*These are the Kanji for the names referenced in the chapter below.*

悲子 Hana Ko Sorrow Child

畑ケ Hata Ke Farmland

案山子 Kakashi Scarecrow

作物 Sakumo(tsu) Crops

Pakkun sighed. Kakashi's whelp coughed roughly in her room, the wet sound traveling through the apartment walls with little effort. Poor pup had been bed ridden for days, a fever wracking her too small body and leaving her dazed and confused.

He hadn't been sure what to think of her, at first. Her scent was strange, like her body was young but her chakra was old, and it made his nose itch. She didn't clamber to pet him, like other kids her age, instead asking for permission every time and speaking respectfully.

That Kakashi took on a child at all had been strange. After all the loss he'd suffered, Pakkun and the pack believed he would never allow another human into his life, let alone start a family of his own. Adoption had certainly been out of the question. And yet...

He could see what drew Kakashi to her. There was a sadness about her, a despondency which dripped from her chakra and called to the people around her to offer their comfort. Her black eyes had seen too much, too soon, too young.

Just like Kakashi.

Another round of coughing broke his reverie, and Pakkun sighed again. It was times like these he really wished he had thumbs. It was hard enough caring for humans when they were healthy adults, but sick children were a realm of their own.

Honestly, of all the times for Kakashi to go on an away mission.

He trotted down the hall and into the girl's room, jumping up onto the bed and settling down beside her.

"How're you feeling, pup?"

She wheezed harshly, opening bleary eyes to look at him. A wobbly smile spread across her unmasked face, awakening a pair of deep dimples. "Pakkun." Another cough wracked her body.

He reached over and removed the wet cloth from her forehead, kneading it with his paws to push out the sweaty water. "Hush, pup. Don't strain yourself." He rewet the cloth and placed it on her head, wiping away the excess water that ran down her face. "Did you take your medicine?"

She nodded, breathing ragged. "Pakkun, what about school?"

"Don't worry about it, pup. Kids get sick all the time."

She tried to protest further, but a knock on the front door interrupted her.

Pakkun pressed down on her chest with a paw, leveling a mock glare on her. "Stay."

He jumped off the bed and scampered over to the entryway, leaping up and hooking his paws around the door handle. His weight pulled it down and the door swung inward, letting a swatch of sunlight broken by a shadow. Looking around the door, Pakkun took in the visitor.

The boy was only around seven or eight, with the pale, pale eyes of the Hyuuga. He wore a wide headband over his forehead, marking him as a member of the branch family, and a dark blue yukata.

"What do you want, kid?" Pakkun asked, sitting in the doorway. "There aren't any humans around to entertain you."

The Hyuuga boy held out a red folder. "Iruka-sensei sent me here to bring Hatake the work she missed in class today."

Pakkun nodded his head. "Thanks, kid. She was worried about that."

A loud cough echoed from inside the apartment and the Hyuuga's pale eyes flickered past Pakkun for a moment before settling on his face.

"She's ill."

It wasn't a question, but Pakkun answered anyway.

"Yeah, I wouldn't linger if I were you. She'd hate it if you caught it from her."

The child nodded and placed the folder in Pakkun's open mouth before leaving.

The little pug turned back to the interior of the apartment, kicking the door closed behind him. Hopefully, the kid would be well enough to finish her schoolwork before it began piling up. Kakashi had never really had any homework—a perk of graduating at six—but he'd never been one for paperwork. Either he did it right away or not at all.

Pakkun could only hope that bad habit wasn't contagious.

Hanako was happy to see the folder, bleary eyes scanning the contents with a small smile. "Who brought it?"

"A Hyuuga," Pakkun replied, burrowing into her soft comforter. "He dropped it off and left."

"Eh? You mean Neji-san?" She seemed genuinely surprised. "Huh, I didn't think him the type."

A cough shook the bed and Pakkun again lamented his lack of thumbs. The kid had to get up and out of bed to get a glass of water, stumbling down the hall into the bathroom. Her fever had come down since that morning, but it was still high enough to be concerning. She chugged the water loudly, filling and refilling the glass as she drank her fill. Then, instead of returning to her bed, she turned down the hall and entered the kitchen, placing the folder of classwork on the table.

"Kid, you should be resting."

She groaned as she looked for a pencil. "But if I don't do it now, I won't do it at all."

Well.

Pakkun leapt up onto the table, keeping a stern eye on the pup as she struggled through a reading assignment. She circled the kanji she didn't know in red pen, saving them for the end as she always did. Genius though she clearly was—no child of Kakashi's would be anything different, adopted or not—she had very good study habits. Pakkun knew how many kanji workbooks she'd gone through just to pass the reading comprehension test the academy set out for her, and he couldn't help but be impressed with her diligence. It would have been so easy to play the eccentric genius card and simply skipped the academy altogether—Kakashi would have helped, the enabling fool—but she seemed to favor the slow and steady route, doing everything one step at a time.

Her handwriting had certainly benefited from that mentality. Slow, even strokes, everything in its place. If he didn't know better, he might have thought the kanji printed rather than handwritten.

"Pakkun," she wheezed, pushing her homework toward him. "What does this one mean?"

He glanced at the kanji. "In that context it's 'expensive'."

She whispered her thanks and continued reading, mumbling to herself as she went.

Yes, she could have graduated without ever setting foot in the academy, but she seemed to genuinely enjoy the learning material. Over the last six months, she'd begun collecting (simple) books on the history of Konoha and the shinobi system, reading them with an avarice that might have concerned him if he wasn't acutely aware of how quickly her reading was progressing.

It was hard not to like the pup when she was so dratted cute, but Pakkun knew he was probably biased. As Kakashi's primary liaison with the rest of the pack, he spent the most time out and about. He saw a lot more of the littlest Hatake than the other dogs, and he knew that clouded his perspective. Once Kakashi came back, he'd talk him into letting the others out more, but, for now, he was on his own.

Unless...

Before he could continue down that train of thought, someone knocked on the door. Again.

"You sure are popular, today," he lamented as he jumped off the table. He brushed off her quiet apology and opened the door.

There were two people, this time, and he could already tell they would both be headaches.

"Hey, Pakkun," Naruto exclaimed while balancing a sealed bowl of what smelled like ramen on his head. "I heard Hana got sick, so I brought some ramen! Teuchi-jii-chan made it just for her!"

"Ah," Pakkun responded, turning to the other child on the doorstep as the jinchuriki ran past him. "And you?"

The dark haired kid bowed at a ninety degree angle, his braid flopping with the force of it. "Good afternoon! My name is Rock Lee and I am Hatake-san's classmate! It was my hope to share my notes with her and assist with her homework if necessary!"

"A-ah," Pakkun said, looking over his shoulder at Hanako. At her thumbs up, he nodded. "You can come in, but if you get sick, it's not our fault."

"Thank you very much for your hospitality!"

Pakkun wilted.

At least Kakashi's kid was quiet. Unless she was asking a question, she rarely spoke at home. Kakashi was also a quiet man, for the most part, so they meshed well in that sense. How such a quiet kid managed to make the loudest friends was beyond him.

"Ah, my friend, your face is uncovered!" Lee made a show of covering his eyes and Hanako laughed hoarsely.

"Don't worry about it. We're friends, right?" Lee nodded fervently, hands still pressed against his face. "Will seeing my face change that?" He shook his head. "Will it change the way you treat me?" Another dizzying shake. "Then we're good."

He lowered his hands hesitantly, wide eyes welling with tears as he took in Hanako's pale, runny nosed face. "My friend, I will not betray your trust!"

"Hey, Bushy Brows, what'd Iruka-sensei make you guys do today? He gave us a quiz!" Naruto's voice broke through whatever speech the boy might have launched into, and Pakkun didn't miss Hanako's relieved expression.

"We covered the Second Shinobi War in lecture—I know you were looking forward to that, so I took especially good notes—and then we continued our chakra training from last week."

"Eh!? You're already doing chakra training? Iruka-sensei says we can't do it until after summer break!"

Pakkun watched from the entryway as the boys chatted back and forth about their classes while Hanako helped herself to the ramen Naruto brought for her. She pointed to Lee's notes.

"What does this one say?"

"Ah, that is sakumotsu, meaning crops!"

"Sakumo...?" She raised her head and met Pakkun's gaze. "Like grandpa Sakumo?"

He nodded. "It's spelled the same."

"Huh," she cocked her head in a way so reminiscent of Kakashi Pakkun could swear he smelled him. "Crops, scarecrows, and farmland.* We're a very agricultural family, aren't we?"

Pakkun chuckled as he joined the children in the kitchen, retaking his place on the table. "Yeah. The Hatake were among the first clans to settle into a sedentary lifestyle, so it's become part of your legacy."

Her expression brightened and even her illness couldn't mask her eagerness. "Is there a book about it? The library just has stuff on the big clans, like the Hyuuga and Uchiha."

Naruto's face scrunched at that, but he didn't say anything.

Pakkun sighed. "Not likely. There might be something at the old compound, but—."

"Eh, there's a compound?"

Ah, Kakashi. What have you been doing?

"Ah," Pakkun said, suddenly tired. "The Hatake were one of the founding clans of Konoha, you know."

They clearly did not, as all three looked at him in shock.

"The only clans covered in class are the Senju and Uchiha," Lee said, a pensive look crossing his expressive face. "Do you think this one of those things that will be built upon later, like you said, dear Hatake-san? Where the younger we are, the simpler the history we learn is?"

She hummed to herself, taking another sip of her ramen's broth. "Maybe. There aren't exactly a lot of us, right now—just me and my dad—so maybe there weren't enough of us back then to make as much of a difference as the Senju and Uchiha?"

She looked to Pakkun for confirmation, but he shrugged. "Beats me kid. I wasn't exactly around at the time."

She sighed in obvious disappointment, but her expression didn't stay dark for long. "Do you think I should change my kanji to flowers? So I can match dad and grandpa?"

Eh?

"What do you mean, Hana?" Naruto asked, clearly just as confused. "Isn't your name already flowers?"

Hanako shook her head, expression sheepish. She set her ramen aside and pulled out one of the assignments her Hyuuga classmate had brought for her. There, at the top of the page, were the kanji for her name.

"Eh? Who names their kid that?"

Naruto seemed to realize just how insensitive his question was just as he finished asking it, slapping a hand over his mouth with wide eyes. Hanako took no obvious offense, though, just smiling sadly.

"Who indeed," she sighed. "That's why I asked about changing it. If it's flowers, then I match the rest of my family. And it's not like my name will change; if anything, it'll make more sense."

The others at the table were silent for a moment as they considered this.

Lee shook his head. "It is not my place to make such a decision, but I do not think you should change it. My mother has often said that a name is a prayer, and its meaning may not always be clear at first glance. Perhaps the one who named you wished for you to overcome sorrow, or something similar."

Naruto, who had been oddly silent during Lee's monologue, jumped up and nodded vigorously. "Yeah! Your name can mean whatever you want it to! Believe it!"

Hanako snorted and the tension in the room vanished. "Thanks, guys."

"Besides," Naruto shrugged. "Your name does match your dad's. You both have 'ko'!"

"His is pronounced 'shi'."

"It's still the same, though."

Pakkun sighed as the conversation turned to the various pronunciations of different kanji, something Hanako was still having trouble with. Leaping from the table, he resolved to have a long chat with Kakashi when he came home.