This Was The Moment Where I Knew I Was A Goner.  

this was the moment where i knew i was a goner.  

i didn’t even LIKE this show back when i watched these episodes, and yet i specifically remember mumbling “oh my god” when i heard those steps on the porch and kakashi’s gentle voice saying can i talk to you.

the idea that this man would even take the time.  kakashi met these people two days ago.  he’s a total stranger to them.  he’s not responsible for inari.  he’s not a part of inari’s family.  he’s a temporary employee, one who’s not even being paid for his work, thanks to tazuna’s lie.  he has absolutely no reason to get involved when this tiny child has a meltdown at the dinner table - and yet.

out he goes onto the porch, after the crying child.  the fact that he does this at all would be admirable enough in its own right, but it’s not just that.  it’s the way he’s such a natural with children, the way he’s such an intuitively skilled teacher, the way he treats inari with the same kind of respect that he would afford to a fellow adult, while still addressing him in a way that a younger mind can easily understand.  it’s the “can i talk to you” - giving this little child the autonomy to say no, instead of using the fact that one person is an adult and one is a child to force an interaction.  it’s the way he always refers to kaiza as “your father,” even though inari and kaiza weren’t technically related (and even though the first thing tazuna says about kaiza is “he wasn’t [inari’s] real father”) - kakashi takes his cues from inari, and for inari, kaiza WAS his real father, and so that’s what kakashi calls him, every single time.  it’s the way he acknowledges that what naruto said wasn’t very nice.  it’s the way he gently explains the circumstances that might have prompted naruto to say something like that, opening inari’s eyes to how naruto and inari have experienced similar pains.  and it’s the way he does all of this without giving away a single hint that his own childhood might have been anything other than perfectly pleasant - the complete decentering of the self, the mending of the children around him without them ever realizing a single thing about why he does it.

kakashi tells inari “i think [naruto] knows better than any of us what you’re going through” - and at the time when i was watching, i was like “sure, sounds legit!”  but now, looking back, and armed with so much more information, i know the truth, which is that there’s someone in the room who understands inari even better than naruto.  naruto grew up without parents, yes.  but the story tazuna tells Team 7 isn’t about growing up alone and shunned as an orphan.  it’s about inari having a father who he loved and revered (“the man who taught us the word courage, who was known as a hero”), and then having him be (literally, on an actual cross) crucified for standing up for what’s right (“this man has defied the gato corporation…he has disturbed the order of this land”), and then inari having a trauma-induced crisis and rejecting his father’s heroic ideals because they no longer feel real or possible to him (“since then, inari’s changed.  so did tsunami, and all our people…we lost our will”), and then inari ripping his father’s face out of their family photo in the kitchen (“[inari] never laughs or smiles anymore.  ever since that day when everything changed.”)

naruto and inari do end up connecting eventually, because kakashi helps them recognize where they have common ground.  but the person at the table who really understands the crying child (the child who’s shouting “there’s no such thing as a hero!”) is kakashi.  the person who really understands inari’s anger at being left behind - at having a beloved parent make a decision that takes them out of your life forever, when they could have just kept their heads down and stayed with you - is kakashi.  the person who understands both inari’s rage at others’ idealism and his unwillingness to break gato’s rules as feelings that come from a place of fear (“gato’s got a whole army; he’ll beat you down and they’ll destroy you!”) is kakashi.

you told me that you’d protect me and this land with both your arms.  you made me believe you could do it.  but it was all just a lie! 

kakashi understands.  he knows, and just like always, he steps in to help.  he sees a suffering child, and he knows he can do something about it, and he gets involved, even though he doesn’t have to, even though it’s not his job, even though there is literally no reason why he should be the one to comfort this kid when inari’s mother and grandfather are sitting right there in the same house.  kakashi doesn’t do it because he’s obligated.  he does it because he can’t NOT do it, because this is who he is, because this is how much he cares, because he’s the avatar for what jiraiya tells young!nagato in the pain arc: “it is because one understands such pain that generosity towards others becomes second nature.”

this scene with inari is in episode TWELVE.  twelve, of one thousand.  at this point in the show, we know nothing about kakashi.  we have no idea what his life has been like.  but this show still tells us exactly who he is, right then and there, when he walks out onto that porch and asks a stranger’s crying child “can i talk to you?”  from that point on, we know - he’s The Teacher.  he’s the one who walks ahead of everyone else, enduring his own pain and using it to help others navigate theirs.  he’s the support structure.  he’s the guide, the protector of children.  it was true nine hundred episodes ago in the land of waves, and it’s true where i’m currently watching, too, in the shadow of the infinite tsukuyomi, when kakashi asks sasuke “what is your current dream?” - because never mind the war, never mind the three intervening years of conflict and bad blood, never mind the danger encroaching on all sides - kakashi is still kakashi.  he’s still the one who sees a lost child and asks, “can i talk to you?”  

i’m not sure he’ll get a response as positive as inari’s this time, or that he’ll get any response at all, but i think it matters to remember that nothing - nothing - has ever changed him from being the kind of person who asks this question.