Chapter 1
Konoha no Mai
a/n Just in case you did not read the summary, this is a sequel to Dance of the Hidden Leaves. If you haven't read the first one, this story will make no sense whatsoever. I repeat, this is a sequel. I have no intention of going through a long tedious explanation of why Kimimaro is doing this or why Kabuto is doing that if the answer is in the first story I wrote. I do not own Naruto.
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
-Robert Frost
Four stone faces stared down at the humble village and the surrounding forest. Carved out of the mountainside, the greatest of Konoha's leaders remained engraved in human memory as though they were still, in their own way, looking out for the village they had loved and lead. But of course, that was just a pleasant fantasy. They had guarded the Hidden Leaf during their own lives, and that was more than anyone could ask of them. They had gone the way of the autumn leaves, and the four Hokages could do nothing more for their village.
Except for one of them.
The Third Hokage looked up at the chiseled mountainside, imagining the future, when the mountain would be full of the faces of the greatest shinobi of their time, and Sarutobi remembered the past, when there was only one. Because he was actually one of the few left who had known each of the village's great leaders personally. When he was a child, he had seen the First, who had forged a foundation of peace in the midst of a world of war and chaos. Sarutobi had spoken with the Second, who had trained him and had taught him the meaning of self sacrifice. And then there was the Fourth.
The Fourth Hokage, more than any of his predecessors, had been the epitome of the word "hero." In his life and death he had inspired those around him. Throughout his existence, he had emulated the sublime attributes of courage, determination, and, most of all, hope.
"He hoped the village would think of the boy as a hero," he said out loud.
"I know," said Iruka at his side. "It seems these days rather like a lack of foresight on his part."
"On the contrary, I think he had too much," the Third corrected. "If anyone had a lack of foresight, it was the village as a whole. Fear and hatred can do that to people, and I'm afraid the Fourth had precious little of either. He probably suspected how things would turn out, but that's the way of things. Gambles don't always pay off, but then again, sometimes they do."
And that indeed was true. It had been a gamble, a few years ago, when he had allowed the boy Kimimaro, who and come to the village, lost and alone, to join the ninja academy. It had been another gamble to allow an aspiring jounin, Kabuto, to become the sensei to a team of genin. His life was full of gambles, and yet...
"You have a point," Iruka admitted. "I worry about him sometimes, but Naruto seems happy enough."
"And, to not display favoritism, I'm sure you worry about all you're past academy students equally," the Third said with a smile.
"I try," he replied. "But surprisingly few academy students have ever managed to save my life."
"No," Sarutobi laughed. "I suppose they wouldn't."
"By the way, what was it that you wanted to see me about?"
"Ah yes! I forget myself. Iruka, I wanted to talk to you about the preparations for the upcoming chunin exam."
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Kimimaro took one last look at his plants before shutting the door. He was pressed for time as it was, but the flower he was growing did not look well. It drooped lower and lower every day and its immaculate white petals had started to grey. Perhaps it was the lack of sunlight. The plant occupied the one windowsill of the lone window of his room, and as Kimimaro seldom bothered to turn the lights on when he was inside, his residence often had the appearance of a prison cell.
Well, if it were any other way, he thought, finally closing the door, it wouldn't feel like home. He smiled at the thought as he began walking toward the training ground, but he knew the light wasn't the problem. The flower was from a much wetter climate to the east, the Land of Water, which was, if only technically, Kimimaro's homeland. He could not neglect the plant for a few weeks at a time and expect it to flourish, and, as a shinobi of the Hidden Leaf, that often happened.
He barely paid attention to the hundreds who passed him on the road in the morning. Each one of them was an individual, he was told, but if half of them keeled over dead one day, he probably wouldn't even notice. Kimimaro found it difficult to think of them as anything other than a statistic. All of them were exactly the same.
But not Kimimaro. He was different, unique. In the whole village, in all the world, there were none like him among the living. The Kaguya clan, his clan, was extinct. They had followed the path of the sword to the bitter end, and had left nothing behind except a scarred land that had already healed. Of that clan, he was the last. That left him with a sense of both solitude and satisfaction. In all the Hidden Leaf, there were none who truly understood him, and there were none whom he could truly understand.
The village's primary skill was with the kunai and the shuriken, and yet human life had acquired irrational value to the point of being sacred. Friends, enemies, even cowards could not be slain except by accident, if avoidable. To do otherwise was almost an act of dishonor. Similarly interesting was that the art of combat was recognized as a necessary skill, which it was, but nothing more. That it could be viewed as an art, as something beautiful, was something that few understood. But in truth, the only time Kimimaro's spirit was at peace was when his body was in combat, and whenever his body was at peace, his spirit was left in turmoil.
Such was the price of being a foreigner, but it was worth it. More important than the isolation was knowing that he was irreplaceable. He could do things that no one else could do; his gift to his village could never be duplicated.
Kimimaro arrived on the training ground on time, but he was still the last one there. Kabuto-sensei glanced up when he heard him, and then turned back to the med-nin training he was giving HInata. Hinata didn't bother to look up, but she was probably the first one who saw him. She had a special bloodline, and with her eyes, she could read a book with her eyes closed. And then there was Naruto.
"I beat you," Naruto said immediately. A large grin covered half his face, not to scorn those he had defeated, but only to elevate himself as he stood, if only for a moment, infinitely content in the sublime light of victory.
"I wasn't racing you," Kimimaro reminded him.
Naruto paused for a moment. "Well, I still beat you." And his smile returned.
The boy was, by nature, childishly competitive. He strived to be the best at everything, and every waking moment was a chance to prove his worth. He constantly challenged those around him to see who could eat more, who could fall asleep faster, or, in this case, who could get to the training ground first, and would do so with or without his opponent's consent.
"Shall we get started then?" Kimimaro offered.
He grinned again, but this time it was one of savage hunger, of desire. If his face weren't otherwise dominated by an expression of pure obliviousness, it would almost have been frightening.
"This time," he shouted, "you're going down!"
Kimimaro almost laughed at the idea. "Every time I don't have you down at my feet within three minutes, I consider it a personal failure."
"Let's go!"
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"What do you think that cloud looks like?"
"A cloud."
"Oh. Uh, how about that one?"
"I'd have to say that that one…also looks like a cloud."
"You know what?" said Sakura, irritated, "this has got to be the most boring thing I have ever done. How can you waste your life doing this?"
Shikamaru rolled his head slightly to face her without getting up. "Passively," he replied. "Very passively."
Sakura got up and scanned the trees for some sign of the missing member of their team. "He's always late!" she complained. "Kakashi has got to be the most irresponsible jounin-sensei ever! And in half an hour or so when he finally does get here, he's going to say something like," she deepened her voice, "'Sorry about that. I was on my way here, but then a blind man dropped his cane and it got kicked down a flight of stairs, so I had to help,' or something even more ridiculous."
"Quit complaining," growled Sasuke from the shade of the tree he was sitting under. "It won't help him get here any faster."
Sakura sat down again in the grass. "Why is he always late?"
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It was never easy to focus on a dead fish. It was harder still with people trying to kill each other right next to you.
"Remember," Kabuto said to his aspiring med-nin student. "The purpose of this exercise isn't to bring this fish to life, it's just to make it move. Shock the nerves to stimulate the muscles. That's all there is to it."
"Hai, Kabuto-sensei," Hinata replied firmly, or at least trying to sound firm. The tremor in her voice was barely noticeable. She moved her hands through the practiced hand seals until her hands started to glow. It was a simple exercise, meant to better understand the relationship between the muscle structure and the nervous system, but Naruto and Kimimaro were sparring and making a lot of noise, and that was not helping her concentration one bit. But then again, if a teammate were injured on the field, she might not be able to wait for things to calm down before she did anything. If she ever made it that far.
Hinata struck the fish and pushed the green light of her medical jutsu into the dead animal.
It flopped.
Hinata and her sensei stared at the fish. I did it, she thought. I can't believe it! She had half convinced herself that the fish was going to explode or something.
It flopped again.
"Oh," said Kabuto. "You started its heart. That was…"
"Wrong," Hinata finished.
"Overkill, ironically," he corrected. "But you know what?" he added, picking up the gasping fish. "This fish has been through a lot. Let's let it go." And with that he tossed it toward the stream.
Klang!
All of a sudden, a deflected kunai from Kimimaro and Naruto's sparring match flew through the air and skewered the poor fish to a tree.
"Or not," Kabuto added, getting up to retrieve the fish. "Alright, Hinata, this one is a bit harder. Let's see what you can do."
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Kimimaro neatly sidestepped a crude kunai-thrust from his opponent and responded with a delicate slash at his shoulder. The shadow clone disappeared in a cloud of smoke just like the thirty others he went through. Naruto insisted on sparring every morning before their daily D-rank missions, convinced somehow that one of these days he would come out on top.
He never did.
To Naruto, this was a challenge, just one more challenge on his way to fulfilling his dream, a dream which he declared loudly to everyone nearby on a regular basis.
To Kimimaro, on a good day this was a training exercise, a warm up, or maybe a practice scenario for when he would have to capture his opponent alive, or something. On a bad day, this was an annoyance.
This wasn't a good day.
Kimimaro wished that he could go all out, without holding back. It had been a while since he had been able to let go of himself on a mission and do what he was best at, and as he sparred with Naruto, it seemed somehow wrong that he was worried that he might accidently hurt someone while he was using a style developed by generations of mad killers that was specifically designed to kill people.
It made things more interesting when something was at stake, when he ran the risk of losing something. That certainly wasn't happening now, and it hadn't happened in a long time. When he was a child, it had happened frequently. Back then, he was with his clan, as the secret weapon of the clan Kaguya, forever locked in darkness like a dangerous beast. But now and again, he would be released, and for one hour, he would have freedom.
And a purpose.
But he had a different purpose now. He had become a shinobi of the Village of the Hidden Leaf, and that was all the purpose he needed. The purpose of the Leaf was more to create than to destroy, to protect rather than to kill. Here he was free. He was safe.
Too safe, he sometimes felt. The last time he ran a risk of losing something substantial was when they had fought against a team of kiri nin. His kekkei genkai left him virtually indestructible, but he could drown as well as anyone, and the shinobi from the Hidden Mist could easily exploit that with their water jutsu. Right then, he was against three of them, with the only help of one of Kirigakure's missing nin, someone that Kimimaro had no reason to trust, but inexplicably found himself trusting entirely.
But that was past. Now he was sparring against Naruto, not in a battle of life and death. This, now, was nothing but a game. A game that was becoming frustrating.
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Naruto was still grinning. He did that a lot when he was frustrated, he realized. Things weren't going too well for him in this match, but that was almost to be expected. Little by little, he was getting better, if only gradually. And more than anything else, that was what mattered. Shadow clones weren't the most effective technique against his teammate, he knew. He was hoping that Kabuto-sensei would teach him some really cool fire jutsu, or maybe a water jutsu, he'd seen some pretty nice ones, but so far he'd had no such luck, so for now, he'd just have to make do with shadow clones. All the same, if he could manage to wipe that calm, bored expression off his opponent's face, well, that would be victory enough.
"Hey, Kimimaro," he taunted. "I think it's been past three minutes now. What's taking you so long?"
Kimimaro didn't reply, but now he looked more annoyed than bored.
Well, that's something. "I mean, this is what you're good at, right?" he asked. "You know, cutting apart people weaker than you? You never had any difficulty before."
That was true, actually. On every mission, on every occasion that he had the chance to fight, Kimimaro would cut apart, slice, and kill every possible obstacle with all the rational ruthlessness and natural affection of a reptile. Through all this, he exhibited neither rage nor remorse, no sense of self at all. It was almost like Kimimaro didn't think of himself as human. And that frightened Naruto.
He didn't like being frightened.
"What are you?" he asked suddenly. "You've been on my team for months now, and I don't even know you! All I ever see you do is fight and kill, and even then it's like it doesn't even matter! Is that all you are?"
Kimimaro hesitated long enough for a shadow clone to almost land a kick before responding.
"Yes."
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Hinata was focusing mending the dying fish when she felt it, like a wave of cold, nauseating flame. She recognized it immediately. Killer intent. She looked up suddenly, not sure exactly where it came from. It seemed like it was coming from Naruto-kun's and Kimimaro-kun's sparring match, but that couldn't be right.
Could it?
Kabuto-sensei looked at her quizzically, as if to ask for her sudden lapse in concentration. Hinata looked back at the fish, almost apologetically. Surely if there was wrong, her sensei would have noticed it.
Right?
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What are you?
What kind of question was that? And yet, somehow, Kimimaro couldn't discard it like the blather that usually fell out of Naruto's mouth. It…bothered him. He knew what he was. He was Kaguya Kimimaro.
No.
That was his name. Nothing more.
He was what he always was. The people involved had changed, and the place had changed, nothing more. He was who he was and who he always was. Nothing more.
He was a fighter, a killer, and when he was not as such engaged, he strove to become a better one. He responded to Naruto's question with a "Yes," before he fully realized it was the truth.
Truth.
All your life you live so close to truth it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye. And when something nudges it into outline, it's like being ambushed by a grotesque.
He'd read that somewhere before, and had never really understood it. But now, after having the truth spelled out for him in the simplest form possible, it made him want to…
Well, it made him want to justify it.
"You're right, Naruto," Kimimaro responded, his voice unrealishly calm. "I am a killer, nothing more." He slipped into the stance for the Dance of the Willows without thinking. "And tell me, Naruto, why do you think that is?" His legs let go of the ground, and clones around him vanished from existence with the slightest touch. "Because it's the only think I can do! It's the only thing I'm good at!"
One of the clones he nicked in the shoulder refused to disperse. He thrust his spear into the copy's torso and waited for it to disappear.
But it didn't disappear.
It bled.
Kimimaro froze and Naruto looked at him, as if confused why his teammate had murdered him. Kimimaro looked helplessly at Kabuto-sensei.
"It's alright, Kimimaro, just put him down gently," said Kabuto with the air of someone who saw people mortally wounded on a regular basis.
Only then did Kimimaro realized that he hadn't removed his spear. He set him down steadily, and backed away. He glanced at Hinata, and would never forget the shocked, repulsed look she gave him. When she and Kabuto-sensei had focused entirely on their wounded teammate and student, Kimimaro backed away further, headed toward the woods.
And ran.
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Naruto lay sleeping, blissfully unaware of his blood spilling out of him. He had been sedated as part of the medical procedure. When he woke up, he would be mended to the best of their ability. If, that is...
"Uh, Kabuto-sensei?" Hinata asked cautiously, "Naruto-kun is going to—"
"Of course," he said easily. "From what you've told me, his liver has seen better days, but other than that, it's just skin and muscle, basic and straightforward."
"Like the fish?" The fish had died.
"I like to think that Naruto is a bit stronger than your average trout," Kabuto laughed.
Hinata tried to laugh with him and failed horribly. "This is all my fault," she whispered sadly. "Right before it happened, I noticed that Kimimaro, he...I felt some killer intent. I should have done something, but, I..."
"Ah," he replied thoughtfully, readjusting his glasses. "And why didn't you?"
"I don't know!" she cried defensively. "I...I thought that if there were any danger, someone else would have noticed it first."
"Is that so?" He frowned slightly. "Tell me, who on this team has senses more acute than yours?" Hinata looked at him, but didn't answer. "No one, Hinata, no one. So trust yourself. Trust your instincts. Trust your eyes, and your heart. They're sharper than anyone else's on this team."
Hinata looked at her sensei, not entirely sure what he meant by that...but right now, they had more important things to worry about. She turned towards Naruto and focused on sealing his gaping wound.
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Kimimaro found himself running through the woods, heading toward nowhere, but only away from what he'd done. He wasn't afraid for Naruto. Naruto wouldn't die. Kabuto-sensei was one of the best med-nins in Konoha, and besides, Naruto was…not strong, exactly, but the word sturdy fit him well. And he was by far too determined and stubborn to let himself die. No, Kimimaro wasn't afraid for the state of his teammate.
But he was afraid.
He had lost control. He never lost control, but he lost control. All these years, he had thought that he had kept his fear and anger in his pocket, where he could take it out and look at it whenever he felt like it, that he had overcome the mad, blind blood lust that had dominated the clan Kaguya. And yet…
It was true, what Naruto had said. The last Kaguya was different from the rest of his clan, but he was still fundamentally the same. He had been a killer for as long as he had been able to fight, just as his clan had relished war since the beginning, and Kimimaro, the last surviving member of that clan, was good at one thing and one thing only.
And it was certainly not gardening.
And for the first time in years, that knowledge left him ashamed.
But why should I? What reason have I to be ashamed of what I am?
The woods ended abruptly, and Kimimaro found himself in a clearing. A black, obsidian monument stood reverently in the middle of the field, and Kimimaro knew where he was. In accordance with a long standing tradition in Konoha, the names of every shinobi who died in the service of their village were inscribed in the black stone of that memorial.
Kimimaro stood in front of the black stone for no other reason than to see if he could recognize a name. It was no use. There were far too many names for any one of them to stand out. Those names were officially recorded and chained to the remnants of human memory, but only just. If Kimimaro died honorably in battle, his name would remain on that stone, but only those who knew him personally would bother to remember him.
Kimimaro turned around and looked at the Hokage monument. The images of the four greatest leaders of Konoha's history looked aloofly down at him. The masters and servants give their lives for the Hidden Leaf, but the servants lie all but forgotten while the countenances of the great ones are immortalized in the earth.
It seemed so unfair to him. The sheer vanity alone was grotesque. Are their lives worth so much more than the legions who died at their command? But then he remembered Naruto's dream, and for a moment he thought he understood the reason behind his ambition.
The Hokage will never be forgotten. As long as the village stood, the villagers never would, never could forget the ones who led them. Kimimaro could empathize with that. To never be forgotten, to forever be part of something that would go on forever, it certainly had a dreamlike quality to it. And if he could leave some permanent mark on the world, well, the idea had some merit. But to do so, he would have to change drastically. It wouldn't be enough to just be strong, he would have to be something profoundly great, someone that could create instead of just destroy, someone that—
Kimimaro realized suddenly that he was not alone. He turned around and saw a shinobi he didn't recognize leaning casually against a tree. His hitai-ate hanging loosely over one eye and half-opened visible eye between his headband and mask made him look so unjustifiably sloppy, but Kimimaro could see that he was a jounin and deserved respect.
"Carry on," the masked shinobi said easily. "Don't let me bother you."
"No, I was just leaving," Kimimaro replied. "My team is probably waiting for me."
"That wouldn't be a surprise." Kimimaro couldn't see through the mask, but he suspected that the man was smirking at him. "I expect my team's waiting for me too. I probably should get back to them sometime. Although, I have to say it's rare to see kids your age looking at graves. They're usually too absorbed with their illusion of invincibility."
"I suppose no one is invincible," Kimimaro remarked. "I wonder how old you were when you dispelled that illusion."
"Oh, I've never had such a foolish notion," he said with a wink (or did he just blink?). "How do you think I've managed to live this long?"
It was an obvious lie, but Kimimaro knew it wasn't his place to pry. He doubted that he would learn anything more here that he already had, so Kimimaro turned back toward the woods and left.
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Naruto woke up with the sun in his eyes and a burning pain in his stomach.
"You're awake," remarked a familiar voice. "I probably should start using a different anesthetic. You seem to be building up a tolerance to this one."
"What...what happened?" he asked groggily. Anesthetic. He couldn't remember what it was, but it had something to do with making his mind feel fuzzy. Naruto noticed that he was lying on the grass and his shirt was gone. And there was blood too. He could smell blood.
"A training accident," Kabuto-sensei replied casually. "You were sparring with Kimimaro and got hurt a bit. I'd tell you not to get up and not to eat anything solid for a while, but I know you'll just ignore me."
"You got that right," Naruto remarked, getting up and reaching for his shirt. It had bloodstains on it and a hole in the front...and the back. "Wait a second!" he yelled, recalling what happened. "That maniac tried to kill me!"
"I was an accident," his sensei told him firmly. Hinata looked like she wanted to say something, but she didn't. "We've all had our share of accidents, Naruto. Even you. Sometimes the consequences are tragic and sever, other times the consequences are just a mild flesh wound."
"If this is what you call mild," he muttered, putting his shirt on, "I'd hate to see what you'd call sever."
Naruto knew what Kabuto was trying to do. He was trying to smooth out the after effects of what happened, prevent the enmity that was threatening to form so their team could act as one. But he couldn't, because he didn't really understand.
Naruto tried not to look down on people. Whether they were friends, teammates, or even kids younger than him still at the academy, Naruto would treat them with, not courtesy, but with respect. And he hated it—he hated it—when people looked down on him.
And when Kimimaro stabbed him, it was a revelation that Naruto's teammate was courteously toying with him since the beginning. If they were in a real match against each other, it wouldn't be a match at all.
He couldn't deny it. The only thing he could do was to try harder, work harder, train harder. And then, one day, he'd come out on top. Because that was who he was.
That was his way of the ninja.
Never give up!
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Kimimaro and Naruto never sparred again after that. Kimimaro didn't want to bring up what was, to him, a dazzling failure of self-discipline, and Naruto...who knows? Maybe he was just tired of losing. Kimimaro didn't press the point. They just both mutually decided not to speak of what happened that day. They still went on missions together as was expected of teammates, but that was it. Whenever they trained, they did so alone, as if they were both subconsciously trying to forget the past.
But the past doesn't always allow himself to be forgotten. Sometimes when your life has leveled out to a predictable pace, the past surprisingly, unexpectedly, or even accidently comes back to remind the world that he hasn't yet disappeared.
Such a thing happened one sunny day when they saw Haku of the Hidden Mist walking down the streets of Konoha a week later.
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a/n So there it is, the first chapter of the sequel. I would like to thank my beta, Racheakt, for helping me fix some of the rougher parts and make my story, for lack of a better expression, suck less. If you don't know him, he's awesome, and if you do, you know what I'm talking about. I didn't want to get into a whole lot of plot development in this chapter, partially because I wanted to experiment to see my old readers are still interested after all this time or if they have found better things to do with their life. I haven't, but that's just me. Also, I wanted to work on the characterization a bit. I realized that Kimimaro's calm, controlled nature can get a bit redundant at times, if not boring, and one of my favorite parts in the anime was when he lost control right before he died, and I wanted to bring that out a bit. The quote he used about truth is from the play, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead." I'm not going to say that that's the greatest play ever written, because quite frankly it goes without saying. I know it's annoying to end a chapter with a cliff hanger, but I just wanted to make it clear that I'm not yet done with Haku. He's just too awesome.
