The first thing you notice when you visit the Hatakes is that there is a phrase carved again and again and again on the door frame. It's their family nindo, and you don't have to know any one of them for very long before you learn what it is. Those who abandon their mission are scum, but those who abandon their teammates are worse than scum. The second thing you notice are the eight pairs of shoes by the door, but that's if you're looking at your own feet to take off your shoes. If you're looking up and around you notice what seems to be a hat rack, but it has nine rows. Eight of them are occupied with every sort of mask in every color imaginable (save for one nearest the door, it has only blue and black masks) on the pegs. The ninth row is empty.
As you move into the kitchen you'll see three women, and a boy of no more than ten, standing and chopping vegetables for what looks to be a veritable feast. The shortest of the women has pink hair which is just beginning to show the silvery threads of her age, and her laugh lines around her mouth and eyes are deep. Another pinkette, wielding a wicked looking knife, stands next to her and dices onions. Her eyes are coal compared to her counterpart's green. The third, barely a teenager, stands with determination as she faces a mountain of carrots. Her short silver hair is no indicator of her age, and it stands up and away from her head at a thirty degree angle. The little boy, wearing his forehead protector and treating dinner as if it were a mission or a training assignment from his sensei, shares his sister's grey hair but his eyes are an innocent green. His job is to tell his mother when the water boils and it is very important to him because there are four different pots he has to watch.
It shouldn't—but it will—startle you to see the odd tan-lines on their faces. Halfway down the nose, bisecting the cheeks, a bright line divided their faces. If they didn't before, the masks in the hallway make sense.
If you pass through the kitchen and out to their living room you'll see an older man in his mid-fifties, although he looks like he's in his mid-forties (don't ask his wife about their age difference, she's touchy that he doesn't show his age through his hair), with his feet resting on the rising and falling shoulder-blades of a young man who could only be his son. The elder is reading a book you've seen him with before, and the younger is doing his pushups extremely slowly for the same reason—he is reading a similar book propped open just under his face. Save for the scars and lines on the elder's face you wouldn't be able to tell one from the other as their spiky silver hair refused to budge an inch from it's typical thirty degrees.
Outside in the backyard, you'll hear the sounds of a furious argument about strategy between two teenagers who aren't twins but are of course siblings. They have a shogi board laid out between them and are at an impasse. Both have pink hair and green eyes and look fit to be tied. No one in the village can match their brilliance save perhaps each other.
You'll quickly do some math, because you're a ninja, and come up short. You've missed something. There were eight shoes and nine pegs, four people in the kitchen, two in the living room, and two outside. The ninth is missing. That's when the man with his feet propped up will look up and away from his book and gaze stolidly across the room, seeing through you as you stand puzzled.
So you turn.
And there is your face, at sixteen, your silver hair looking distinctly put out after what could only have been a fierce campaign against it from your mother, your coal eyes are lazy and happy above the red mask. Your arm is confidently flexed up into the frame, a fresh ANBU tattoo—so new that it is still crimson at the edges—stamped across your bicep. You remember you were grinning under your mask that day.
You turn back.
Your father still doesn't see you, but he does see you, he has to, because he and your mother chose that picture because they knew you, they knew you went out obeying the family nindo, and your own. They understood you and loved you, and kept your place in their hearts warm. It's why you're here, at the Hatakes. Because you are a Hatake. And you want one thing, and one thing only, something which will make your brother fall flat on his face, something which will make your father drop his book. Something which will make knives clatter to the floor in the kitchen.
"Daddy?"
You wake up.
There's a beeping machine too close to your ear and it makes your head twinge in an awful way. What did Sensei feed you? But there is no bar in your recollection, no bill for your tab, and you would surely remember those—your father skips out on bills enough for you to know when to know when there's one coming. Opening your eyes further you see the darkened form of one of your ANBU teammates, with a badger face. It's not him of course—the book was a dead give-away—it's your father making sure you woke up. Your mother would have his head if he didn't. He might be getting on in years, retired from active duty, but there had yet to be born a ninja greater than him. Getting into the special hospital for the black ops would be nothing for your father, let alone impersonating an ANBU.
You remember now. The battle. Whisking in front of the team medic to save his life. Two shuriken to your chest, five wicked looking throwing needles to your good arm—where the medic's face was a millisecond before. Whirling into action with a dozen clones to engage the enemy and end them. You remember hand-to-hand which would have made Lee-sensei proud. Collapsing backwards only when everyone on your team gives the okay-go signal. The four nindo which were threatened by the altercation have been preserved. The village's—never abandon a mission. The family's—never abandon a comrade. Sensei's—never allow injury to overcome you. Yours—never have others have to pay for your fuck up.
The poison had been a slow acting one, but your mother had noticed the instant you walked in the door delirious. But that was according to her. She always watched you like a hawk when you were young, having a major freak out on average once a week. And if those freak outs were merited, well, you don't like to think you couldn't have handled it. Because you could have. You totally could have.
After the battle you'd picked yourself up, ordering the medic to check the team for injuries before they moved out. You went to the body of the man who thought you looked better as a porcupine and yanked out the needles from your arm. It was a little stiff, but nothing a few hundred pushups would have fixed at home. Then the world had gotten a little fuzzier for you.
Your father is still doing admirably at pretending to sleep, when in reality he is indulging in a worry much deeper than your mother's. Mother was never in ANBU, whereas your father was for years. He could care less that you are awake, he cares that you keep breathing.
Breathing had been a bit harder, but that could have been explained by the smoke bombs the enemy had thrown before the battle, coupled with your two masks. One of them cloth and covering the lily white lower half of your face, and the other the painted porcelain of ANBU. The needles clattered to the ground next to their former owner, and your muscles felt a bit colder as you stood than they should have considering the battle you'd just ended. It didn't seem to matter at the time.
You gave the team the order to move out as you pulled out the book the Nanadaime, Naruto, gave you for your birthday. It was a collection of short stories by the author of your father's books. For some reason they had been incredibly moving, from hilarious to terribly sad. On the third day of traveling homeward you couldn't remember where home was, so you elected to take up the rear—you could keep a better eye on your teammates that way. The next morning you woke up early and wandered away from camp. Your teammates didn't find you for seven hours, in which time you were showing the full affects of the poison. Which meant you looked fine to them and had a wonderful excuse of scouting ahead to pacify them.
Scouting turned, later that day, into watching butterflies which quickly turned into homesickness which turned into leading a forced march home to see your family. That was how your mother noticed you'd been poisoned, too. You were black ops, ANBU, and you didn't lead forced marches homeward to see your family of all people. If you hadn't been poisoned you wouldn't have called your father "Daddy," and would have been able to avoid Mother's quickly applied frying pan to the back of your head, something to put you out of your misery for the time being.
You totally could have
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