that Pingu sleep beside him—the box on the windowsill got a pat on its lid, and Shin murmured, "Pengin, I won the river," before dropping off again—and then the house went quiet.
Kakashi came into the kitchen in dry clothes, hair still dripping down his neck, to find Sakura holding two cups of tea. She slid one across the table. He sat. For a while neither of them spoke.
"What did he do?" she asked at last. "When he let go."
He paused, and a faint, tired smile moved through his voice.
"He let go," he said. "That's all."
"That's all," Kakashi said, and the words sat on the table between them like a third cup of tea.
Sakura didn't push. She turned her own cup in her hands, watching the steam curl and break, and the quiet of the house settled around them — the hum of the refrigerator, the tick of the clock above the stove, the faint scuffle of a moth against the window screen. Kakashi drank his tea. It was good. She always made it too hot and it was always good anyway.
"He's going to sleep hard tomorrow," Sakura said finally. "All that water. He'll be out cold before dinner."
"Good. He needs it."
"You both do." She reached across the table and tapped his wrist with one finger. "You look like you fought a war."
"I fought a river. I told you."
"Same face."
He huffed, which was the closest he got to a real laugh when he was this tired, and then the phone rang.
They both looked at it.
It was past nine. The house had been quiet for an hour. The phone didn't ring at this hour, not for anything normal. Sakura was already half out of her chair when Kakashi held up a hand and rose instead.
"Stay," he said. "Eat something. You skipped dinner."
"You don't know that."
"I know you."
He crossed the kitchen and picked up the receiver. Sakura watched his back — the worn gray cotton of his shirt, the slight slouch he never let anyone see outside the house — and listened to the muffled voice on the other end of the line. She couldn't make out the words, but she knew the cadence. A woman's voice. Harried. Apologetic. The kind of voice that used a lot of small words to say something it didn't want to say.
Kakashi said, "Mm," once. Then, "Yes, I'm listening." Then, in a voice that had gone very flat, "I'll be there in ten minutes."
He hung up.
He turned.
"What?" Sakura said.
"That was the academy. Shin got into a fight."
Sakura's face emptied of color, then flooded back into it all at once. "What? He's four. He's— what does that even mean, a fight? He can't—"
"He hit another kid. That's all she said." Kakashi was already moving, grabbing his sandals by the door, snatching his flak jacket off the hook where it had dried. "I'm going to get him."
"I'm coming with you."
"No." He said it gently but it landed like a wall. "Sunday's asleep upstairs. She dropped off at seven, remember? One of us has to be here."
Sakura stood frozen in the kitchen doorway, her hands twisting at the dish towel.
"If something happened—"
"Nothing happened. It's a four-year-old. It's a fight." He slid the jacket on, did up the zipper, and crossed the room in three strides. He kissed her forehead — quick and dry and steady — and said, "I'll bring him home. Ten minutes. Eleven."
She caught his sleeve. "Kakashi."
He stopped.
"Don't be angry at him," she said. "Not before you know."
He looked at her for a long moment. Then he nodded once and was gone, the door clicking shut behind him, and Sakura stood in the empty kitchen with the tea going cold and her heart going fast.
The academy was a two-story building with a bell tower and a courtyard, and the courtyard was where they held the after-hours meetings. A woman was waiting for him at the gate. Her name was Ms. Anzai and she was new — this was her first year with the youngest class — and she had the specific expression of a young teacher who had spent the last hour rehearsing an easy version of a hard conversation.
Kakashi did not make it easy.
He saw Shin first. His son was sitting on a bench against the wall, and he was wearing the clothes he'd worn to school that morning — a little green shirt Sakura had picked out, little brown shorts — and his hair was a mess, and his face was red and mottled, the way a face goes after it has been crying for a long time.
He was not crying now. His jaw was set. His arms were crossed. His feet did not quite reach the floor.
Beside him, in a plastic chair, sat Pingu, and Pingu had been neatly, deliberately, reverently placed upright. Shin did not go anywhere without Pingu. Not anymore. The old penguin had its box; the new penguin had Shin's arms, always, and the fact that it had been set down on the bench instead of clutched told Kakashi everything about how badly the hour had gone. Anzai said, "Hatake-san, thank you for coming so—"
"Where's the other boy?"
She blinked. "I'm sorry?"
"The other boy. The one he fought. Where is he?"
"His mother has taken him home. He's fine, it was nothing serious, just—"
"What's his name?"
"Umehara. Kenji Umehara. He's in Shin's class."
Kakashi nodded slowly. He crossed the courtyard. He did not look at Shin yet — he looked at the teacher, and the teacher took a half step back.
"Tell me what happened," he said. Anzai folded her hands in front of her. "There was an incident during free play. Some harsh words, I believe, and then Shin struck Kenji-kun. On the arm. Twice. We separated them immediately. Kenji-kun's mother was understandably upset and I've spoken with her, and Shin and I have also spoken about why what he did was wrong, but—"
"He struck him. Twice."
"Yes."
"And what did Kenji do?"
A pause. A very small pause. "I'm not sure I—"
"What did Kenji do? Before. During. After. All of it. He's the other half of this. What did he do?" Anzai's folded hands tightened. She looked over at Shin on the bench, as if looking for help, and Shin was staring at a point on the wall with the fixed intensity of a child who had decided not to look at anything at all.
"Kenji-kun said some things," she said. "Which I've addressed. But words are not—"
"Words are not what?"
"Words are not—"
"Words are not what, Ms. Anzai?"
She took a breath through her nose and did not answer.
Kakashi turned. He crouched in front of the bench so that he was below Shin's eye level, looking up. Shin's jaw was still set, his arms still crossed, and his eyes were very bright.
"Shin," Kakashi said. "Look at me."
Shin looked at him. His lip trembled once — he caught it, bit down, held it.
"Tell me why you were fighting," Kakashi said.
Shin's voice came out small and scraped raw, the way a voice does after it has been used up on crying. "Kenji said Pingu was stupid."
"Okay."
"He said Pingu was stupid and ugly and stupid, and he said my penguin was a girl's toy and I was a baby for carrying it, and I said he was wrong, and then he—"
"Then he what?"
Shin's eyes flicked down to Pingu on the bench, upright and patient, and his whole face crumpled.
"He took him," Shin said. "He took Pingu off the table when I wasn't looking and he held him up high and everyone laughed, and I told him to give him back, and he wouldn't, and then he—"
Shin's breath hitched.
"Where did he put him, Shin."
The boy's chin came up. There were tears in his eyes now and he was not letting them fall, and Kakashi — who had seen Shin cry a hundred times, who had seen him cry at the river that morning over the mouth of a great wide water he did not understand — had never seen him do this, hold them back, hold himself together by the seams.
"The trash," Shin said. "He threw Pingu in the trash."
Kakashi did not move.
"He threw Pingu in the trash," Shin said again, and his voice broke on the word like it had been cut into him. "And I got him out. I got him out myself. And then Kenji said he should've stayed there because that's where ugly things go, and I—" He swallowed. "I hit him."
Kakashi straightened up and turned around. Anzai had gone the color of old rice. Anzai," Kakashi said. His voice was very calm. It was the calmest his voice had ever been. "Why isn't the other boy being punished?"
She opened her mouth.
"He threw my son's property in the garbage. He insulted my son in front of his classmates. He made a group of children laugh at him." Kakashi's hands were loose at his sides. "And you're standing here telling me about the two times Shin hit his arm. Why isn't Kenji being punished?"
"I— we—" She blinked several times, very fast, like a woman trying to catch up with a train that had left the station without her. "The policy is— that is, when there's a physical— Kenji's mother and I have also spoken to Kenji and we— both of them will be, that is—" She stopped. Collected herself. "Both of them will be receiving a consequence. Shin will miss recess tomorrow, and Kenji will miss recess tomorrow. Both of them."
"Both of them," Kakashi repeated.
"Yes."
"That's generous of you." Anzai's jaw worked. She said nothing, because there was nothing to say, and Kakashi looked at her for one more long cold second, and then he bent down and scooped Pingu off the bench with one hand and held out the other to his son.
"Come on," he said. "Let's go home."
Shin slid off the bench without a word. He did not take the hand — he reached up and wrapped both arms around Pingu instead, hugging the penguin so hard his arms shook, and Kakashi let the offered hand drop without a word and walked his son out of the courtyard and into the night.
He did not say anything until they were two blocks from the academy.
Then he said, "Do you want to talk about it, or do you want to walk?"
Shin walked. Shin was very, very good at walking quietly when he wanted to. They passed under a streetlamp and his shadow skipped along beside them, small and hunched and hugging a penguin.
At the corner, he said, "I'm not sorry I hit him."
Kakashi nodded. "Okay."
"I'm not."
"Okay. I heard you."
They walked another block. The lights of the apartment building came into view, warm and yellow, and Shin's stride got slower and slower and slower.
"Is Mama gonna be mad?" he asked.
"Probably not."
"Is Mama gonna be sad?"
"Probably a little. She worries."
Shin stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk. Kakashi stopped too, and turned back, and Shin stood there under the streetlamp with his face all screwed up and said, very fast, all in one breathless rush:
"I'm sorry I hit him but I'm not sorry I got Pingu out of the trash. He didn't belong in the trash, Dada. He's not ugly. He's not. He's my friend, and he didn't belong in the trash."
His voice cracked down the middle and he started to cry — really cry, the way he had not let himself cry at the academy, dogged and noisy and shaking with it, and Pingu got hugged so tight his neck bent.
Kakashi crouched down in front of him again.
He did not say it's okay. It was not okay. He did not say you're fine, because Shin was not fine, and he did not say don't cry, because that was not the point.
He said, "You stood up for something that mattered to you. And you stood up for yourself. That's not nothing, Shin. That's the hard part. That's the right part."
Shin's sob hitched.
"But we don't start fights with classmates," Kakashi said. "We don't hit people. Even when they're wrong. Even when they're wrong and we're very right. That's not how we fix it, and it's not how a shinobi fixes it either. Shinobi with the biggest fists are the worst shinobi."
"Why?" Shin wailed, wet and furious and four.
"Because the fists are the easy part. Anybody can hit." Kakashi tapped his temple. "The hard part is everything else. Words. Patience. Getting help when you need it. You had a teacher. You had a whole classroom full of kids. You didn't have to fix this alone, and you didn't have to fix it with your hands."
Shin sniffled. He wiped his nose with his sleeve and looked up, down, at the sidewalk, at Pingu.
"Kenji's not a very good shinobi," he mumbled.
"No. He's not a very good friend either."
"He's not a friend at all."
"Fair."
Kakashi stood up and held out his hand again. This time, Shin shifted Pingu to the crook of his elbow and slid his small hand into his father's. They walked the last half-block in silence, and then Kakashi said, "Did you get him out of the trash?"
Shin looked up.
"Pingu," Kakashi said. "Did you get him out yourself?"
"Uh-huh." Shin hugged the penguin closer. "He got rot on him. I wiped it off."
"You wiped it off."
"With my shirt." A guilty pause. "Pingu's fine. Pingu's okay. I checked."
Kakashi squeezed his son's hand. In the warm and the quiet and the last long shadows of the street, he said, "Then that was the important part. You didn't leave him there. You got him out." His voice was low. "That's what I want you to remember about today. Not the fight. That."
At home, the lights were on and Sakura was in the doorway before they reached it. She took one look at the red eyes and the penguin and dropped to her knees on the mat and opened her arms, and Shin ran into them and Pingu got crushed between them and Shin told his mother the whole story in one long shuddering breathless sentence.
Sakura listened. She held him. She looked over his head at Kakashi, and Kakashi looked back at her, and all the anger he had carried on the walk home folded itself away quietly and got put down somewhere he would not need to pick it up again.
"Bed," Sakura said. "Bath first. Bed after."
"Not sleepy."
"Shin."
"...Can Pingu have a bath too?"
"Pingu can have the damp washcloth on the sink. He's fabric, sweetheart. That's as much bath as he gets."
Later, after the bath and after the story and after Shin had finally, finally dropped into the heavy sleep of a child who had been to the river and to war in a single day, Kakashi stood in the doorway of his son's room and watched him breathe.
Sakura appeared beside him, drying her hands on a towel.
"Well?" she said softly.
"Kenji Umehara," Kakashi murmured, "threw Pingu in the trash. Shin fished him out and hit him twice."
Sakura drew a slow breath in through her nose.
"He's not sorry he hit him," Kakashi said.
"Are you?"
"No." He let it sit. "I told him I'm happy he stood up for himself. I told him we don't start fights with classmates." He glanced at her. "I think I meant both of those things."
Sakura turned and looked at the small sleeping shape in the bed. Pingu was tucked under one arm, one eye catching the nightlight, the purple heart on his belly rising and falling with Shin's breath.
"Two years," she said quietly. "Two years of stitches. It would've been easier to let him cry."
"Very." Kakashi's eye moved to the windowsill, where the wooden box sat, patient, unopened. "But he fished him out of the trash."
"Yes."
"I think that tells us everything we need to know about who he's turning out to be."
Sakura reached down and found his hand in the dark, and they stood there together, two people and a river and a penguin and a box on a windowsill, and outside the window the last of the night went its own gentle way.