THE NEW ME .

unprompted | @medtensei asked: it's weird to approach him like this, surely. but ... kakashi seems open to discussing things with people, despite things from the past. the medical - nin's gaze cannot meet the rokudaime's, a glare over his glasses as he stands in the hokage's office as they agreed to meet. "i do apologize if i made you think this was urgent... hokage-sama." well, it was to him, but he recognizes that kakashi is a busy man now.

"i ... this will sound extremely odd to ask, but i promise it has meaning." he attempts to steady himself, dropping his polite pleasantries in exchange for a more relaxed demeanor, to see as though he is relaxed. is is truly anything but. "what can you tell me of your family, kakashi?"

he does not mention the digging he's done, not yet.

The other had made it seem as if it had been urgent to meet, even if he was acting like it wasn't urgent suddenly, he was still reading the situation as urgent to at least the one standing on the other side of his desk in his office. He hadn't been expecting Kabuto to want a meeting with him but hadn't turned it down, he was working to bring peace into the village, into the rest of the world with the help of other kage alike. Of course he'd make time for someone that he'd had conflicts with in the past, that the village had conflicts with in the past, try and show peace was on the table for everyone.

Hokage - sama, the title is still taking getting used to even now, he's not sure he'll ever get used to it. He's never been good with titles and honorifics. ❛ Maa, trust me, just Kakashi is fine. We've known each other long enough. ❜ We've fought one another and have been anything but kind to one another before, is left unsaid. ❛ I did get the impression that it was pretty urgent. ❜ He admits, resting elbow on desk and setting his chin into the palm of his hand as dark gaze stays trained on Kabuto's form.

He doesn't say anything to the next set of words, instead pale brows rise and he makes a motion with a free hand to get him to keep going. He's not against answering questions if he has the answers. Yet, when the question presents itself to him, he feels like ice water has been dropped over him. There's a moment that he takes to process the question, there's a furrowing of brows, a narrowing of eyes but then there's a sigh. What can it hurt to talk about a dead clan? It was never easy to think about the clan he came from, there was a lot that surrounded it and he was some sort of clan head of a dead clan when he thought about it.

❛ You've lost me on what this is about but I'll humor you, just this once. ❜ There's another sigh that spills past the Hatake's lips as his mind words to find the words to supply his tongue. ❛ The Hatake clan was once a rather large clan and became known as one of Konoha's many clans very early into Konoha's existence. There were shinobi and civilian alike in the clan. ❜ Fingers drum against his desk. ❛ The wars started dropping the numbers for the clan, more Hatake clan members felt they had to join ranks as shinobi to help the village and more and more Hatake didn't come back. It got to a point where the clan had a split, the ones that were more inclined to being shinobi stuck around in Konoha's walls, the ones that weren't as inclined to the shinobi lifestyle branched out of the walls that Konoha offered, from what clan records show they were still located in the land of fire. ❜ Sitting ducks, it's what he'd thought when he finally worked up the nerve to read clan records what felt like forever ago now.

❛ Not sure if they were trying to make sure the Hatake name didn't die out or if they just stopped feeling comfortable with the shinobi lifestyle but . . . The clan that was left in Konoha all but died out over time, slowly but surely it was just me and my father and then after his passing it just left me. There was never really any contact with the other side of the clan. I . . . I looked into that side years ago. I wanted family to connect to but there was nothing left to connect to. ❜ Sitting ducks indeed, likely targeted for their relation to Hatake Sakumo, his father who had made quite the name for themselves and they had no way to protect themselves as they were not shinobi, they were peaceful, not fighters and they'd been wiped off the map for one shinobi of their clan having a name for himself.

stories nono told him about how she found him were few & between. at least, from what he remembers of them. he tried to hold onto everything his mother ever told him, but the mind of someone with physical trauma to it tends to suffer with recall. something he learnt on his own, from the countless experiments on bodies of unlucky shinobi - of those dead & revived over & over to satisfy a ever devouring hunger for knowledge.

" ... yes, yes, of course. " though he seems almost coy about it, a sly persona that he still has not had the chance to entirely slip from, there is a weight in kabuto's movements that has never been there before. " i have to ask forgiveness, but i did a bit of snooping behind the scenes. being a spy is never something you lose a talent for, i'm afraid. "

the topic of his identity has always been one so difficult to carry.

" i would have spared you much of the details of my own story, but ... if you so badly want me to humor you all the same, i will. " stay steady, kabuto. do not tremble before someone else.

" yakushi nono, the former caretaker of konoha orphanage, was my adoptive mother. i do not know where i came from before, only that she found me with a head injury outside a destroyed city ... in the land of fire. " one could subtly see the man's gaze angle to kakashi's hair. he chuckles a bit, without thinking.

" in these times of peace, i've been struggling to discover myself, you know? in a bit of curiosity, i wanted to see if there was anything possibly left untouched, anything that danzo perhaps did not destroy, that still existed of my mother & myself. " spies should never have records, but kabuto knew his mother. he knew the loving woman that nono was before she was lied to by danzo. she would have held onto something. he knew.

& he was right.

" i stumbled upon the location of where i was found, as a boy, & went further digging into konoha's records to see if anything about the city existed ... "

without warning, his eyes meet kakashi's. his cunning smile remains - but it is not the same as it usually was.

dude went from this